No, you shouldn’t sleep with someone else "to get it off your mind". I don’t have to tell you that that is ridiculous and destructive. You know it is. I won’t even go into the multitude of reasons why.
You JFO’d. It’s been abundantly explained why you’re feeling the way that you currently are. Your feelings are universally typical-natural, and quite understandable, to us, but not the uninitiated. Those who never experienced infidelity, can’t possibly understand what we experience.
So don’t expect much understanding and support from family, friends, counselors and, especially, your WP.
She’s trying to frame this as an isolated incident, a one-off, that happened only as a consequence of an impaired mental state.
You’re seeing this as a possible pattern of repeated behavior and wayward thinking-mentality that could, will, eventually repeat itself in the future when causative factors and opportunity again come into alignment.
You’re coming up on the seven year itch and you’re wondering if you’re WP is a ticking cheating time bomb with a latent, undiagnosed, untreated predisposition to cheat laying in dormancy.
The safe logical pragmatic play would be to cut and run. No sunken cost fallacy. No having to play marriage cop. No sleepless nights. No mind movies. No waiting for the other shoe to to drop. No dragging her, and you, through the rigors of Reconciliation. No lingering resentments. No taint on your beautiful love story.
However, you love her. And that trumps all logic and practicality. All logic except for the fact, that crazy fact, that humans are capable of change given the right circumstances.
The circumstances she requires for possible change are:
-She needs to chase down the causative factors of her long history of cheating through intense therapy.
-She must sincerely want to do this. She must enthusiastically go to counseling.
-She has to enthusiastically educate herself as to what you’re experiencing, empathize and react appropriately.
-When she makes mistakes, she has to objectively analyze her mistakes, make changes, and show a continuous trajectory of improvement.
-And, she has to initiate and sustain this effort with an almost selfless devotion. As if the love of her life is dependent upon it.
If you suspect that she is not up to this task, if she lacks the devotion, if you’re already seeing signs that she is not capable of sustaining this effort past the hype of the I Just Got Caught phase, then you know what you must do.
Sitting around waiting for the other shoe to drop, just waiting for the next time because no real reconciliation, no definitive mitigation was completed, is no way to live.
Because you’ve kicked this can down the road for seven years, because no one as taken any definitive measures to fix her, no building of trust, you have one foot in the relationship and one foot out. You’re failing to fully and intimately commit to her and she can feel it. Neither of you feel like you’re part of something real, authentic and beautiful. Your lack of definitive action is setting the stage for a guaranteed repeat if it hasn’t already happened-is happening.
[This message edited by RealityBlows at 8:30 PM, Wednesday, May 11th]