MH,
There's a few things I have been thinking about in relation to your situation, and I will post them now, just as food for thought. If they're crap, ignore them!
She is being coached by her boyfriend and he was the one telling her to be nice to you.
More than likely right.
Is it possible or ok to say he may be manipulating her. To get what he wants?
Of course she is trying to manipulate me too......for the most part unsuccessfully; at least when it comes to terms in the D.
I have done a lot of thinking about the process an AP goes through to get someone to cheat, and the conclusion I have come to is that they achieve something that I call 'freeing the beast'. Earlier in the thread, you mentioned that you thought she had been 'played', so I want to run my 'beast' theory past you, and see if it may be a bit nearer the mark than the notion of 'playing'. To me, 'being played' suggests an element of being misled, or lied to. I actually believe that what successful APs do is deeper and darker than that, which is why it can seem to be so inexplicably powerful, and change 'nice' people into someone we do not recognise.
Rather than 'playing', or stringing people along with promises they will never make good on, I think that the process in many cases involves an AP enabling and encouraging the potential wayward to unleash thoughts or desires that they might otherwise think improper or wrong to consider, let alone indulge. To say the unsayable, think the unthinkable, and do things they might never have done without someone coming along, unlocking the cage door, and freeing the 'beast' in them.
However, the process of freeing the beast is very different to mere 'playing', because it relies on there being a beast in someone in the first place. And it has much more impact on the individual concerned than 'playing' or misleading, because it is not about an AP acting like a hypnotic svengali and imposing their own will on a hapless victim, but rather its power comes from within the individual themselves.
This is what many BS's cannot understand, and they wonder how an AP has such a peculiar hold over their wayward. In fact, it is not that the AP is using mind control or hypnotism, it is that they have encouraged the wayward to drop their own boundaries and ethics, and enjoy the ride of giving in to their darker desires or thoughts. So the 'power', such as it is, does not come from the AP, but within the wayward themselves. What waywards do is not done because they are puppets of the AP, but because they have given in to something within themselves; the beast that the AP has freed.
Now, it is entirely right to think that the AP has freed the beast because it suits them to do so, but what we have to understand is that the beast is not something they have implanted in the wayward, it is something that was within the wayward all along that has simply been let off the leash. That is why waywards can seem like totally different people, and do things we never would have thought they could. But it is not the AP making them do it; it is the waywards riding on the backs of their own internal beasts that they have been talked into freeing.
Once a beast is free, the AP doesn't need to do very much at all, because waywards frequently convince themselves that they were actually wrong to have kept the beast caged for so long, and may even demonstrate resentment at having done so, with statements like, "I have been unhappy for years", as if keeping the beast caged was a form of abuse by the spouse that they have decided to betray.
Does any of that sound familiar to you and your experience?
Can a 'beast' be created by an AP? I think so, but only if the component parts already exist within a wayward's mind and personality. An AP can, through discussion and suggestion, 'help' a potential wayward to form a set of scattered component parts into a coherent, solid 'beast' that did not exist in that form before, even if all the parts were there for years.
The big ones APs work with are suppressed desire, unfulfilled wishes, and latent resentment. The latter is the driver behind statements like, "I've been unhappy for years" (which you yourself have been treated to), which strikes so many BS's as complete nonsense, because the wayward had never previously mentioned any dissatisfaction or unhappiness, so it just sounds like a convenient bullshit justification for terrible behaviour.
I used to think that myself, but what I now think is that perhaps the wayward's resentments did exist in the past, just in the form of a lot of scattered elements that were nothing significant in themselves, but which became more significant when the AP 'helped' the wayward to put them all together to make a full-on 'beast'. But that beast is actually produced by the wayward, from things inside themselves, and the action of freeing it is the decision of the wayward, not the AP.
In fact, if the 'beast' has been built 'properly' by the AP and the wayward, its freeing can be accompanied by a sense of justification and outrage by the wayward at having had to keep it caged for so long. How many BS's have been shocked by a level of aggrieved aggression in their waywards? Quite a few! I believe this process is what lies behind it.
Waywards themselves do not fully understand the nature of the 'beast', and often try to rationalise, justify, or intellectualise it. It can be hard for many to admit or accept that their 'liberation' is actually a betrayal of their own values and ethics. As part of the justification process, they will often demonise the BS, who suddenly becomes the fount of all their unhappiness, and whose alleged wickedness makes the affair not a transgression, but a liberating act of revenge on a cruel oppressor. Is it any wonder so many BS's are left thinking WTF???
Maybe that all sounds like garbage, but the reason I have written it is because I have followed your thread from the beginning, and a lot of your wife's actions match my thinking on 'freeing the beast'.
For example...
To create the beast:
Hell I didn't know anything was wrong and according to her she didn't know anything was wrong until she met the OM.
To justify the beast:
Once again she has tried to blame me for everything saying she had the A because she has been unhappy for a long time (like 5 years).
...she said...I was only in it for the money.
The realisation that the beast is actually a blossoming of something toxic from within the wayward themselves:
She is either so deep in the fog with her OM...Or she has turned into just a plain mean person.
Recognition of the beast as a fundamental change in the wayward's personality:
I still want my wife back.....But the wife that I married not the one that she currently is.
When I agreed that we take 30 days apart and try and work this out; I only had one ground rule. She would not see the OM and cheat and of course I told her I would not cheat or try to get even. (I could never do that) She promised. She got in her car and I watched her leave. Not a minute had passed and she called the OM. At that moment I knew what I was up against.
The beast revealing itself by projecting its own toxicity onto the BS:
...when I asked for support in the counter she said that reinforced her view that I was only in it for the money.
I actually think that a major part of the resentment that formed your wife's beast may be the fact that she was the major earner, and the AP encouraged her to start seeing that as an imposition by you, thereby turning you into a freeloader in the eyes of her 'beast'. Step back and think about that 'in it for the money statement'. Many here have said it sounds like the most stupid thing ever, but I believe it is actually very revealing about what led your wife to build and then free her 'beast'. Financial resentment. He helped her see it, and she used it to make her 'beast'. And when she freed it, she felt perfectly justified to do it, because you had become a freeloader in her mind. Does this sound at all possible? Might it explain her lack of guilt and remorse, and that weird sense that what she did was 'right'?
Then there are the self-serving delusions to ease guilt:
She did tell me a few weeks ago that she had planned to come back when she left on that day in July. I asked her what change then and she didn't have an answer for me.
There was no answer because it was not true. She was talking to herself more than you, trying to convince herself she did not just abandon you. Had she wanted to come back, it would have indicated a desire to be with you, and if she had wanted to be with you, she would not have left in the first place.
And finally, a recognition of what so many BS's end up facing:
At that moment I knew what I was up against.
That last statement, MH, is why you need to step back, disengage, and let your lawyer fight aggressively for what is yours. You are not fighting your wife, you are fighting the beast. The beast resents you. The beast sees you as a freeloader, and has admitted that. The beast feels justified in abusing you. The beast is irrational and unpleasant, but until your wife recognises it for what it is, she will remain in its grip, and there is little you can do to change that. You just have to defend yourself.
I know the wife I married is gone forever.
That is not an absolute. She will be gone for as long as she embraces the beast as a flowering of herself, and fails to recognise the toxic waste that powers its heart, and the bile that flows through its veins. That is why, for the time being, all you can do is defend yourself from it. There is a chance that one day, maybe, she will look into the mirror of her soul and see the ugly gargoyle of her own making that she has allowed to take up residence there and rule the roost. At that moment, if she recognises the beast for what it is, and rejects it, she may finally start to return to being the person you remember. But there is no way you can make that happen, only she can do that, and there are no guarantees that she will get that moment of insight.
For now, you have to recognise that you are dealing with the beast, and act accordingly.
I am sorry if what I have written seems like fairytale hogwash, but it seems like the best way to express what I see happening in waywards when they build a reason inside themselves to cheat, and then act on it. It is an attempt to take a different angle to try and make something so crazy and wicked a little more understandable.
I wish you luck, MH, and we will all be here to keep supporting you through this.
