I've posted previously regarding my wife's affair which I discovered two months ago. In summary, married 12 years, two kids, long term EA+PA of 4.5 years with a married friend of ours/father of my son's best friend, yaddayaddayadda.
So much reflection since then. I have moved past expecting to ever hear than she felt remorse while her affair was ongoing. I've accepted that it had real value to her. I don't think she's a monster. I respect her more now than in the first few weeks after D-day. I think for the most part I am not accepting her blame, while still acknowledging and exploring my own remorse for my own factors that made her affair more likely in our marriage. I'm mourning the marriage while respecting her own pain.
I've been prompted to post after reading a similar scenario from another user here who was only three days post D-day but was struggling with how to interact with their WW. I, like that user, feel I have a tremendous amount of personal work to do. I feel I need some emotional distance do to the work, and that most of the work involves working on myself as an independent individual that doesn't "need" her to be happy. That independent version of myself is the only person I can see agreeing authentically and wholeheartedly to "remarry" her (or anyone) at this stage. I really feel this is the most important work of my life right now, both for me and for my kids' sake. If I can be vaguely thankful for anything in this mess, it's having the opportunity to do this work now, and not in ten or twenty years.
Unfortunately, her needs are diametrically opposed to mine: she needs and expects some degree of affection on a daily basis from me to "demonstrate that I'm still committed to rebuilding our marriage." "Committed" means whatever it takes to make her think I'm committed to rebuilding the marriage and might include occasional hand-holding, ring-wearing, etc. I am simply not committed to marriage yet and can't meet those needs right now. I know this hits an exposed nerve for her, because her justification for the affair centres on my emotional unavailability over the last 5 years, which we have agreed was a symptom of burnout from my demanding career at the time. Our most explosive argument yet took place yesterday, when she called me a "selfish prick" for focussing on myself here, screaming that this is what I "always did throughout our entire marriage" and that it's proof I'm not good for her.
But my wife has always had a way of making me think my own thoughts and intuitions have gone awry, and this feels like no exception. I honestly do not feel committed to the marriage, in spite of all we built together. That's not the same as declining to do some serious relationship work, i.e. to make the best possible relationship (friends?) going forward in light of the fact that we share two children; but she wants a commitment to marriage reconciliation, pronto. I can't, and won't make the decision to stay married to her today, because I simply don't know if I want to be married to her again. Don't really even know who she is.
You won't be surprised to hear our MC (x 2 sessions) hasn't exactly helped this. Session 2 jumped right to defining forgiveness as something I give to myself, the trauma as entirely in my head ultimately, etc. I actually like him and his style, but his timing was poor. WW seems to have heard this as "forgiveness is a decision" (true enough) and assumes I can make this decision now or soon. She sees my reluctance to do so as a sign that I don't value our marriage and probably never loved her in the first place. Again, it's a pressure point for her because she says she has felt that I've been only minimally committed to the marriage for years already, i.e. this is just more of the same shit from me. (I know, the irony alarm is blaring, but I'm done with the tit-for-tat with her and I know she's in pain too.)
Because I haven't found the emotional distance I've needed in the past two months, I've reached the point where I think the only way for me to move forward and get anywhere - even to some potential reconciliation - is to physically move out of our home and lay out a shared custody situation for our kids for some indefinite period of time. I don't think this will be weeks, more like months to a year. (Before people say "make her move out!", I don't want to keep the house to myself; they were together numerous times in the home, there is some tangential involvement of various neighbours who were aware of the situation or who were also hitting on my wife without much resistance, etc - that might be a post for another day.) I don't want D today, and I suppose on some level I hope this does help me move towards the holy grail of forgiveness (i.e. canceling the debt I currently feel she owes me which I really don't want to carry around for long). But it's obviously also a step potentially towards divorce in the long run. It also means real changes and trauma for the kids, which is a terrible thing to have to accept as necessary. (I wish she could see that as a sign of how seriously I need this, instead of as a sign that I don't value our family and its stability.)
So this led to an unexpected turn of events last night and the punch line of this post. She told me that if I'm not actively committed to repairing our marriage now or in the very near future, she doesn't think she can wait and is "worried" she'll find someone else in the meantime. She's not talking years from now; she's talking imminently. I told her I respect that need, cannot meet it at the moment, and wonder if she should reflect on why she can't be alone for a few months of her life, especially if she's as devoted to me as she claims she always has been. I won't stand in her way at this stage.
Part of me wonders if her rush towards reconciliation serves as a bit of a veneer right now, ego-instinct, stressed nearly to its breaking point. She might also ultimately be happier if the marriage ended, and might acknowledge this on some level that she's trying not to explore. She could be burying those thoughts because of fear, pain and shame. After all, in the past, she was miserable, but didn't leave me; she cheated instead. Now, is it easier for her to express remorse and pledge devotion while watching me stumble through ending the marriage and shouldering the inevitable guilt? I don't want to hurt her. I want what's best for the kids, for me, and for her. I just don't know what that is.
After 4.5 years of fairly impressive lies, then deleting the trail of messages I found, and then eight weeks of significant blaming for her affair, her "shape up or ship out" ultimatum makes me feel like I'm living in some bizarro carnival world.
At two months post D-day of an affair of this scale, is it unreasonable to be firmly and intentionally "on the fence" between R & D? And has anyone had any experience with physical distance/separation for therapeutic purposes? I don't see that topic come up much on here.
