First real post in a while .... brace yourself, it'll probably be long.
I'm a bit of a mess at the moment. Separated three months now, and it was getting a bit easier. As much easier as it can get in just 3 months anyways. I've been doing well being single dad to 3 kids 11 and under. Just got back from taking them to see their grandparents in Europe. 23 hour trip door to door, multiple flights. 6 years ago I was a childless bachelor and spent my time playing computer games and drinking beer. Half a year after that I thought it was exhausting to have 2 kids interupt my morning routine for 30 min. I think that felt more exhausting than dragging 3 kids on a 5 hour drive then 2 intercontinental flights alone does now. Things change.
I've taken reasonably good care of myself, I work out 6 times a week (dumbells in the kitchen after kids bedtime, how any single parent find time to go to the gym mystifies me) and I was going out with friends about once a week.
Couple of weeks age STBXWW started her crap again though. I really shouldn't care and I should be somewhat immune by now, but the thing is she keeps upping the ante. Upping it enough so that it's a bit of a shock to the system each time, yet the raise is small enough that she could keep me squirming for quite a while without hitting the ceiling (I'm assuming there's a ceiling, a person can only be that far removed from reality, there must be a limit).
This time it started with a weird duo of emails, one really long one pointing out my every flaw in her eyes and how I should fix them, "not for me but for our children". Then 12 hours later an email about how she misses me terribly and wants me back. The first of these emails is nothing new, I have a fucking library of texts about how bad I am and in all the ways she's retroactively fabricated how bad our marriage was. The first thing I ponder is quite simple, how can she think it's in any way constructive to spend a few hours writing up an email explaining how bad I am when she wants to get back together? It's like opening with "Your teeth are very yellow" to the pretty girl at the bar. This is a pattern, some prolonged attack on me followed by expressions of affection, how sorry she is etc.
I said the first of these emails isn't anything new, but the second is, at least since we separated. She's expressed how she wants to remain close friends and her bewilderment at how I could possibly not want this several times, but not that she wants me back.
In my post about a month back I detailed how she'd had dinner with one of her AP's outside of my work about 5 weeks into the separation, so my first thought was that she'd either got dumped or had discovered herself that the grass isn't always greener. I should have not responded at all (I've been generally very good about not responding to her almost daily emails containing anything not related to the children) but I was shaken and weak. What I wanted to say was "No, you do not get to see how things work out with the fucking AP that lead to this separation in the first place, then come running back when it doesn't" but I wanted her to admit she'd been seeing him herself. So we shot a few emails back and forth on this. Just like with the A's getting her to admit the truth took a lot of pulling (even after telling her I knew it, I just wanted her to say it). At the end of this email exchange I ended up not with the quarter inch splinter I was trying to remove but with a damn 2 inch sliver of wood to heavy to be held by the tweezers. I got the confession I wanted, in the roundabout way of knowing that he was one of the 10 people she slept with in the past 13 months. 7 of them in the last 3. Ta-da! Not what I was expecting. Maybe 2 was the max. I'd be willing to wager.
I mean, 7 in three months is A LOT even for well hung 20 year old frat boy. 7 in three months for a 36 year old with a full time job, three children to care about 50% of the week and while in the middle of moving (she has moved 3 times in the 3 months since the separation started) just strikes me as a logistical feat. If you strike the time she had the kids, that leaves 6 weeks of separation. If you strike the days where I know for a fact she was just moving furniture or otherwise engaged, that shaves off another week and we're down to 5. So 7 guys in 5 weeks. God damn.
Why does this matter ... I don't know. I can say almost for certain that I wouldn't want her back even if it had just been the one guy I knew about. Maybe it matters because it's just another facet of my former wife I could not phantom. I didn't have much respect left for her, but it's fast approaching 0. Maybe because she's now slept with 3 times more people in the past 3 months than I have in my entire life (male thing this one I guess). Maybe because during the re-bonding phase after her initial A we spent a lot of time talking about my lack of self esteem and sexual issues rising from these and this crap doesn't exactly help. Mostly though (I think), it matters because I hadn't quite given up. I was hoping that somewhere down the road, I would get the email I got (just with more sincere appologies, and without the email preceeding it). That maybe a year would pass and she'd better herself and me myself and we could start again. Don't get me wrong, I had prepared for and expected this separation to be long term and that a divorce would follow. But after this continous downhill of a year I think maybe I thought this was the bottom for us and that there was at least the possibility that given enough time and reflection, there might be some way up from there.
Someone here told me way back when (meaning 5-6 months ago, when I had a different account that I had to disable), "Give it up man, she's gone". I had given it up, 98% or so. I guess the last 2% remained because I didn't believe that she was gone. Not all gone.
The second thing I ponder is that given what I've just relayed, how can she and why does she say she wants me back? It's not as if she gave up once she told me about the 7, that email ended with something like "If you're willing to give us another chance, I promise this won't happen again". It cannot possibly be me that's just a prude and that most/some/a minority would consider this? Am I wrong? Are there more than a fraction of a percent of people who would consider taking her back after this behavior? I mean, just the escalation: She had her affair, then 7 months later when we do a trial separation for a few weeks she sleeps with two more guys, and then two months after that and three months into our proper separation she sleeps with 7 more. Even if somehow you'd be ok with those 10 partners, what does this pattern predict for the future?
This is a legitimate question, I'm not looking for confirmation that her behavior is abnormal but I'm trying to understand what kind of illogical thinking produces this behavior. It's not that she thinks sex is truly nothing, like a handshake or a hug. Sex is her one and maybe only mean of feeling a sense of self worth, so I understand why the extreme promiscuity. But she also has always held that if I ever cheated (for her meaning slept with anyone else) she'd be out the door in a heartbeat, and she knows how badly her first A which was just one sexual encounter with one man affected me. The ONLY pattern of thought I can see that would lead her to believe that she can do what she did and still have a chance to get back together with me is that what she does will not affect others.
I'm asking these questions because I want to understand what is going on. It feels so much like just a kick in the face, like a "Look! Look at the shit I did this time!! Do you still love me?" spoken with a sadistic smirk but I know that's not it. She actually wanted to get back together, and she thought there was enough of a chance of this happening to ask.
[This message edited by sartre at 11:02 PM, September 6th (Friday)]
