Some really good suggestions, and much appreciated. I have done things like cooking her salmon for her one night (I've always been the cook for the most part, but she now has this diet thing going - clean eating - and she does most of it herself). I may try to do more of this stuff for her. I also do a good chunk of the laundry. Getting her to get rid of any pictures or emails from the guy will be hard for a while, as she is still in that stage and doesn't want to reconcile yet with me, so this is all part of pulling her back too me.

I sit near her when possible and occasionally try and find someway to interject small talk, which she has been responding to. Getting her to go somewhere with me is going to be tough for a while, but I have some ideas on at least getting her to go out with us as a family. Might try to get the kids baby sat again so we can go to this little restaurant we last went to alone, as she mentioned it when we had or last alone time to do the budget. I like the flowers thing, but she is so into not spending money so that we can get our debts down (in FL our debts are ours, not individual, so this is good for both of us and relieves some of the financial strain on our relationship). So I definitely need to either go cheap or go pick some when I spot them. Maybe a small vase with a few wildflowers on her desk.

Getting thoughts going here. Thanks for all of the advice.

Remember, too, that she's in Withdrawal right now, both as far as the "three states of mind in marriage" *AND* as in an addiction. I'll call them Withdrawal and Addiction Withdrawal, as there are kind of different symptoms.

Addiction Withdrawal has reasons for relapses. Given that OM went NC -- same thing with my wife, it took me blowing up the relationship to OMW for him to stop contacting my wife -- she may have better luck avoiding recidivism. Right now, she BLAMES you for taking away her drug of choice, right. You are the bad guy. That's why all the talk about her being "happier alone"... she is angry with you both for exposing and for acting in such a way that you took away her play-thing. This anger typically lasts a few weeks to a month or so... three weeks is very average. She is going to be extremely disinterested in anything like a normal relationship with you during this addiction-recovery phase. Your Love Bank deposits are leaking just as fast as you deposit them, more or less, because of the ACTIVE RESENTMENT she holds for you (Google "Active Resentment site:marriagebuilders.com" for more info on this).

Your marriage can survive her anger.

Then there's the Three States Of Mind in Marriage type of Withdrawal. Your goal here is to try to give her no more reasons for Active Resentment. Passive Resentment is OK; it will be resolved when the two of you come to enthusiastic agreements together. Once her active resentment simmers down, your diligent Love Bank deposits will begin to be effective. The trouble is, you don't know her state of mind, and whether your Love Bank attempts are registering at all. Her responses are a very poor gauge, until you cross a threshold.

That threshold is CONFLICT. When she's willing to argue with you or get on your case for meeting her needs, you'll know that you've crossed that threshold, however briefly! You MUST go through Conflict. Your goal during Conflict is to avoid responding with demands, disrespect, or anger. Be the calm, strong one.

Refuse to engage in affair or divorce-talk, but instead focus on drawing her into brainstorming solutions with you. Remember that MarriageBuilders-style brainstorming does not involve shooting down ideas you don't like, but instead continue suggesting ideas until you find some you do like, and combine ideas in unique ways to find the ones that both of you are enthusiastic about. It feels tortuous -- and some things simply never get done -- but the reward in love retained is worth it.

Read this: The Three States of Mind in Marriage

So the state you're aiming for is the Romantic Love Threshold. She will know when she's surpassed it, because she will feel an OVERWHELMING ATTRACTION toward you. You may spend weeks or months in Conflict. It gets better, as long as those Love Units keep piling up and you avoid behavior that withdraws them!

The key thing to remember is you'll keep dipping into and out of the adjacent states regularly. You'll know when you're on the better side of Conflict when she stops lapsing into Withdrawal. And when the Romantic Love Threshold is reached, she'll nevertheless dip into Conflict from time to time.

Believe me (a total stranger!!! ) when I say this .....

IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT.

The link below is to a thread called

Anatomy of Adultery - How It Starts.

I did not write it, but I liked it so much I started a discussion thread based on it. You can just read the first post if you want to save time.

*** link ***

What I appreciate about that thread is how it explains the progression of a perfectly good spouse into a confused foggy wayward willing to walk away from a good marriage.

Anyway, take a look-see.

I see a lot of hopeful signs in your particular situation. Do not give up. Reserve your energies and keep up the good work! In my view, your wife is a typical "run of the mill" wayward wife.

Here is another link to a discussion about the "run of the mill WW".

"Run of the mill WW" link

(PS: I do know how to spell gnaws! LOL}

DITTO !

That's one of the reasons I'm posting on the thread, too. Your situation reminds me a great deal of mine. Your marriage was OK before. Not great, not bad, but OK, and probably better than most. Your wife brought this devastation into the marriage by her choice to have loose boundaries with an old boyfriend. Your marriage still has a solid foundation, and you can choose to view this as an opportunity to turn a good marriage into a GREAT one. There's nothing special about what happened here; it's EXACTLY what would happen if ANYONE put themselves into the situations your wife put herself.

And that's really a key tenet of MarriageBuilders. All of us would act the same way if the situations were the same. We are all vulnerable to adultery. What matters is that all of us would have an affair under the conditions under which our spouse had the affair. Those who reject this belief almost invariably fail to recover their marriage.

I suspect it has something to do with empathy. Even though your wife did just about the most painful thing she could possibly do to you, understanding in your heart that if you were in her place you'd have done the same thing under the same circumstances seems to give the critical empathy required to move forward in your relationship.

Thank you...thank you...thank you...to both of you, Pep and DNM. These posts are EXACTLY the kind of info I was hoping to get. I want to make sure I know how to react respond and understand the stages that she will go through. This information is great.

Again, thank you both!

You are welcome.

I am posting less on MB for personal reasons. I am convinced MB is your very BEST BET for a GREAT recovered marriage. You are getting excellent advice from everyone here.

My WW fits "run of the mill" to a T. All her crying is done in private, but I can always tell when she has. She has a hard tim dealing with the guilt part and has shone those who love her, but are "against" her. I did remind her that her parents and I are not the enemy, even though I knew she likely didn't care. Just hoping some part of her registered with it.

I am convinced that the MB plan will work for us and make a great marriage with our hard work. I just need to remember that I have to give her time to come out of this and keep tabs that the OM continues to stay away (easier when they are 1000 miles away) and when he was already backing off.

Thanks again. Now I need to focus on plan A until my time limit is up and move to plan B if needed. I'm hopeful, but very realistic, that my situation will lend to her coming out before have to go there. But I'm prepared if she doesn't.

Good post, DNM - you nailed some serious EN's for women. Some women aren't as 'physical' and don't require touch or sex as a top need.

Meet her needs and she will be receptive to meeting yours, including SF.

What a day. The wife just asked me to do an Assumption of Liability transfer of her cell number over to her for her own account. It will, cost us a combined $30 more per month now to have 2 separate lines, and for what? All because she wants to play Miss independent and have her accounts separate. Moments like this are the ones that make me want to go straight to plan D.

We were having a decent day today too. Times like this make me just want to hop in my car and drive away for a while.

Is this typical, even during withdrawal? I've been checking for contact and see no signs of any, so I don't think anything to do with that. She's just been big on separating everything (separate account so that she can now write me checks and pay her own bills so that she can know how to do this - she's in accounting...WTF?).

Ugh.

She is still an active wayward, obviously to us (maybe not to you)

Are you talking about her feelings? The guy refuses to communicate with her, so it's one-sided right now. She is still in divorce mode, that much I know, but I have also seen signs of withdrawal. It seems she's bouncing between withdrawal and trying to get away. Unfortunately, I can't remove the enabling cousin, nor things that remind her of him (such as certain songs). So I think she keeps finding things to remind her of him and try to hold onto those feelings. Is that what you are talking about?

I can't imagine that she can hold onto these feelings for more than a few more months with the guy not willing to make contact. Right? Wrong? It's been a downer evening for me. Tomorrow is another day.

Agree with reading, she is still an active wayward in some form or fashion. I would step up the snooping. She's making some kind of contact somehow. Could be nothing more than a false FB account to see his page, but that's enough to keep her triggered, or even to make contact if she's addicted enough.

Frankly, if I were you, I would tell her if she wants to start separating your lives in this fashion, then let's just go ahead and separate it in a more permanent manner. If this is the way she wants to live, then fine, but she can do it as a divorced woman. This excuse of hers is just to hide something else she has come up with to maintain contact. I believe it's pretty much that simple.

Just let her know in NO uncertain terms that she's all in with your marriage or all out. You live an open and honest, integrated lifestyle, or you don't stay or opt for divorce.

Put it on her.

Make her choose.

Oh, then keep up your Plan A at the same time.

I think one of the triggers is that they are still friends on FB, but no contact from him. She's probably looking at his page to keep the triggers going. Think I might send the OM an email to de-friend her and see if he does. Would probably go a ways toward knocking him down a peg on her ladder if he dumps her as a friend on FB as well.

I will step it up and see if anything fishy pops up on the radar, just to be safe.

FR,

No you expose OM so much that OM of his own choice rejects your WW. I just can't believe you are allowing OM to remain friends with your WW.

God Bless
Gamma

Gotta shut this down. Until you do, you stand NO chance at recovery. Yeah, get back with this POS and get this done now.

Remember, it truly is an addiction, and until you can truly break her away from the source of that addiction, it will maintain....

and then get worse.

Again, do not allow her to separate her phone account. That's not good at all.

Of course, you know that. You're quite unique around here.

Have you not exposed OM through FB?

And they are still FB friends??? I missed this!

Partner, you've been awesome in your efforts, until this point.

Shut this crap down now or you may as well go ahead and file for divorce now. You're allowing a cyber drunk to walk into her cyber watering hole. Can't fix your marriage this way.

Remove the threat.

She is still wayward as she is trying to get 'space' to carry on her affair un-observed by you.
Everything she is doing screams that it is still on. Probably more underground than you could imagine at the moment.

Also, she is using your good nature and trust in her word to request space.

Really.

It is obvious she is still involved with the guy.

You just haven't been able to snoop enough to find out how they are communicating.