Sorry to hear you are so exhausted. Reconciliation efforts ARE exhausting, and that doesn't even account for the rest of life's little hassles and challenges. I think a key word in your comment is "ambivalence". Progress is nearly impossible when ambivalence is present. We rarely accomplish that which we don't care about in the first place.
If I can offer any advice, it would be this... do something else. Something non-affair related that nonetheless encourages cooperation and communication. Paint the living room. Clean the garage. Plan a last minute weekend trip. Choose a book and read it to each other. Find a 2 player video game to play together. Take cooking classes. Learn how to shuffle dance and plan a small routine for your next party. Start exercising together. Volunteer at a pet shelter. Start a blog.
The downside of MC is that it typically focuses on what's "not" working. Rather than focus on past failures, the idea is create new wins, and in so doing, create those wins together as a team, so that they become part of your new story.
At the end of the day, recovering from infidelity really has very little to do with infidelity. That part is already over, we can't change it. Trying to fix what can't be fixed would indeed be exhausting and endless. Recovery and reconciliation are about where we're going, not where we've been.
FWIW, the world is insane right now. Politics, the economy, health issues, employment issues... it doesn't matter where you live in the world or what your beliefs are, the truth is, we all start to dread even waking up in the morning when it seems like the world around us is insane and hopeless. How are we supposed to love ourselves and each other when it seems to world around us is so focused on hate and conflict? Go easy on yourself for being exhausted. You should be. We all should be.
I once read an article about people in Japan, where getting on a train often involves "people pushers" who shove the human bodies so tightly into the train that they can barely close the doors. The article talked about how people on the train have learned to "go into a personal world" in order to remove themselves from that oppressive reality. They make their own "safe space", their own reality, and that becomes their truth, and allows them to bear the burden of being squished together.
I think getting through the exhaustion requires a similar approach. It's not rug sweeping, it's getting a new rug.
[This message edited by DaddyDom at 5:52 PM, Wednesday, November 30th]
