Is it too much to ask (as a betrayed spouse)?

[aileD]

The therapist is right.

If she's gonna cheat. She's gonna cheat. You can't control that. A place of employment can't control that.

 

There comes a time where you have to give up control. You're already halfway out the door. You both know if she cheats again, you're gone. If you keep a foot on her all times it doesn't give her a chance to show you she's trustworthy.

 

But there has to be a plan....because you need to be comfortable too. A new job at a certain time, or adjustments while he is still there, something.

 

I know she'd hate to manipulate her company but I bet if she told them she was thinking about leaving because of the stress of working with the OM, they would probably let him go since he's on his way out anyway and she's the only one that can do her job. That's what I would do if I was a company.

[Nirbhao.Nirvair]

anyway, the "rewriting history" is the major one that's killing me.

 

 

 

When you first posted here, you were very strong and confident and was ready to let her go because you didn't want to be her plan B. But when she comes back, after realizing that the OM is going back to his wife, you are ready to become her plan B.

 

 

Why does she want to come back? She doesn't love you. She wasn't that concerned about preserving the family when she asked for a divorce earlier. What made her realize now that she wants an R?

 

 

You say that she is quite remorseful. Remorse and feeling sorry are not the same things. A person who thinks of you as a safe-choice, a person who was ready to let you go when she thought she had a better deal and a person who wants to come back to you once that other deal turned sour, is not someone who is remorseful about hurting you.

 

 

The bitter truth is, you have become what you didn't want to become. Her plan B. That is not to say you shouldn't reconcile. But you shouldn't reconcile until she is in the driver's seat and she does all the hard-work for the right reasons. If you haven't got her reasons for choosing an R and if they aren't the right reasons, you are only willingly becoming her plan B.

[Just a Guy]

Hi csad, your thread title posed a question. How close are you to having your question answered? Have any of the posters come close to answering your question adequately for you to make a decision or is this thread going to meander along until you close it down with out having taken a decision or because yo are not getting the answers that you started out with? I guess you have to take a call on that. Warm wishes.

[Southern Sun]

You really can't make a condition of your reconciliation that she has "unconditional love" for you.

 

She can display love to you. She can have loving actions towards you. But you will really never know exactly what she feels towards you. And by the way, most spouse's love for one another IS conditional. I mean, I bet you are starting to not love her quite as much because of the conditions she's recently created, huh?

 

The only thing you can do is require certain things that are measurable.

 

You could require her to quit her job. I mean, dang, the moment my D-Day occurred, my job was OVER (affair with my boss, too).

 

You could say that, since her boss is supposed to be leaving, either he is gone by x date (whatever you've been told), or she must quit her job by x date.

 

Perhaps there are other actions you would like to see from her besides her device transparency - planning date nights? Initiating sex? I don't know.

 

You can't measure anything by feelings.

 

I can't recall when her affair happened, but I will tell you that it can take a while for "feelings" for a WW to settle into something that resembles normal. She had an affair, and while that is way wrong, what IS perfectly natural for people in an affair is to 1) convince themselves that their marriage was never really that good, even in the beginning; and 2) maybe they don't even love their spouses anymore. All of this allows them to rationalize how and why they are doing something so out of character in the first place. So she has to dig herself out of that hole.

 

You can decide that you aren't okay with that and choose to divorce. Many men do. Or, you can decide that you are willing to wait to see if she can dig out, as long as she is demonstrating effort and loving actions to you.

 

Good luck.