I read your story and I am going to sugar coat this statement a bit: I think you may not have had enough time to do a Plan A effectively. Plan A is two fold, 1) work on yourself 2) show her that you can be a great man a man for her to fall in love with again. <p>The first part is the most difficult. If you do the first part well, the second part is a cake walk. Here is how I think you should progress since us guys need a real step by step instruction booklet for things of the heart. Good thing when it comes to other things like puttin' together stuff and driving somewhere without directions we need no instructions.<p>Here is my first stab at the instruction booklet for men.
1) First thing is you need to sleep on this whole thing a few days if you are angry. You can't possibly think straight if you are real angry.<p>2) This is kind of wound up in step one because you need this to totally get over your anger. Examine your Love Bank and why you love your wife. Do you have quite a bit of love in there for your WW. This will help you on the later steps so be honest with yourself. Right down everything you can about why you love your wife. Forget about the A when you do this. Go back to when you first met and slowly track through your life if you have problems. This will all come back. Make sure you have your pen and paper handy. This little sheet of paper in your underwear drawer will do wonders for you later on. You will need it so do not skip this step.
After that little excersize you should feel the love coming back a bit. This is a good sign and natural. It will help you figure out your love bank status. Until you get through this step (needs to be very very short a few days max) try to avoid contact with your WW. You will only do major LB's.<p>3)Buy the SAA book and read the whole thing front to back. If you are in a hurry to move on, stop when you get to recovery. You will not need this for at least 3 months to a year depending on how bad you screwed up the first day, and IMHO: man did you ever screw up. You might as well filed for the D yourself. You pushed her to it. Consider in this step to find an IC if you are still having big problems.<p>4)Now comes the decision. You must commit to work this thing out and go for the long haul. Figure out how long you are willing to stick it out for and make this your goal. If you have more love in your love bank, you will need more time. Remember this is only a goal. The time to Plan B has all to do with the level of love in your love bank and how good you are at not LB'ing (love busting). (I hope you know all the lingo by now). When you feel your love for your wife go and you can not stop LB'ing. Time for Plan B. You need to get to a point where your love bank is low or you are going to go through a huge withdrawl and this will be extremely painful. About the comitting part, you have got to do this from the heart because you love her. This is very important ingredient to the whole thing. You have got to want to do this because it is going to really rock your world and teach you all about relationships (hopefully). Something that all of us here have realized.<p>5)PLAN A --- PLAN A---- and read and post and then PLAN A again. You have got to see what works for you. Try a little of it all. You will mess up from time to time, but that is what learning is all about. Learn everything you can.<p>5a) Ask your WW about why she left you and why she decided to move on. Ask yourself the same question. Again keep notes of these things. You may however get quite a bit of angry words from her if you ask her why. Let these roll of your back, but write them all down. Your wife is the best judge of character you have right now. However, she will be a bit harsh so you will have to understand that the things she says are not as serious as she may let you believe. Search your feelings about what she said because remember some of them will have truth to them. Once you know what these are, work on fixing them.
5b)Fill out the EN for your wife (do not ask her to do this now, she is in a fog and can not possibly be able to answer this.) You should have a good feeling what works and what does not work for her. If not you are going to have to try to meet her needs and then find out which one has the greatest effect. More than likely, as in most cases, she will not allow you to meet the needs that the OM is meeting, and these are probably the ones you neglected and are the most critical.<p>6) Plan B if necessary. You must time this perfectly or it will backfire on you. If your wife is anything like mine, she probably has already decided the OM is the one of her dreams. YUK!!!! My WW told me the other day that she is trying to get me to leave. Well I have decided no matter how much harm and pain she causes me I am sticking with it till I am ready. If she wants to leave, she is free to go.<p>7) If this works then comes the recovery stage. I am not all that sure what to do here yet. I am focusing on the Plan A right now and have only real world knowledge to share with you about that.<p>Above all, stay calm and rational. The last thing your Marriage needs is three irrational people.
