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The thought of losing my WW is devastating. Even after everything shes done to me. The hurt, lies, betrayal, cruelty and rejection. I love her so much which sucks balls at the moment.

What The1stWife said was here is dead on.

I love my H. However I love myself more. I now come first. Not him. Not in a mean way but in a way that I needed to learn that I cannot sacrifice ME fir him which I did for 25 years.

Love yourself more, Cr1spy. Because if you don't then how can you expect your WW to love you? Do you understand this? Even if your situation ends in D, you need to love yourself more for yourself and for your daughter, and the next woman in the future you will meet. Unless you love yourself more right now your reconciliation is not going to go well, if at all.

The only advice I seem to get is "Dump Her Arse".

That advice is more about taking the power back, reclaiming your self respect, taking control of the steering wheel, and those actions to dump her arse show her that your are willing to, again, "love yourself more' rather than let her decide what she wants to do about the situation. If she has decided to "save the marriage" at this point then she needs to take action in convincing YOU that she deserves another chance at it. Otherwise, she thinks she doing you a fucking favor by deciding to "save the marriage". I hope for your case she doesn't think she is this fence sitting Venus who's giving you the opportunity you win her back. Because if she does have that mindset then what you will be dealing with from this point forward is the constant "waffling" of her desire to save the marriage every time you don't things her way. And that segue's to how you are already setting the stage for this with the following:

After a lot of discussion, we have agreed to take things really slowly. Starting with getting comfortable in each others company enjoying conversations and having a few nights out together.

I'm sorry, but again this is bullshit. It isn't up to you therapeutically massage and guide her heart back into loving you. She just murdered your marriage by having an ONS and you are going to lighten up her consequences as a result? You are going to set the stage so that she can find her way back to you again with dates and light conversations about the fucking weather? Are you fucking kidding me? What she needs to do is go to IC on the double! She needs to dig into herself to understand how she let it come to this in the first place! When several sessions pass and her consistent proactive actions over time show you that she is committed to reconciliation it is THEN that you go on dates and be all pleasant like you just discovered each other.

Tigersrule77 is right. Your WW has no remorse. The reason being is she has no empathy toward what he has done to you, the marriage, your daughter. Without empathy, she will never reach remorse but with IC it can help guide her towards it. You do this "take thing slow" approach is pretty much an attempt a rug sweeping and you are throwing around giant pillows so she can have a soft landing. Tell me, Cr1spy, if some guy walked up to you out of the blue and punched you square in the nose would you really to invite him for some tea, befriend him in hopes of talking out his reasons for his aggression towards you? I'd rather call the constables, have him sit in jail for a night or two, then let him try and explain his aggression before the magistrate then I decide whether or not to further press charges.

Bottom line, IMO, I think your WW is deeply ashamed of what she did but is rationalizing it all by viewing the OM as her twin flame, otherwise how could she have done such a thing if it wasn't kismet? Her pining for the OM has more to do with her not wanting to look in the mirror and admitting she got taken advantage of not so much because he was such a smooth player but because she was weak and a fool. That can be a hard thing to admit for a lot of people, especially narcissist. But until she can look at herself in the mirror, she will not even begin to explore the consequences as a result of her actions and understand the pain she has caused you and your daughter and the devastation she has brought to the M. So take those fucking cushy pillows away and let her fall hard the way she is meant to fall as a result of betrayal and deal with her own consequences. Quit hand holding her into R like you are coaxing some timid little kitten into it by dangling kibbles of "no consequences".

Threat of divorce didn't do what you think it did.

Coupled with the love of her life boyfriend ghosting her, the possibility of D meant that her backup plan wasnt going to be there anymore. So she snapped her fingers and bam, backup plan firmly back in place.

She neither loves nor respects you right now.

[This message edited by GoldenR at 9:49 AM, July 19th (Friday)]

If you are in a hopium addiction you'll see only what you want to see not necessarily the truth

If you are in a hopium addiction you'll see only what you want to see not necessarily the truth

WW and BS alike. Far too often the BS wants to see their WS as this great person they have built in their head and fail to see who they really are and what their real intentions are.

This will only work until she finds a new boyfriend.

She is NOT remorseful, she just doesn't want to give up her home.

I just happened to watch a dr. Phil show today about people being catfished. These look like normal people but they have allowed themselves to be scammed out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. It has to be some form of mental illness to buy into the ludicrous situations that they are in. I consider limerence a form of mental illness. It does not matter how much reality you put in front of a person in limerence they pay no attention to it because they are so delusional. In my job I have worked with delusional people and let me tell you reality does not stand a chance. Just move on in your life. There’s not much you can do.

Some of us here are not telling you to Divorce her. I used my own experience to show just how far I was pushed and how long the limbo and mistreatment went on before I woke up and stood up for myself.

Once I stood up for myself things changed. But my point is I finally did something because I deserved better. I was lucky we reconciled. I was fully prepared to be Divorced because being divorced was better than living with a lying cheating spouse (in my opinion) who was putting the Affair before his marriage and kids.

My experience on SI is that most cheaters don’t like weak Betrayed spouses. They continue to disrespect and walk all over the BS as long as they can.

A female friend once told me that you know you are ready for a D when you are ready and willing to live in a cave to get away from the spouse. I'm guessing you are not there yet.

So what to do? Keep showing up. Keep doing all the things a normal person would do. You love your WW? Fine. You are happy with life? Prolly not.

What do you need? You. Your inner core your inner being. What do you need? Not what do you want. What do you need?

My guess is that you need to have your WW get her head out of her highly used ass. Is that going to happen? Hard to say but you can't fix crazy and you can't fix stupid.

So do whatever it is to step back and analyze what it is you need. When you do, you will see that what you need and what you want may not be the same.

My advice is to do what many have suggested. Begin D to see if she finally gets it. If so, you get what you need. If not, you D and you get what you need.