“That's why I was thinking about 180. I don't want D right now, but I think 180 would help to convince myself to go down that path. Other approaches seem to "promote" R and might make me blind to other option.”
Buster, I get the impression that because of your feelings of anger, you may be considering hitting your wife with D because you feel like she deserves it, or as some kind of punishment, while in your heart, you don’t actually want it for yourself. It’s like you want her to have some kind of ‘big’ consequence for what she did, to have her world turned upside down like yours was, but at the same time you don’t actively want to end the relationship. I can understand that, the aftermath of discovery is a time of hugely conflicting emotions and ideas. The thing is, unless things end immediately after discovery, then both D and R can be possibilities for months afterwards. You will not be blind to the option of D; it is always there for you. The point is whether you take it because you really want to finish with your wife and you see no future for the relationship, or whether you want to use it because you feel hurt, let down, or like you need a way to strike back.
As others have said, you are still very close to discovery, and it is really too soon to be able to make a ‘big’ decision yet, whether it will be to R, or D. And I don’t say that for your wife’s benefit, I say it for yours. Whatever decision you eventually make, it should be made with a calm head, after much thought, and you should be utterly settled and at peace with it within yourself. At the moment, you are suffering the emotional turmoil that everyone goes through, so the ‘peace’ needed to make a truly considered decision does not exist yet. So please don’t rush into a decision too quickly. Give it time, and daily life will start to stabilise again.
“Interesting thing is that OM was pressuring my wife to exercise 180 to detach herself from me. My wife refused to do that.”
It sounds like your wife never detached from you or the marriage in her mind, she instead established a second, lesser relationship that she thought she could run alongside the marriage. I know that sounds mad, and it is certainly stupidly selfish, but there seem to be countless waywards who think that there was a wall separating their two relationships, and that their ‘affair’ was in no way damaging or detrimental to their main relationship. It sounds like that POSOM thought he could run off with your wife, but that was clearly not what the affair was about for her, and he thought he was more important to her than he really was. All it was for her was a second, and secondary, relationship, full of ego kibbles perhaps, but not intended to be anything more meaningful than that. And like so many waywards, she has discovered that when the two relationships collide, what may have been a meaningless secondary relationship that was not intended to go anywhere can do huge harm to the main, important relationship. The wayward views the affair one way, the betrayed spouse sees it very differently. That can lead to a situation where the wayward hopes the betrayed spouse will come to understand that the affair had no depth or meaning, that it was just selfish ‘cake-eating’ that is now regretted, while the betrayed spouse wants the wayward to ‘wake up’ and see the affair the way they do, as a missile fired at the heart of a marriage, and moreover, a missile fired at someone who did nothing to deserve it. That difference in expectations can create a situation where waywards think all they have to do is express regret, and keep saying that it meant nothing, and the betrayed spouse feels like the wayward is making nothing like the effort they require, and have no understanding of their feelings.
It sounds to me like that may be where you are at the moment, but the situation can be improved, in time, with better communication that will help your wife understand what the affair meant to you, which is probably very different to what it meant to her (which is a damn sight less than it meant to you). That communication can only happen when you feel more settled. If you try and discuss such emotive things when you feel angry, it is bound to go off the rails and end in venting that improves nothing at all.
Give it time, Buster. Unless your wife is an idiot, and she does not sound like one, she can be brought round to understand the impact that the affair had on you, how it affected you, and why. And once she understands that, she can start doing the things that you need to heal.
