I'm not sure about the OP putting her up to this. Actually, it seems worse than that: It seems pretty clear that she would like me to somehow grant my approval, and that we should all be friends.
In other words, her contention is that the marriage is irreparably over and that this OP will be the new something-or-other in her life.
I should characterize how this happens a bit more sharply - My wife tells me all this in between spells of breaking down and crying. All the while, she's literally wracked with emotional agony, which is hellish to watch. I just have to wonder how deeply her feelings about the death of our marriage must go for her to go through this over and over again with me.
She says that she loves me and will love me forever, and that while this marriage is over, a new "marriage" will take shape out of the ashes, and that she can't think of me not being in her life forever. (this is it in sum.)
She says that she doesn't want to use the word "divorce" because she doesn't think we could ever be divorced - it's just a "legal term" for what we have to do.
Furthermore, the OP is "quite like me" except that the ways in which he's not like me are the things she needs.
(As I try to figure this out, I keep thinking that this must certainly to do with listening better and not making her feel "like she doesn't deserve me" - these are the things she has complained about. Now, I can (and DO) listen better and I can be very careful to be nurturing, full of praise, and accepting, (and I do), but I just can't change her self-esteem for her, and I certainly can't change how her feelings about herself was in the past. I just hope that when she expresses thanks for my new listening skills that she sees something changing.)
Naturally, this whole situation gets to me. I'm having trouble concentrating enough to write this even now. Before, it was a gargantuan struggle to hold it together, especially when I looked her in the eye.
I'm saying that although I very much keep my cool, continuing to listen to her, only interjecting to say that I will not meet the OP, this winds me up into an absolute knot.
For instance, the last time she related all this to me she went back to her place after a few hours. A little later, she called, asking if she could stay over with me. I really didn't know what to say. Of course I wanted her with me, regardless of how much this all hurts, but I wondered what was going on behind it. But I agreed.
It was at least something to share the misery. We are in somewhat of the same boat - both broken up over the failure of our marriage. We try to comfort each other.
But I did ask her if she was staying out of pity for me. (I've given no indication of needing it, causing her to comment more than once that I seemed to be taking things well.) No. She said that after such a painful talk we should be together for a while. OK, I thought, although in a certain way it was even more painful.
All night, she kept asking "what happened to us?" and the like. She would cry, want to be held, curl up close to me, etc.
This is a strange kind of torture - a painful hint of what you most desire: that intimacy that's been lost. I'm experiencing the suffering of things falling apart, but now it's more than doubled because not only do I feel her hurt, I feel my own reflected back through her. I'm guilty, despairing, burned out, and generally ground down to nothing.
And I can't let her see this.
Obviously, since I'm not the man of steel, some of my suffering comes out. For the sake of decency, at least, I can't keep all my feelings hidden away from her anyway. So I say that I'm sorry too - sick with it - and that I wish we would have paid attention to things that were going wrong earlier.
Of course, to her it is too late for that now. I don't do anything more than gently loft the most subtle hints about there being hope because I know what the reaction will be.
(This even though she has just recently suggested that we talk to someone together, ostensibly to ease the breakup process.)
So I'm really at something of a loss.
Oh, I forgot this: she said something to the effect that she might have languished in a sort of separation limbo if it hadn't had been for the OP. He's apparently the catalyst - in some way - for her moving forward. (Why do I think it's forward to him?) So even though I don't think that he put her up to setting up a meeting between us (which would be a patently ridiculous encounter, although maybe something this kind of character might dream up), I do think he is exerting some kind of malign influence over her - or at least reinforcing her belief that there can be no hope for a reconciliation between us.
