I’ve been browsing around here for a few days, finally deciding to post. My wife of 10 years did the BD on me July 6. I initiated this a bit when I found out about her EA. The man came to our S18’s graduation party (hers from a previous relationship, but I adopted him as my own) and I could just see the way she looked at him, a co-worker. I had suspicions before this, but he is a government agent who works undercover and I saw no way he would be this awkward around me. The only thing he would say to me was that he can't stay because he has a few parties to go to, but he stayed for 2 hours. Either he’s not good at his job or something was going on. I was a little distraught the rest of the day, drank too much, and after everyone went to bed I went through her old phone since she had just gotten a new one that week. Lots of “inappropriate” texts. The most obvious was her mentioning a letter that she wrote to him, I immediately deduced she was in love with this man and this letter was him telling him this. Others were things like “miss you” with winking emojis, “wish you were here,” trying to meet for coffee almost every day, just general out of bounds talk from married people. From there I looked at phone records and saw that she spoke with him for at least 30 minutes a day, every day except weekends (he is also married), always when I’m not around. For instance, we drove separate to our sons graduation and I texted her something from the parking lot that she did not respond to. I see when I check that she was on the phone with him and later sent him several texts. That was enough for me. I left her a letter to reach out and went to work early, your general “I’ve been a bad husband” talk, apologize for my failures and ask her to try to work on our issues with me. It’s not that we didn’t get along, we did, but she was drifting from me and I from her, I could feel it and I knew something was wrong. I checked phone records again that day and saw that she talked to him 6 times, including when she was supposed to be in the movie theater with our S6 and a group of friends, some adults. That tells me damage control, more confirmation, so I told her I would not be coming home that night.
She dropped the bomb the next day when I came home. Without too much detail she denies anything with the OM, says she has been unhappy for years, that she has “changed” but I have not. I admit that I have not been a perfect husband and told her I could feel her rejecting me and I quit trying. It was all the little things for both of us, I quickly realized I had been unhappy too but the difference was that I thought we could work on things and she did not. We quickly came up with a plan of separation, we would sell our house and move into separate residences, but stay married. We both started looking right away, we were both ready to move on. I will admit for me it was more that I knew that was our only shot at reconciliation, to be apart for a while. But she kept telling me things that I already knew to be untrue, mostly little things that there was no reason to lie about, and would not fess up when challenged, so I got scared that she was going to go buy a house and try to stick me with half of her debt on this. Full disclosure, she makes about double what I do, so I am a little more worried about what will happen financially when this all happens. I told her after this that she should file the papers, to me it was the only way to stop her buying a home. I would have filed myself but I gave her the option to save her the embarrassment of being served in front of her co-workers. I quickly regretted this and asked her to reconsider, but she filed anyway, August 6.
I want to skip ahead to present now. She has admitted the EA, swears it is not a PA (not totally convinced, but in the end it doesn’t really matter), but she has “feelings” for OM and is possibly in love with him. Because she allowed it to happen she doesn’t feel she should be married now or ever. We were all ready to put the house on the market, I had the realtor come over, do a market analysis, take the pictures, everything was ready to go but then she halted it. She was worried about finding a place to stay, there’s not many houses for sale in our area and apartments are hard to come by. Plus she said she didn’t want to ruin Christmas for our 6 year old. I’m really not understanding any of this or where it came from. I had brought up Christmas before and how I would like to be able to spend it with my family and that’s when she said we need to be living in separate homes and it was not a good idea to spend Christmas together. We have been doing family stuff pretty much every weekend, Halloween things last weekend, more of that planned for this weekend, we went to Dave and Buster’s a couple weeks ago, we have always had a weekly dinner with my dad and her mom that has continued, she talked about taking a trip to Florida with the family (after telling me she hates going on vacation with me). But for the most part, everything is exactly normal and how it was before all this started. Mostly normal, but actually somewhat better, she seems happier and more like the woman I married than she had been. I know I have been much happier as well. We get along fine, joke with each other, sleep in the same bed though there is no physical contact. Other than the occasional comment about something like how I should go to the doctor before I’m off her insurance, no divorce talk or anything. I’m just not sure how to treat this, a part of me feels like she did not expect me to go along with any of this and now she’s not sure what she wants. She has stopped coming home late from work, which tells me maybe she is not having her coffee dates, if one of us is going to the store we still ask the other if they need anything, it’s just normal. We went to a mutual friend’s wedding together a few weeks ago. It all just seems weird, I know I need to be detaching and I know this is not healthy in the long run, but I’m not sure how to go about this. I want to spend as much time as possible with my S6 before I have to miss half his childhood, but I know I need to start moving on as well. She has made it clear she doesn’t hate me, doesn’t even dislike me, but she’s not in love with me anymore and just feels that we shouldn’t be married anymore, it’s best for everybody. She has even said it’s not like she’s closing the door on us being together in the future. I just can’t wrap my mind around this mindset. Sometimes it just feels like manipulation, like she has something up her sleeve that I don’t see, but I’m not sure what. She has told me twice now that she was reconsidering until something I did, the first was I told her I accept this and maybe we were never right for each other. I do accept it, not because I like it but I really have no choice. I really don’t believe that we were never right for each other, I think that whole concept of being right for someone is wrong. It’s the love that matters. I told her this later, it’s one of the things I was telling myself at the time to help me get through this, but the damage was done. The second time was when she found a log I had started keeping in a depressed/angry state of what time she left for work and what time she came home and where she was spending her days. She travels around the state pretty frequently and I was trying to find evidence of a PA as well as her ignoring our child. I had already told her about this, I was fully prepared to hurt her as much as I could and try to full custody of our 6 year old, but I backed off. I knew it wasn’t right and I wasn’t going to win that anyway, it was just going to cost a bunch of money and do more harm than good. I know I can’t get inside her head, but I’m just wondering, does anybody understand or have any insight into what she could be thinking? I’m obviously leaving out a lot of details but I tried to hit the main points. I can’t understand what changed her mind about Christmas, caused her to try to plan a family vacation, and to act so nice and friendly once this was all out in the open. Overall I’m doing quite well with all this, I don’t look at phone records anymore and I am moving on with my life. But I still have that fleeting hope of reconciliation. I’m not sure if she thinks the same, or if she’s just so relieved that I went along with it. I don’t initiate conversations with her, when I go to a different room in the house to get away for a minute she often follows. It just doesn’t feel like we’re divorcing, or even that we should be choosing the nuclear option at all. Staying the way we are is just going to make things harder in the long run when the floor finally drops out from underneath me and everyone else, but I don't want to bring it up and scare off any possible reconciliation if she's already considering it.
You may be on moderation now, post in small frequent replies and stay on this thread until you reach 100 posts (for your thread, you can also post on other peoples threads to give support). Especially on this Newcomers forum, where the posting activity is very active, and your posts can quickly fall to the bottom of the page or even several pages down. Keep journaling and asking questions - people will come! Most important - POST!
Get out and Get a Life (GAL).
DETACH.
Believe none of what he or she says and half of what he/she does.
Have NO EXPECTATIONS.
Take care of yourself, breathe, eat, sleep, exercise.
Take the parts of this advice that you need and don't worry if I have repeated something that you have already done.
Here are a few links to threads that will help you immensely:
Sorry you are here but you have come to the right place.
Sounds like you are a lot luckier then a lot of the LBS around here in that your W doesn't hate you and intentionally try to hurt you.
It sounds like your M wasn't horrible but you started to grow apart which sent her into the arms of OM. Right now she is thinking emotionally and there is a saying on here that when decisions are made based on emotions there are sure to be consequences.
I would cut out the family time that is considered cake eating. Do things alone with your son and make yourself as scarce as possible when not with your son. Work on your short comings, workout, eat right, dress nice and always look your best around her. Show her what she'll be missing.
You can't reconcile with your W when she has the heart of another man. This is going to take a long time to play itself out but odds are the affair will fizzle out and at some point down the road you will probably get a chance to recon. The key is to detach, command respect and be the lighthouse.
Read through the attachments in cadets thread above and start implementing Sandi's rules immediately.
Thanks. I just can't get over the confusion, and of course today there was a development lol. I had found a place to stay a month ago when we were trying to list the house, that's when she told me we should wait and she doesn't want to ruin Christmas. Today she tells me she has found an apartment and can go as soon as mid-December and wants my opinion. I'm just not really sure what to say to that, I'm at work so I told her I'm not talking about this right now. I'm just confused about it all. Even the cake eating, a lot of it just feels like she's already trying to reconcile, but I don't know how I can know without asking her which I won't do. I won't talk to her about any of this stuff unless she comes to me and even then I have a hard time holding my ground in the moment when we do talk about anything. I honestly think the affair is fizzling or has fizzled, just by how much she seems to enjoy talking to me again. It's strange to me, I hate to just say she's not typical but she's not, and while some of my story is pretty similar to many others I've read her responses and behaviors are so hard to figure out. They don't match what other people say and I feel like I really am in a unique state compared to many others.
Thanks. I just can't get over the confusion, and of course today there was a development lol. I had found a place to stay a month ago when we were trying to list the house, that's when she told me we should wait and she doesn't want to ruin Christmas. Today she tells me she has found an apartment and can go as soon as mid-December and wants my opinion. I'm just not really sure what to say to that, I'm at work so I told her I'm not talking about this right now. I'm just confused about it all. Even the cake eating, a lot of it just feels like she's already trying to reconcile, but I don't know how I can know without asking her which I won't do. I won't talk to her about any of this stuff unless she comes to me and even then I have a hard time holding my ground in the moment when we do talk about anything. I honestly think the affair is fizzling or has fizzled, just by how much she seems to enjoy talking to me again. It's strange to me, I hate to just say she's not typical but she's not, and while some of my story is pretty similar to many others I've read her responses and behaviors are so hard to figure out. They don't match what other people say and I feel like I really am in a unique state compared to many others.
Your story is very similar to mine. My W told gave me conflicting messages too. .
There is a saying around here that if the WW wants to reconcile then you will know and if not you’ll be confused.
I think right now you have to look at her actions. Her getting an apartment doesn’t quite sound like she’s ready to reconcile. When you get home just listen and validate her feelings. Look up validation if you are not sure what it means.
It is not uncommon for a WW to want the best of both worlds and want to cake eat. My ex loved cake until I put her on a cake free diet lol.
Just remember that the affair is a symptom that something was missing in your marriage and even if it’s over doesn’t mean it changes anything.
Agreed on all points, but a bit of a kick in the gut for the day. Like I said I was ready to move a few weeks ago and she stopped me. Which led me to believe she was rethinking some things. But now, she's got the apartment all lined up, so my thinking on the matter was clearly off. I get what the affair means, but the way she has been acting has led me to believe she's ready to work on things but was not ready to say so. Today tells me that nope, that's not it at all. Which on the plus side makes me much less confused!
I get that too, honestly I knew (or thought I did) that this was the only way things COULD work out at all. Then she put the brakes on, slowed everything down, changed her demeanor around me, started planning a bunch of family time, etc. I mistakenly thought that meant something other than her wanting to cake eat but I'm realizing I was wrong. I think she is too stubborn for anything to change though. She has not budged on her whole reason for the divorce, that she developed feelings for another man and she therefore is not cut out for married life. I have read Sandi's rules of course, and I really feel my W is a different case, that she really will just think if I don't spend time with the family then it just means I'm a jerk.
JR my W after her EA (which ended fairly quickly) was dead set on D. I could give you the details but trust me, she had her mind made up.
When I remembered DBing. When I went out and got a life (GAL). When I 180'd, self-improved, focused on improving myself. When I really started to emotionally detach. And as I improved in all of those efforts, her mind started to question the finality of her decision.
DBing doesn't guarantee that your sitch will move into reconciliation, but it gives you the best chance at that. Because pressure and pursuit almost never works.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
