</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">12. I only married my wife for her looks.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Do you honestly believe that? I find that hard to believe especially based on the depth of your post and your ability to reflect inward.

You've lost your connection to your wife...you "lost" understand.

OW is a drug but more important she gives you an excuse not to deal with the real issue......

The fact that you and your wife are disconnected.

Old couples that made it into their golden years always say you have to work at having a happy marriage.

Whenever a spouse finds happiness outside the marriage invariably they quit working at finding happiness from their marriage....and then things naturally get worse in the marriage...and for some odd reason that suprises the WS in an emotional affair...often propeling them to cross the last line.

john -

You really sound depressed to me. I think you are working too much and feeling that it is not worth it. While it is nice to have things, sometimes the price paid is too high. You find out that you have no time to enjoy the things, because you are too busy working for them.

Will you have to keep working all these hours for a long time? Does your wife work too?

If this is a temporary condition, maybe you can get through it. Or maybe you and wife will need to make some changes.

Thank you, friends, for your words. They are confirming some things that happened about an hour ago.

I had a moment of clarity tonight. It felt great.

On the way home from a movie w/my W, I thought about an Eric Hoffer quote I read a week or two ago. (I think I posted this here at some point.)

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Every intense desire is perhaps basically a desire to be different from what we are.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Before this coworker started paying me attention, I felt frustrated with the sloth, lust, and dishonesty in my life. Her words (especially the words that hooked me) emphasized what a great person I was. Looking from the outside she could see exactly what I project without seeing the mess underneath.

The moment of clarity came when I realized that the mess is still right here underneath. I'm no better inside if I surround myself with a different person. In fact, I'm a worse inside because of the level of betrayal such a move would necessitate.

This lead me to two points of understanding:

First: The quality or validity of my life does not depend on what the OW thinks of me. The past week has been torturous as I struggled with obsessive thoughts of what OW thinks of me, what if she stops thinking that about me, how can I have continual assurance that she has a positive opinion, and so on.

Second: My actual desire here is to be a "different person", a "better man". I actually have the control over that. Someone nailed me on this when I first started posting here: If I want to be admired by my wife I should be admirable.

Dad, you're right I didn't marry my wife because of just her looks. (It was a factor; I can't lie <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" /> .) There's beautiful person inside of her... She's just very cold and disconnected from people. That hurts me because she can't trust anyone and never gets close to anyone. My happiness includes visions of having lots of family and friends around. But W is so patient with me, I can't just choose to abandon her because of her own pain in life.

When she married me she put all her eggs in one basket. She doesn't have a single other friend in her life. She talks to her family maybe once a month. It's a tremendous amount of pressure for me sometimes; I hope it is something we can work on.

After threats of me moving out she did finally agree for the most part to me quitting my evening job.

Life is not all despair anymore, but I am still afraid. Very.

Thanks for your words, everyone. Appreciate your support 2long and finally_learning and y'all.

john - Stick with us and I think you can work through this. People here have great ideas. Sometimes others can see our true situation better than we can.

Let us know more about your goals.