Thank you Michele for your response and spending your valuable time reading my post. It means a lot to me.

Well, I did do some 180’s for several months but it didn’t seem to make any differences. Ever since we married, I have never gone out to a club or stayed late at night at my friends’ house or something in that nature. But during her affair, I did go out or disappear for couple nights a week and come home later than usual. I took dancing lessons and stayed late after the class to practice. My wife knew that there were lots of single women taking the lesson too. It was a free lesson once a week. My wife didn’t seem to care or maybe in her mind at that time, she had already given up both our marriage and me.

For 12 years out of 15 years of marriage, I used to do the cooking, the cleaning and the grocery shopping. I stopped doing it as part of my 180’s.

Until now I still don’t know whether her affair died a nature dead or she was so shameful or couldn’t bear to see the kids go through this whole mess that she created. She ended her physical affair 4 months after I found out, but continued her emotional affair for 6 more months until she quitted her job. Part of the reasons was because of the other man, but I still don’t know “exactly” why she still refused to work on our marriage. Whenever I raised the OR talk (which I have not done that for sometimes now), she kept telling me that she felt so dirty and unworthy to me. She also said that how could she have sex with me again since she has given her body (having sex) to the other man already. She regards sex as the most important part of being marriage. In her mind, it was a turning point of no return when she decided to have sex with the other man. She also thought that after having sex with the other man I wouldn’t want to have her back and besides she went ahead and had sex with him to just get back at me for telling her parents about her affair. Before I told her parents, she said that it was just kissing and hugging or being naked together in bed but no sex. That’s where my wife is in term of intimacy.

She is happy with everything else right now including the current arrangement of just being a roommate. She is a stay-at-home-mom for now and is in a process of looking for a new job. We are still doing family activities together and she seems to want to talk to me more than before in term of kids, household chore, home improvement, vacation, etc…except the OR talk. That’s where I’m right now in term of our daily life. As a matter of fact, we have been going places as family more than before since summer began and we have also been doing the biking and the walking in the park as a family almost everyday if the weather is good. Do you think that’s the good sign? But then where do I go from here to be in intimacy with my wife again? That's my goal.

LAN

[This message has been edited by LonelyAtNight (edited 09-18-2001).]