Firstly, many thanks to Bigger and Stevesn for your kind words. They are appreciated, and reciprocated. I wish I had more time to post, but work and domestic life are absorbing more of my time than they did before lock-down.
mrplspls,
Could my wife have been drawn in by the OM and then found herself turning on herself? Hating herself for what she had done, lacking the courage to tell the truth AND lacking the courage to leave the marriage.
She has admitted to me that she preferred the version of her that I blindly knew, loved, adored and wanted to have children with. She hated herself as the cheater and my rug sweeping choices made me the best place to be, the best man for her and the best road to a good life...
Your question could be considered and debated by us here, and you would get a range of views, but some of these questions can only be answered definitively by your wife.
And discussing these things with a wayward spouse can be difficult, because if you hand them a story or set of circumstances that makes them look good, they may jump on it and compliment your amazing insight, simply because it offers them an easy 'out'.
A lot of your posts focus on you, and people have come up with a lot of good information about ways a betrayed spouse can take care of themselves and methods that can be tried to counter mind movies, blaming yourself, rushing to make a decision too quickly, etc.
However, the big blind spot in your thread is what your wife is saying and doing.
You have said that you are seeing a therapist, but is your wife having individual counselling to investigate why she made the decisions and choices she made?
From outside your thread, it is very hard to get a sense of what your wife's attitude is, and how much responsibility she is taking for her actions.
I think there is a danger that if you or us start writing her story and creating her reasoning and decision-making processes for her, we will end up creating an image of her that may hang together logically, but which may not represent her reality at all.
And I think the issue of false image is central to the decisions you made in the 1980s, and could also be the key to creating a solid, authentic foundation on which a healthy but realistic reconciliation can be built, if you choose to go that route.
Going back to the aftermath of the affair you were not fully aware of, we find you loving an image of your wife that you did not want to damage by asking questions that might have horrible answers, and your wife buying into that image, despite knowing how false it was:
She has admitted to me that she preferred the version of her that I blindly knew
And the truth is, you also preferred it, or you would have dug deeper into her relationship with her boss. I am not criticizing you for that, many people have done the same.
The trouble is, it set up a dynamic where your wife was never challenged to address her issues, and you were hesitant to pry too deeply, because the image you had created was perhaps your idealized version of who you wanted her to be.
Both of you had vested reasons for not upsetting the applecart.
The problem with burying a serious issue is that it is like burying a land-mine in your garden. In time you forget where it is, but it is still there, and eventually you will step on it.
So I think it is crucial that you and everyone here does not create a new image or persona for your wife, because this is a time for the real woman to finally emerge from behind the character she played, and finally start dealing with her issues.
That woman may not be the way you idealized her years ago, but at least she will finally be who she really is, and that will enable you to finally make an informed decision about whether you want to stay married to her.
That may be a daunting prospect, but both of you need to abandon the image and embrace reality. It is the only way to avoid burying another land-mine in your garden, in the crater left by the explosion of the first one.
So when it comes to what your wife's motivations and decision-making processes were, and are, there should only be one voice speaking, and that is your wife's.
You, and all of us, can only guess about them.
The only person who can tell you what your wife was thinking is your wife.
The only person who can tell you why she stayed after saying she wanted to leave is your wife.
That does not mean we will not be here to help you with how you handle this process. That is what this forum is for, and I think all of us are here, giving our time, because people took the time to help us, and we want to pay that back.
However, we really must not speculate too deeply about what your wife was thinking; she has to open up about that herself, because that is a vital part of both of you getting past this. And an individual counsellor can help her to do that.
[This message edited by M1965 at 5:56 PM, October 23rd (Friday)]
