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So WW is moving out of the house at the end of the month. My mind is frozen on what to do and what to feel ( basically midst anger now)

To those who have separated did it bring clarity to you and how?

I don't know about clarity, but it got more peaceful. And easier to keep up. Less clutter, or thoughtless "someone will pick up behind me" stuff.

Peace is good. If clarity is what you need, I hope you get it.

I found I was thinking much more clearly when we physically separated and I went NC. It wasn't overnight, but peace, sleep and clarity were all by products of separation in my case.

Did the clarity lead you to R or to,D?

I guess I'm asking if separation is always a precursor to D Right now it feels like D is the only way but somehow I feel bad about it and I'm the BS. Maybe I'm just loosing it m

My POS left on DDay and left the state about five days later. There was tremendous stress and tension relief, but it didn't stop the severe emotional rollercoaster. Even with him gone I was a zombie for the first two months or so. THEN I began to get clarity. We started to talk after almost three months of NC. I thought there was a sliver of R, but when he told me he could not assure me it wouldn't happen again I knew it was over. Now, if I would be reasonable in his eyes and agree to an open marriage, we would be a happy intact family again! In my selfishness, I declined.

Sometimes being apart will lift them out of the fog, which I was hoping for,but it was not to be. After finding out additional info since, there is no way in hell I would let him back into my life so in that respect, the separation was a good thing simply by reducing stress. You will know when you have had enough.

Wow Phoenix1 sounds like our WSes are similar. She tells me she needs to be on her own to find herself because she can't guarantee this wont happen again. The EA came to light because she wanted an open marriage and wanted EA partner to be her "boyfriend" (she is 42 he is 71).

And there are some people that are okay with open marriages, but I am not one of them. If that is really the way your WS is talking, you need to really think about it. It does not sound like she is even remotely remorseful and would really prefer that type of arrangement. If that is not your thing, you need to walk away. As many have said, you need to be prepared to lose the marriage before you will ever have a chance to save it. You can always stop divorce proceedings if she gets her head out if her ass. Otherwise you need to start protecting yourself legally and implement the 180 and NC to send a strong message, gain more clarity, and begin to heal yourself.

I'm in the third month of S and NC. It has been good for me in the sense that I finally started eating and sleeping normally again. I also made sure to do IC twice a week during these slower months to help build a good foundation for moving on and that has helped tremendously. Got a new car, new job, new wardrobe, new hobbies, etc etc etc. With my "free" calendar, I was spending a lot of time with friends and taking it easy (not as much now, I'm actually starting to get behind in my work because I was out with people everyday!).

But, as others have said, the roller coaster doesn't stop for awhile and, even now, I'll have about two days a week with a breakdown of some kind-- this week it was telling my PCP I needed STD & AIDS testing b/c of WS (I teared up telling him what happened) and then on Saturday I borrowed my father's truck to run some errands and saw a souvenir in the back seat that WS and I bought him during a family outing last summer and I broke down sobbing. But I let the tears come and I bounce back a lot faster than I used to. And because I cried in the store, the clerk gave me a 75% discount. :)

But "clarity"? For me, I'm not sure. I go back and forth a lot. In IC I went over the DDays and the whole relationship and was able to pick out some signs that he was selfish and a little emotionally immature. At first I thought I was going to have some kind of big revelation.. but nothing has really been so glaring I could ever see the A coming. Most everything "bad" he ever did happened during DDays -- and they were *so* bad they point to a PD, so not much else I can go over or do about that. (Like you, he made all kinds of bizarre suggestions for "alternatives" to keep us together that we the ramblings of a madman.)

But I do think I'm solidly at the point that I can no longer picture a future with him in it and I'm heartbroken, but know in my gut it's right.

I think, at this point, D is inevitable. I've maintained NC and not made any moves since S because his job is only publicly active May-August and I know his schedule is insane (like, sometimes no sleep at all insane)... and he owes my family $ that my L says I can only get if he pays out of ignorance, so I'm waiting to see if he pays it back at the end of the month after he gets his summer bonus as he promised. So I have a date set in my mind for myself.

The problem I see with NC for this long, actually, is that I think talking to him again could be difficult and potentially set me back. As much as I'm working on myself, trying to tell myself he's a POS, etc... if we ever talk again and I find out that he moved in with OW or something like that, it's going to hurt big time. I'm not going to pretend it wouldn't. The question is, has all of this work I've done on myself prepared me for that kind of revelation not landing me in a padded cell? I hope so, but I don't know for sure until/if it happens.

NC/S wasn't what I wanted, but if the goal is to get yourself on your feet, yeah, it works better than getting dragged around emotionally by your WS. But will it give you clarity or pull your WS out of their "fog"? It's obviously case by case... but I think it's probably the second to last nail in the coffin in most cases.

I felt peace & like the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders when we separated. I felt like I'd been let out of jail.

Once we separated I was able to begin the separation, healing and my new life.

good luck to you!!!

Thanks everyone.

Silly question here. Phantomlimb was talking about NC with her WS. is that recommended during the S?

WW asked me last night what I thought this S would look like and I really don't know. Had not even considered NC.

The only reason you would separate with NC is if you really want a D. If you are trying to R, S and NC will not bring the desired result.

WW wants to S but wants to maintain contact and "date" and sort of start over. She says she is in love with me but wants to learn how to love me.

I have no idea what this means. I've lost my ability to assess things.

Before we separated I put in all the effort I could (in spite of his behavior) so separation to me was the last result. I never wanted this but I also never wanted to be married to a cheating, narcissist butthead either. He made the choice that I must deal with, and the separation has done wonders for me to get to peace and regain my self-confidence but I don't have any false hope that this will lead to reconciliation (I KNOW that I did anything and everything i could do to try and save the marriage and have no regrets!! It takes 2 to make a matriage work.) He hasn't gotten his head out of his but yet so I dont think he is going to start now. I'm just taking this new life a day at a time and not putting any unneccesary expectations on myself.

Yes and no.

It brought me peace. But some things? There's just no clarity to be gained. And trying to make sense out of the senseless can really cloud clarity---so I've had to learn to separate the things for which I can find answers from the senseless.

Unfortunately, in my situation, most of it is senseless. There will be no clarity beyond, "He's really fucked up." That's hard to wrap the brain around---and it's REALLY hard to impart to kids (who are old enough to both question AND deal with the answers).

But it is what it is.

She says she is in love with me but wants to learn how to love me.

That sounds eerily like the old, "I love you but..." line. Proceed with caution and watch actions, not words. My concern would be the fact that she does not appear to want to give up the OM. How can she possibly learn any form of love for you if she keeps him on the hook? And do you really want to be her backup plan? That sounds like what she wants, i.e., cake eating. Are you willing to be her Plan B if the OM drops her?

It brought me peace. But some things? There's just no clarity to be gained. And trying to make sense out of the senseless can really cloud clarity---so I've had to learn to separate the things for which I can find answers from the senseless.

^^^This.

I needed the space for two reasons. First, I was really traumatized from DDay and knew I needed to get immediate help getting myself back on my feet without more input from him. Over time he got increasingly hostile and verbally/emotionally abusive (for the first time ever, which was also disorienting). I refused to be abused further.

And I told him that if he broke NC with OW, he would lose me. And he took the A underground and I figured it out (through his IC, actually). So on DDay2, I told him I wanted NC for a period of two months in order to follow through with my stated boundaries.

I chose two months because I had a major professional event that I had to prepare for. I knew I would need space and serious occupational therapy to make that deadline. And he promised to stay in IC and I told him he could contact me when I returned (I had to go abroad).

He never contacted me after the NC term was us. He continued to post passive aggressive stuff on FB (our last open source of contact), so I unfriended him. Then he took himself off of our phone plan about two weeks later. So I'm not sure I know his address/phone number anymore.

Right now I'm in a holding pattern for financial reasons that I won't get into here.

But my intention with S/NC was to follow through on the consequences I set and for us to each deal with our shit and then regroup. It was just so clear to me that we had nothing to offer each other at the time as far as accomplishing R was concerned. I tried to act on that notion of "you have to be willing to lose your M in order to save it."

It shocked me that I didn't hear from him after NC. I believed he would have been working on himself and chomping at the bit to come home.

I no longer understand what has happened here. He denied that he loved OW and was even ambiguous about their future together, but maybe those were lies. All I know is that whether it's that he was in love with her and minimized it or has some kind of PD that was undiagnosed previously, I don't have all of the info. And who knows how the situation has changed at this point.

But I have no intention of breaking NC. I've been hurt enough.

[This message edited by PhantomLimb at 6:46 AM, August 21st (Wednesday)]

It brought me clarity, as there was so little change in day to day life around here - I got a clear view of what WH was bringing (or not) to the M. And I realized what it was like not to walk on eggshells all day long. It was an incredibly painful realization but at least I got to mourn the M in private...

Are you willing to be her Plan B if the OM drops her?

^^ Given your situation I think the question above is key. Sounds like she is manipulating you into a back up position...

what Take2 said - do you want to be plan B?

The key here is this: first, decide what you want. And yes, I think S helps with that. It gives you some space to truly think about the situation without the WS trying to interject his/her feelings into it.

For this purpose, I think that at least a few days of NC at the beginning of the S is vital. You need a little time to make your decisions and plans.

During that time, decide if you think R is possible, or if you are going directly to D. If it's D, then you just continue with the NC (no contact other than what is absolutely necessary to move the D along).

But if you feel you want to try R, it is vital to have a plan. What do you need to happen to make R a possibility? Decide clear guidelines for R, and stick with them.

My example: My now-X left a note and was gone one night while I was at practice for the church praise band. The note was full of things about him not knowing if we were really over yet, and that he didn't know if we were through, but he just had to be with her and "find out".

Load of crap, is what it was. He thought he was going to be able to just keep me dangling there as a backup while he did whatever he wanted.

Instead, I came up with a plan for when (not if, but when) he called wanting to come home. Which happened two days after he walked out.

The plan was this: I would not allow him to move back home for at least one year. He had to quit seeing (and obviously, living with) her. And we had to go to counseling. And none of that was a guarantee - it was just my conditions for even attempting R. Break any of them, and we were done.

During the time apart, I realized that I'd had enough of putting up with his emotional/mental abuse that I'd been dealing with almost all of our 10-year marriage. And I discovered after about 2 1/2 months that he had never really quit living with her; he had been lying about it and had friends covering for him the whole time. (BTW, it was only 2 1/2 months because before that, I was trying to give him a chance... by that long in, I knew he wasn't "all in' on the R, and I wanted to find out if what I suspected - that he was still with her - was true.)

Bottom line - the S gives YOU a chance to decide what you want instead of allowing her to decide for you. And it gives you time to decide what you need from her to consider R successful, or to even have a chance at it.

If someone isn't willing to meet reasonable conditions like the ones I gave, it's obvious that they aren't serious about making changes, stopping the lying and cheating, and dedicating real effort to the M.

You may not discover everything. You may not get closure on anything. But you will get clarity if you realize that you don't have to just let her call the shots and hope she comes back. It's much better to have a plan and be firm on what you expect in your M.

[This message edited by osxgirl at 10:41 AM, August 21st (Wednesday)]