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@thumos

I am wondering what you hope to gain from the therapeutic separation you mention

As I see it there only a few outcomes

1. You decide you can move on and live without WW and extend this indefinitely

2. You decide you cannot, return to WW and lock yourself into this stalemate and show WW that she doesn’t need to do anything else

3. WW decides she can move on and live without you

4. WW has some kind of epiphany and starts to do the things you want / need

Assuming it is number 4 - do you know what those things are?

Or is there another outcome you are looking to achieve?

TD

1. You decide you can move on and live without WW and extend this indefinitely

2. You decide you cannot, return to WW and lock yourself into this stalemate and show WW that she doesn’t need to do anything else

3. WW decides she can move on and live without you

4. WW has some kind of epiphany and starts to do the things you want / need

Hey all, I apologize for delay in reply. I hadn't seen all the responses until just now.

To answer a few inquiries:

1. My WW has walked up to a few "whys" here and there, but none of them in detail and none seem adequate. She's hinted around at some FOO sexual abuse, she tried to position her AP as a playa who manipulated her (this is why I'm always so adamant about "little lost girl in the woods" syndrome among WW's) and so on. She also tried to subtly blameshift onto the marriage in the past, but that's mostly stopped.

2. @TwoDozen, I think you outline the options pretty succinctly regarding therapeutic separation. I am not afraid of my WW finding out she wants to be without me. If that is the outcome, I will be fine with that. I think my biggest hope for implementing one would be to get out of this house where this all happened (she slept with him at our house) and see if I can clear my head by limiting contact with her. She sex bombs me constantly. I don't know if it's fair to call it sex bombing. Her appetite for intimacy is ravenous. Naturally I enjoy it, it feels fantastic, etc. I also think, obviously, it has an impact on my ability to think straight. A therapeutic separation would allow me think clearly absent the influence of sex hormones and brain chemicals from sex. It would allow me the time and space I never got after DDAY to really try to take stock of my life and think about what I really want.

That's my hope. Who knows if it would work out that way?

3. Lately, I have been giving a lot of thought to a therapeutic separation again. Again, to clear my head and see how I feel alone and apart from her. An "experiment" in aloneness.

September could be a good time. I have a couple of work trips coming up that will take me away in any case during that month, in October and November. One of my September trips will be in the Rockies and I plan an extended weekend that will be at least five whole days. I am thinking of extending to entire week away and that would be a good time to implement the full separation when I return to our town.

4. Around Father's Day, I had a work trip and had to drive for this one. On the drive back and forth and at the staff retreat, I was kind of a basket case. I had an internal meltdown though I doubt anyone could have noticed from the outside. I was really "this close" to calling my WW while I was out of state and telling I'd rented an Airbnb for a week and wouldn't be coming home. The idea of doing a therapeutic separation came to me again on the trip and I felt such relief thinking about it. The practical side of me stopped me from doing, the side that is always thinking about the impact on my kids and simply not wanting to be the cause of that pain.

5. When I came back just before Father's Day, my WW gave me a card with a long letter and money she'd been setting aside. In the letter she went into detail about her remorse and told me the money was so I could take a vacation by myself somewhere (as I had planned to do last fall, but which was interrupted by my son's COVID quarantine from school).

6. After reading the letter, I was moved and decided to tell her about the meltdown and that I almost hadn't returned home after my work trip.

Since then, we've been talking about it off and on. Life comes at you fast and we are busy people.

When I think about implementing a therapeutic separation, I feel lighter and relieved.

That should tell me something.

Personally, i heard a revolving, shapeshifting, and groundless series of "why's" that made so little sense to me that i straight up told my ex that I would not put up with having to listen to them anymore, as they were obviously pulled straight from a rearward-facing orifice.

I've had a similar experience.

There is such a thin line between the whys and excuses. I've always wondered how anyone, including the WS, can tell the difference.

This is the essential conundrum, to the point where I'm like "Do I even care any more?" She successfully buried the texts, failed her polygraph and there just seems to be a hard line past which she will not go.

I don't know how to reestabish authentic trust and intimacy in the face of that. We have something much more surface now, though she seems to believe for herself it is deeper.

She's being so kind and understanding now, out of fear of losing what she had and didn't appreciate before. She can continue to act like this for the rest of her life. But what matters is not how people are, but how they can be. She already showed it.

I have actually been thinking something pretty close to this the past several weeks. My version is she seems to have gone through a period where she craved excitement, or whatever she believed she wasn't getting, enjoyed the attention from a younger man, and of course never intended for me to find out.

As far as the marriage, she thought it was something she wanted and would not walk away from.

But she wanted him. She enjoyed every aspect of the affair, their long talks, their make out sessions, the texting, the secret messages, the longing looks.

He made her feel "like no other man, ever." (something she told me later).

So she plowed on through my soft confrontations, she went ahead with crossing the Rubicon and planning and inviting him over to our house for the express purpose of unprotected sex while I was out of town.

Then I heard a VAR recording where they alluded to the sex, chuckled about it, he fawned over her gorgeous hair (she does have gorgeous hair, among other things), and she told him she didn't even care if I found out about the affair.

It was a very casual conversation, in which he was freaking out a little that I had figured out a phone number he was using. She laughed at him and said "I told you he was really smart" (referring to me). Then they bemoaned the fact that each of them were married to "such assholes."

It was kind run of the mill conversation, ho hum. Like this wasn't serious for her. Her voice was knowing and deeper. She used quirks and mannerisms in this conversation with him that I thought were exclusive to me, but which in hindsight I now realize are just part of her repertoire for handling men.

Now she's scrambling like mad to save the *marriage* she never intended to destroy, but took for granted. She's told me several times how she's grieved over the fact that she envisioned us growing old together and that may not happen now.

Because it's comfortable for her and because it was a good marriage in the first place. She understands how frightening it will be for her to be alone at 50 as a woman.

Does that make me plan B? I don't know.

I’m wondering, if that’s the case, is there no burning desire on your part to understand why she cheated? Is it past the point that you care anymore?

Almost every poster that I can recall, whether they’re in the process of R, completed R, Divorced, or are in limbo, at a minimum, has uncovered the stated why’s. I’m not sure how you can remain in this state of limbo indefinitely without getting to the bottom of why, as well as the unanswered questions you have.

I can’t see this ending well. Maybe when your youngest gets out of HS, which is a long way off, the plug gets pulled. In your current status, can you actually envision retiring in bliss with your WW? Your posts come off as logical and analytical, but your coexistence as it now stands with your WW is the antithesis. It’s difficult to wrap one’s head around it.

There was a burning desire to understand the affair before. There was a burning desire for truth. I just don't think there is in me as I examine myself currently. Maybe that will change. I just don't feel an ache to "get to the bottom" of it now. I'm pretty apathetic about it and very apathetic about our marriage. Example: She wants to kiss me constantly. She's the one to initiate most hugging and kissing and most sex most of the time.

I reciprocate always, but when we're going in for that kiss, I always just have this feeling inside that is withholding. I enjoy the kiss as a physical act, but I can't really put my finger on the emotional tone I feel or don't feel as we're doing it. It certainly isn't the same as before D-Day.

In your current status, can you actually envision retiring in bliss with your WW?

No, I can't.

[This message edited by Thumos at 4:07 PM, June 30th (Wednesday)]

2. @TwoDozen, I think you outline the options pretty succinctly regarding therapeutic separation. I am not afraid of my WW finding out she wants to be without me. If that is the outcome, I will be fine with that. I think my biggest hope for implementing one would be to get out of this house where this all happened (she slept with him at our house) and see if I can clear my head by limiting contact with her. She sex bombs me constantly. I don't know if it's fair to call it sex bombing. Her appetite for intimacy is ravenous. Naturally I enjoy it, it feels fantastic, etc. I also think, obviously, it has an impact on my ability to think straight. A therapeutic separation would allow me think clearly absent the influence of sex hormones and brain chemicals from sex. It would allow me the time and space I never got after DDAY to really try to take stock of my life and think about what I really want.

This sounds like a great idea.

I have to wonder if maybe she has a slight intuition that you are apathetic towards her and the marriage and that's why she's more affectionate. The kissing you described sounds more like someone who wants their spouse to "reassure" them that the relationship is okay by repeatedly accepting/kissing back. It's like the partner who is always saying "I love you" because they desperately need to hear "I love you too" multiple times a day. It keeps the fantasy that things are fine going for her. It tells her that it's no big deal if you leave for a bit because you'll be back and things can finally go back to normal.

It's amazing to me that she believes she "may not" get to grow old with you when if I were in her shoes, I'd see the end of the marriage on the horizon and would be doing anything and everything my spouse said would help to stop it. Not blowing off big ticket items like IC in favor of more kisses.

Honestly, all it says to me is that she hasn't changed much. She STILL hasn't learned to listen to you when it comes to doing what she needs to for R. She only does what feels good and is easy in the moment to put a band aid on the problem.

[This message edited by nekonamida at 4:55 PM, June 30th (Wednesday)]

@TwoDozen, I think you outline the options pretty succinctly regarding therapeutic separation. I am not afraid of my WW finding out she wants to be without me. If that is the outcome, I will be fine with that. I think my biggest hope for implementing one would be to get out of this house where this all happened (she slept with him at our house) and see if I can clear my head by limiting contact with her. She sex bombs me constantly. I don't know if it's fair to call it sex bombing. Her appetite for intimacy is ravenous. Naturally I enjoy it, it feels fantastic, etc. I also think, obviously, it has an impact on my ability to think straight. A therapeutic separation would allow me think clearly absent the influence of sex hormones and brain chemicals from sex. It would allow me the time and space I never got after DDAY to really try to take stock of my life and think about what I really want

@thumos thanks for the response. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again. So many parallels.

Anyway for me the house is a similar issue, not because it happened in my house (could of, I was travelling a lot) but because I was renovating the house at the time so there are a lot of memories attached to the new kitchen, the new bathroom etc and basically every room in the house so I totally get where you are coming from.

What I will say to you is, almost like a switch, the day we finally agreed to separate almost all of the triggers, the mind movies, my thirst for data and facts, the inability to focus on anything else all stopped. I went from operating at 10% of my capability to say 70% almost overnight. I secured a new job in a senior management position 1 week later and I kid you not a week previous I could barely function. I guess taking back control of my life had a huge HUGE impact on me.

I have found, for the most part my WGF to be a much better candidate for an amicable S than she was for a proper R. The affection is still there, she has agreed to practically everything I have asked for and we remain very close.

I have to admit that today 3 months later and with my own house purchase happening yesterday we are still each other’s “comfort blankets”

I think what you are doing is a good idea. If I had my time again I would probably do this within the 1st 6 months. But better late than never.

What you said about your wife giving you the money space and time to take a solo vacation is probably how my WGF sees this chapter in our relationship. I guess we’ll see how this pans out.

Good luck to you brother

TD

Thumos

Just my opinion. I have been reading everything you have written since we both arrived here at about the same time.

You can do this "trial" separation however you structure it but in the end you will still be faced with the same choice. Return to the "scene of the crime" and accept it, or divorce and make the separation permanent.

Aside from that you cannot move to not see this OM ever or know he was in your home, the way this has played out ( not your fault just a fact) is that she is still in the same box as she has been in for a long time

If she comes totally clean with what caused her to fail the polygraph, you will divorce her. if she doesn't come clean, which is still the case after years, you may divorce her BUT YOU HAVE NOT DONE THAT IN YEARS. The second option is a better one for her, given most of us here believe what I think you believe and there is a bunch more you do not know.

I admire you patience and ability to maintain some sort of rationality in all of this, but it appears this is going to be a standoff with no end in sight. And the emotional toll on you after years of this and more to come cannot be measured on this forum.

Personally I find Thumos' current dilemma to be heart breaking. I think Mrs. Thumos does genuinely love him, in her own broken way. But she did an awful, hateful thing, a big thing that persisted over a long time period and involved a string of a great many choices to hurt Thumos deeply and personally, and she hasn't grown much beyond the person who did that. It leaves Thumos with a Hobson's choice. Do you see her for the broken woman she is and stay with her despite the pain she has caused and despite the frustration of accepting her unwillingness to look at her own brokenness and try to fix it? I really think that's the crux of it. By the way, I don't think you would be wrong for making that choice unless, in so doing, you would be betraying yourself. Only you can know that.

They often say that the betrayed spouse gets served a "shit sandwich". This is Exhibit A for that. There is no good option for Thumos. Just bad options, or slightly less bad options.

I reciprocate always, but when we're going in for that kiss, I always just have this feeling inside that is withholding. I enjoy the kiss as a physical act, but I can't really put my finger on the emotional tone I feel or don't feel as we're doing it.

I would hazard that what you feel is the infamous "ILYBINILWY" feeling. It's actually quite common for a BH to feel this way.

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 10:15 AM, July 1st (Thursday)]

Am I stating this correctly? The most significant aspect of the A at this point which is causing you pain, this limbo status, and your predilection, yet inability to pull the trigger on D, is the fact that you believe your WW is still withholding significant details of the A? Cue in failed poly..,

If this is the case, have you clearly communicated this with her? I think you absolutely have. Assuming you have clearly communicated this, your assumption is that your WW hasn’t divulged the entire truth is that she believes it will cause D? Thus, she’s willing to bet that she has a better chance of remaining married if she continues to hold back the truth?

Assuming all of this is the case, snd it is your desire to do so, have you said to her that if you get the total truth you will be able to move out of your current ambivalent state and fully move towards R?

If all of this is is on the mark, what has been her response? We see she’s written nice empathetic, apologetic letters, and love bombed but what about the meat of the matter?

When you say to her, you failed the poly, I know I don’t have the full truth, I need the entire truth, what is her reply?

^^^ this ^^^ I think this is spot on

I believe if the OPs WW was able and willing to do what the OP needs she would have done it before now. I don’t believe lack of love is the reason she can’t or won’t

TD

I would hazard that what you feel is the infamous "ILYBINILWY" feeling. It's actually quite common for a BH to feel this way.

I do.

I think one of the terrible ironies of being a BH is that we end up feeling ILYBINILWY authentically down in our core, as opposed to a fleeting fantasy "feelz" temporary state that our WW's talked themselves into.

When you say to her, you failed the poly, I know I don’t have the full truth, I need the entire truth, what is her reply?

She has said essentially, "I've told you everything. I can't make something up. If I made something up more about the affair that didn't happen, I would be lying."

The most significant aspect of the A at this point which is causing you pain, this limbo status, and your predilection, yet inability to pull the trigger on D, is the fact that you believe your WW is still withholding significant details of the A?.

I could be wrong, but I don't believe that captures where Thumos is. His issue is really more the totality of it, the way some of the truly awful things she did and said continue to torment him periodically. The stubborn, defiant withholding of truth and simply provides a context that tends to amplify the fundamental trauma.

I mean I would plainly put this statement snd question to WW. Given how I feel about you and our marriage right now, how do you actually envision our M playing out over the long term? I know how it is going to play out, but do you? Can you actually envision a R, happy marriage, and us moving into the sunset snd a happy retirement as the situation currently stands? Put it on WW to answer this snd do not let her off the hook with I don’t know, we’ll see, I’m hoping things will work themselves out…

I am one who always plays a mental game with every major decision I make - I look 20 steps ahead, as each answer plays out, towards what the final end state will look like. No different than war gaming or strategic planning in the corporate sector.

Many of the successful BH’s like Thumos, TD, space ghost, BR, Walloped, WW, WWTL, snd many others, all make important business and personal decisions in this manner. WW’s do not. Had they played their decision out to 20 steps ahead, they most definitely would not have cheated. They all regretted their A’s once uncovered.

I think Thumos needs to clearly explain this strategic thought process to his WW. Look honey, I’ve already played this out 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the road. I see the future. Do you see the future like I do?

I would be interested in her response.

BFTG - if that’s the case, then Thumos needs to either work towards acceptance or simply D. If he can’t come to grips, either with or without therapy, with how his WW wife behaved during her A, than he shouldn’t waste another minute of his time remaining married. Isn’t that the implication of what you’re suggesting?

Your story and especially your feelings about your marriage and your wife remind me very much of those expressed by waitedwaytoolong.

Dude, that's why I said what I said above.

It leaves Thumos with a Hobson's choice. Do you see her for the broken woman she is and stay with her despite the pain she has caused and despite the frustration of accepting her unwillingness to look at her own brokenness and try to fix it? I really think that's the crux of it. By the way, I don't think you would be wrong for making that choice unless, in so doing, you would be betraying yourself. Only you can know that.

People choose to remain in marriages with broken spouses. Spouses who are addicts/alcoholics, for example. No marriage is perfect. Every married person balances the imperfection against the gravity of ending the marriage.

I’ve been following Thumos for a long time, and watched him go down this road before only to be tied in a Gordian Knot. As this thread progresses, I think it is about to double back on itself preparing to be knotted once again.

Thumos can’t move forward with his WW because he still believes she is withholding information or lying by omission. I personally believe he is correct to feel this way given: 1) the horrific way she treated him during and shortly after the affair, 2) the anxiety attack/ER visit she had leading up to the poly, 3) the shit show with his SIL and WW at the examiners office, 4) her inconclusive answer on only one of the questions, and 5) her refusal to take another poly.

She holds the key(s) to letting Thumos move forward (tell the truth, pass a poly, work on herself), but she’s too afraid to give it to him because it unlocks a door that makes D more likely in her mind. However, that unwillingness, in itself is selfish, wayward behavior which should tell him something about her capacity to truly change.

However, there is still a way forward for Thumos without those keys. He just has to be willing to find and use an alternate door or window to find his path. Sadly, by his WW’s own actions, that alternate path almost assuredly doesn’t include her.

I truly wish you well, Thumos.

Sanibelredfish and I seem to be in agreement.

I once heard on an infidelity podcast a WW, who wanted to keep her marriage and family intact, tell her BH, “why implode our entire lives snd family because my vagina was in the wrong place once or twice. I want to stay married but these are my conditions; I revert back to my maiden name, and once in a while, but not too often, I get to have a fling.”

The context is that this was a mid life woman who felt constrained by traditional marriage, child rearing, and family life. She thus wanted it all - a Classic cake eater. And do you know what, her husband reluctantly agreed, although the moderator told her that he most likely wasn’t happy about it and was given a take it or leave it deal, so he essentially ate the shit sandwich. The WW begrudgingly agreed with this assessment.

Isn’t this what we’ve seen time and again on SI with these WW mid life affairs, Thumos’ WW being no exception?

Sanibelredfish and I seem to be in agreement.

I once heard on an infidelity podcast a WW, who wanted to keep her marriage and family intact, tell her BH, “why implode our entire lives snd family because my vagina was in the wrong place once or twice. I want to stay married but these are my conditions; I revert back to my maiden name, and once in a while, but not too often, I get to have a fling.”

The context is that this was a mid life woman who felt constrained by traditional marriage, child rearing, and family life. She thus wanted it all - a Classic cake eater. And do you know what, her husband reluctantly agreed, although the moderator told her that he most likely wasn’t happy about it and was given a take it or leave it deal, so he essentially ate the shit sandwich. The WW begrudgingly agreed with this assessment.

Isn’t this what we’ve seen time and again on SI with these WW mid life affairs, Thumos’ WW being no exception?

Isn’t this what we’ve seen time and again on SI with these WW mid life affairs, Thumos’ WW being no exception?

My WW's affair was most certainly of the cake-eating variety. I really don't know how else to characterize it. She wanted the feelz and the tingles and thrills of a younger man who was feeding her a lotta bullshit and attention. She wanted it, she went for it, she could have given two shits whether it hurt me, and she thought she could pull it off without me ever finding out. The convo I captured with VAR reveals that.

I think WW mid life affairs are kind of a new plague in the West (that is to say, America, Canada and the UK) that has been receiving almost no media attention, other than in the laudatory "you go grrrl" sense.

Someone asked here about the sex boming. Here's the thing: We had a good sex life before the affair. During the affair, definitely not. I got starfish sex a few times. Even though I was not clued into what was going on, I was extremely confused and hurt by this sudden change. After D-Day intense HB commenced. I struggled a lot with mind movies the first two years after D-Day, less so than now. She has amped up the sex consistently over the past four years. It's like we've had extended HB. Hard to describe and I don't want to get too graphic.

I’ve been following Thumos for a long time, and watched him go down this road before only to be tied in a Gordian Knot. As this thread progresses, I think it is about to double back on itself preparing to be knotted once again.

I completely cop to being caught up in limbo. I may be one of the more egregious examples, or maybe it's just that I post so regularly and have diarrhea of the keyboard, so you're not hearing from the potentially sizable audience of men out there in limbo. Here's one piece of context I've considered: After my WW failed her poly in Dec. 2019, I was dead set on divorce. What slowed things done was first the heart attack scare, followed almost immediately by the lockdowns of the pandemic. I backed off because I felt scared and weakened by the heart attack scare and because I felt it was untenable for myself to implement divorce during the pandemic. Only recently where I live has the pandemic "calmed" to a point where maybe we are finally past this terrible event.

as for waitedwaytoolong, he and I have talked about our similarities. There are a lot of them. Slightly different scenarios, but too many similarities to not pay attention.