You’re not going to like what I’m going to say and I don’t mean to be harsh, but yes, you are right, you have handed him the golden plate to continue enjoying his luscious cake-her and you. It’s so nice to have two women fighting over him. Makes him feel good. And since he can’t decide who he wants to be with he will continue to fence-sit and you will continue to be his backup plan because you have given him this choice and allowed him to do this to you.
You say he’s doing all the right things but until NC is real, he’s not really doing the right things and you know it in your heart, and it cancels everything you believe his so-called attempts at fixing your marriage. You will never feel secure in your marriage until she is out of the picture. Please don’t go into MC if he is still in contact with her, you would only be wasting your money. MC is for only for the married couple, not including the girlfriend.
He said OW sucked him in? Right…he wanted to be sucked in—isn’t it great how he put the blame on her to justify his actions to continue communication and contact with her? This is what his actions are telling you, that he has placed OW, still, before you in the marriage. And how many times does it take for him to end with OW? When my husband told me that over the phone, I told him go right ahead and see her in person and end it again, but this time, pack your shit and don’t bother coming back is what I told him. He got the message then. It only takes once!
There’s no reason to divorce now, 180 since it is really for you and not to save a marriage, weigh your options, you will continue to take the abuse from him until you finally have had enough. Only you will be able to decide that. You will eventually pull up your breeches with a vengeance, pull on your bitch boots and knock him off the fence and smack the cake out of his mouth. Close that bakery—it took me nearly 4 years to figure out that I was worth 10 of OW despite all of her degrees! And I had had enough. That’s when he’ll stand there in shock or you will continue to live in limbo, rug sweep the affair or in the end give him over to OW. And if she gets him in the end, what kind of man did she really gain? A man who is willing to cheat, lies, a man with no real morals, a person willing to manipulate his family for his selfishness, and a man capable of hurting those who truly love him. Is that the kind of man you want?
But really, when it’s all said and done, you are the one who is really holding all the cards – you can divorce him and move on. I told my husband that I can do bad by myself, that I didn’t need him to make it any worse than it already was but I wasn’t going out without a fight – I would take him to court, I would take half of his income and then some if I could, and I would not be nice—I had worked too hard, too many years, for the jewels on this crown to be handed over to her!
We as BS, don’t think we hold all the cards. But this is what we do, us, the betrayed—hold on to a spouse who is willing to hurt us, because we want the betrayer to understand the amount of pain we went through that they caused, but the sad thing is, they will never, ever understand until it happens to them. We believe that there is no one else out there and that we have put so much into the marriage that it is worth fighting for. But in reality, when we can finally look beyond the pain and the aftermath, our own happiness is just as important as our spouses. But if we don’t respect or love ourselves, how do we expect them to respect us in the end?
[This message edited by ladymnurse at 4:54 PM, July 7th (Monday)]