Something that's been bugging me a little. I'm sure this group knows the answer. How come if my wife is so unhappy with the marriage And had and resorted to an affair and is acting like she hates me for the most part, and continues to lie either directly or by omission why doesn't she just divorce me.
My WW raged on me during her affair. She said she still loved me, but would go on and on about how miserable and exhausted she was with her life. She criticized me and berated me horribly for over a year. She was emotionally and verbally abusive. If it weren't for our family of 7, I wouldn't have put up with it.
Now that the affair has been over for about a year and a half, she is very loving and caring and feels terrible for how she treated me. She knows she was abusive and is trying very hard to never be so again.
You sound a bit like me. My wife is a dentist and for many years made more money than me. She was resentful of this. I did my part to do the housework, cook the dinners, pack the kids lunches, etc. But no matter how much I did, how much money I earned, how loving I was, it was never enough. My past mistakes and selfishness were held against me. 20 years of mistakes were built up in her because she never forgave me. She reminded me of them frequently and cherished her resentment for me.
You can't nice her back. I tried and tried. Month after month I pleaded with her to try and convince her that her friendship with the OM was inappropriate. She refused do agree and resented ME for trying to convince her. Of course, she knew it was wrong as she was screwing him the entire time, it turns out.
Best to press on with finding out the OM, exposing to OM wife, and filing for divorce to bring her back into the real world.
What my wife feared the most (it certainly wasn't me) was me telling everyone that she is an adulteress. Her friends, her neighbors, her kids, her parents, her dental patients... it would be too much for her to bear. She said that if that ever happened she would move out of state and take the children with her.
So I think your wife wants the depiction of that which she is not: A loving, caring, respectful, honorable wife. If she divorced you now, she would be known as a lying, cheating, adulteress. She would wear that badge for the rest of her life.
She wants the cake without the calories, the pleasure without the price, the evil and sin without the consequences. She is counting on you to keep her lie a secret.
Don't be your own worst enemy like I was. The damage done to me while I flailed about believing she was honorable while she abused me week after week, month after month, weighs very heavy on me now.
Be strong and keep moving onward. Only when you act decisively and crash her dream world will she recognize you as valuable and cherish you like she should. The difference between my wife now and when she was in the affair -- they are Jekyll and Hyde. The difference is that she was addicted to the way he made her feel, and I was in the way of her addiction.
Her addiction needs to be broken. You are the one to do it.
NP5
