Very unsettling talking to myself in this way; maybe it will clear things up, maybe I'm spinning my wheels with useless thinking. Who knows?
Note #1
I think I may have had a bad case of 'getting one's hopes up' a while back when the wife told me she was putting the brakes on her 'friendship' with OP. My response to her upon hearing the news was guarded to say the least - I simply expressed my hopes that she was doing OK with everything. In fact, even my own internal response was pretty moderate. Almost immediately, I reined in my feelings of relief and happiness. "It could all change tomorrow," I figured.
It didn't however. Within a few days, my wife spontaneously brought up the issue of a reconciliation, recognizing that it would be difficult and so on, but open to the possibility.
In this case, being 'guarded' was again my watchword. She wanted me to say what I thought about it, and I said what I felt - in essence, that the possibility was there and that I would work for it - but I didn't press the issue.
Then there was talk about us moving in together (possibly, somewhere down the line, if things work out, etc., etc., etc.)
Then the issue of children, pets, and all the other accoutrements of domesticity. (We've led a pretty austere life for a while for a number of reasons, so these things would open up a new era for us.)
I did not do much to continue these conversations. It seemed appropriate to very lightly agree, ask questions, say "ummmm," and basically hold my cards close to my chest. No need to give away the fact that this was certainly what I've been waiting to hear for months.
But the fly in the ointment: contact with OP not broken off, simply drastically curtailed. Reports of a few brief cell conversations, primarily one to address OP's "devastation" and "confusion" about the end of the affair. So, the wife wants to deal with OP humanely. I can recognize decency in ideals. No need to be cynical.
But the gifts keep coming, and things that were to be returned are not returned. (Hard to get to the post office, etc.)
Hence: suspicion. Not enough to derail my basically easygoing and friendly interaction with the wife (I should say that we've always been very affectionate with each other), not enough to draw up "boundaries" (we're at least sleeping in the same bed most every night), not enough to rile up my occasionally iracible nature (because the thought of OP and his shenanigans crossing my mind manages to enrage me still, as little as I try to let this come out).
But enough.
She's subsequently admitted that her feelings for OP are not at all dead and buried. It seems that the "clarity" she referred to that she expected to gain by cutting him off has a few clouds in it.
On top of this: A very disturbing admission that she feels that she doesn't deserve to be loved. A welcome admission that she recognizes an eating disorder.
A perhaps helpful decision to seek help, albeit not with a professional (of whom there are many of many degrees of quality, as she knows from experience), but with a priest.
Helpful? It is difficult to say. We've spoken to one before, with less-than-amazing results. Of course, the marriage 'professionals' we've seen were worse than useless, so that actually is saying a lot. But how this will help her with deeper issues remains very questionable to me.
See, I'm in a quandry as to what to do at this stage. It mirrors the way I feel at every point where something appears to change - for instance, the impending OP visit a while back impelled me to write here, while an earlier thing (I think it was the "hopeless" verdict my wife delivered to me at some point) got me into the whole DB thing in general.
I know that some of you out there have gone through these ups and downs - what I'd really like to see is some specific advice about how to handle things now. How did you do it? How did it work? Etc.
I don't want to muck things up. Perhaps progress has been made, even if we have a two step forward, one step back tune playing in the background.
Should I 'switch things up' at this stage? Is this a good time to do 180s? Of what kind?
Is continuing to work on my own behavior (listening, basic Mars Men, Venus Women stuff, genuine loving a la Fromm, and all of the other real insights I've gotten into what I was doing wrong), is that enough at this stage?
So much of what is behind DB (and other things of that ilk) is the emphasis on what you can do about yourself with a firm recognition that you cannot do everything about everybody else. But there is a 'strategy' - this isn't exactly the serenity prayer. Some courses of action work better than others.
