little background first, We have been married for 8 years together for the total of 16 years, 2 kids, dauther is 4 and son is 1. In October of 2002 she told me that she no longer in love with me and she was not sure if she ever was in love with me and we got married for the wrong reason. She also assure me that there was no OM. I was devastaed at first adn she offered to go to MC, which we did for about 3 sessions then she decide that she wasn;t going to it anymore because she does not want to work in it anymore.

I later found out through searching her e-mails that she has deep feeling for a person she meet online. I confront her with this and seh denied everything until I gave to the printed e-mails, that's when she admitting to havign feeling for this person and that she assure me that she knew it was a fantasy and that she no longer feel for him. She still wanted a separation a this point. during all this time I have tried everything I can think of, reading all that I can from this site among others. I applied plan A that sometimes work sometime not. For more than a year now, she still maintained that she wants a divorce and the lawyers are talking and I have not been serve with the complaint yet.

During this whole time she kept talking to him everynight in the internet and justify it by saying that they are just friends. About a month ago, I decided to confront her one night about her feeling the OM and she admitted to me that she still had feeling for him and that her feeling for him adn what is happening wiith us are 2 separate issues, I told her I don't think it is and that her feeling are messed up. She assure me that she was able to "compartmentalized" the situation and separate out the feeling she has for me and the feeling she has for him are separate and that her decision to leave the marriage is based only on how she feel about us and had nothing to do with the way she feel about OM. I told her that it is BS and that she is in the fog. Two days after she admitted to me about her feeling for this guy she told me that her feeling for him was gone and that she still want to leave adn that proved she was able the separate the feeling.

Fast forward to present day, I had a talk with her a on Sunday and she has told me that she has been struggling with either staying in the M and work it out or leaving. Since I will be taking my daugther to Houston for a week visit with my parents I told her that she should take this time away and think about either to stay or go, it has been more than a year now, I also made it clear to her that I desire the marriage and would like to try and work it out. This is significant because this is the first time that she ever admitt to struggling with the idea of staying or going.

I'm struggling with the thoughts of what I should do between now and when I come back from Houston, should I let her be or try and be affectionate torward her. While in Houston should I have no contact with her?

Any comments are greatly appreciated.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by jamesp:
<strong> She assure me that she was able to "compartmentalized" the situation and separate out the feeling she has for me and the feeling she has for him are separate and that her decision to leave the marriage is based only on how she feel about us and had nothing to do with the way she feel about OM. I told her that it is BS and that she is in the fog.
</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">You are completely correct. The fact of the mattter is that we human beings have only a limited amount of time and energy in our lives. If we devote time and energy to the OP then we do not have that time and energy to devote to our spouse. This happend to my WW. More and more time and energy when into the A and less into our marriage. Of course, our marriage suffered as a results (not that she was only to blame, I did neglect our marriage also). She eventually got to the point that even though I had started to turn things around and refocus more attention on her, she did not have time for more than a minimal response.

The end results is she now says she would rather give up me and our 20 year marriage than the OM.

Be the best husband you can. There is lots of good advice on this site. But the OM has to go.

Besides you will be doing her a favor by insisting the OM leaves her life. OM are dishonest jerks who don't deserve to lick your boots.