I would copy the letter in the book nearly word for word.
Delete the part about how you don't deserve to be cheated on. Write "Your affair has devastated me."

Do you have an IM?

Yes, a close friend of mine.

My lawyer sent me another settlement form. Apparently this one she is comfortable with. Her plan was to try to get WW to come in and sign my lawyer's revisions to the settlement, and apparently this happened.

I'm going to review the settlement tomorrow to make sure I don't miss anything. I'm just a signature away from the legal process being done.

Are you still moving to plan B once divorce is final?

Yep.

You'll still stop by here from time to time, right?

Oh definitely.

I've still got quite a bit to learn!

Plus I like helping new BHs when/where I can, the way veterans here helped me when I was a new BH. Never going to forget that.

Plus I'm still technically waiting until the end of the calendar year before I end my Plan B and start dating again, so in the event my WW made a miracle turn-around, I'm certainly going to come back here for advice on whether to try R and if so how to do it.

Plus if/when I do move on, I want to chronicle a bit about my dating the way other posters have (it's encouraging to me since I'm in the middle of the valley) and I want to make sure whatever follows this is MB-based. I'm pretty much sold on MB, it answers so many questions I always had as a H about how to improve my marriage and care for my W.

So I ain't goin nowhere. But I've considered starting another thread in the D forum or something. I don't like bumping this thread because I feel there are other posters whose situations have more hope and who have more immediate need of assistance.

You are setting a bad example if you want to help other BS's. You want to date then you get a divorce first. For married people do not date others.

Unless you want to be a cake eater as your WW.

You seem to misunderstand what is happening here. I've already filed for divorce and have obtained a settlement with my WW that I will turn in on Monday.

I will have been divorced for almost 8 months by the time the end of the year arrives. So I'm not looking at dating at all until 8 months past my divorce being finalized.

I would suggest you read back a few pages if you are curious as to why I filed.

Does not matter why you filed.

Filling does not make you divorced.

Hearings in front of a judge does not make you divorced.

Getting the final decree signed by the judge does.

Your own words settlement is still pending.

We're on the same page here. What I'm getting at is going from "both parties signed and notarized" to a "judge decrees" ain't gonna take 8 months in my jurisdiction. We have no kids or custody hearings, I'm in a no-fault state, and we've agreed on everything else.

I'm not the type of guy who would ever date someone while married and if by some freak course of events I find myself still married Jan. 1, 2016, my expectation of being months divorced by then isn't going to change that. I'll simply wait until the divorce is finalized if that's the case.

Exactly.

One of the reasons I filed on Friday is that it will take at least six months to get divorced where I live. It's just the law. It doesn't matter the circumstances at all. I can imagine that it will take longer than that knowing my WH. However, I've basically lost hope in this situation, so I think the sooner I gain freedom, the better. But for me, dating is not the main point. I have a little kid and I am not sure I will date at all. I just need finality to this awful situation--not to be yoked to someone who clearly doesn't care about me at all.

Judges often do not approve signed mutual agreements for technical reasons.

It can take quite a bit longer than you would think for the agreement to pass the judges fine tuning.

So, my experience - both personal and professional - if both parties reach a settlement that attorneys have written/reviewed, the judge will sign it. Usually, once an agreed settlement is filed, it only a matter of weeks before the judge signs it and it becomes final.

Everyone, please note....Ax has been very clear that his statement about dating 8 months from now when he concludes his Plan B means he intends to remain in Plan B until the end of the year even if his divorce is final. After that, assuming his divorce is final, he may start dating again. He was very clear - he has not intention of dating until he is divorced.

Road, he's waiting until the end of the year to date.

"Plus I'm still technically waiting until the end of the calendar year before I end my Plan B and start dating again, so in the event my WW made a miracle turn-around, I'm certainly going to come back here for advice on whether to try R and if so how to do it. "

I agree 100% about being sold on MB.

I think back to when my WW first demanded D and searched the internet for hours trying to figure out how to save my marriage. I finally found MB and was stunned by how much sense Dr.Harley's concepts made. I was hooked before I even suspected the A. Reading Dr.Harley's articles is what made me realize the A was happening.

I think MB is hands down the best philosophy a person can take into a relationship. Regardless of what my WW ends up doing, I'm happy with the knowledge that my next relationship can be based on MB; with WW or without her.

Good luck Ax!

So, I've got an update and some explaining to do...

When I went to turn in my signed half of the settlement, I re-read the cover letter and realized they had sent it to me BEFORE my wife had signed. I had just skimmed it the first time around (before I posted here about it) and assumed this had already been done because my lawyer had specifically said they were going to send it after they had her signature and also because it had her property additions in the property schedule.

I didn't update here because I didn't think it would matter as it was still 3 weeks from mediation and I couldn't imagine she wouldn't sign, given how quickly she counter-offered a settlement. Heh heh....yeah...

So mediation was this morning, since WW never turned her half into my attorney.

WW joined the session by phone because she claims she is living out of town now and couldn't be there in person. More on that later...

She has decided she does not want her car now, and basically handed it to me. Everything else is split along the terms of the settlement offers, which as explained in prior posts, are nearly identical between her and I. I brought both offers in to show the mediator so we could save time.

The mediator simply contacted my attorney, asked her to change the property schedule to show WW's car awarded to me, and had my attorney email it to an email address WW provided. She then instructed WW to either notarize it and send it to my attorney, or to go to my attorney's office and sign.

So nothing really changed in the property other than her giving me the car, and I don't really have anything to complain about, but some interesting points:

The mediator is supposed to be impartial of course but seemed a little peeved at WW. I don't think it helped that WW called in (which I didn't even know is an option) when we are court-ordered to attend, and before the call-in I had to explain to her that I don't have any way to contact her (she initially thought WW had skipped and was going to try and reschedule with her) which she thought was ridiculous. The mediator said to me a few times that she saw her role as making sure WW would follow through on signing her side of things. I'm guessing she probably sees this sort of thing a lot and sized up the situation pretty quickly.

WW had put on a chipper/happy sounding voice like she did in counseling, but it sounded forced to me. Maybe that's just a BS thing to feel that way, but she sounded off.

I asked how she wanted to do the car dropoff since I have no way to contact her and she said she's going to drop off the title and keys to it at my attorney's office next week when she signs the settlement. She tried to give me an address for where the car is "in case you want to look at it", and said the starter is out on it but it is otherwise OK. I told her not to worry about that and just leave the address with the attorney when she drops it off. What she is saying doesn't make sense to me and I wanted to wait until things were signed before I go wander off to look at a car I don't have keys to. She also made a particular point of saying she doesn't live where the car is parked, for whatever reason. The PIs report includes a house with some other young adults she had stayed at for a while after moving out, and this is probably where the car is.

I inquired about my latest settlement offer and she said she hadn't received it before mediation, so that may be why she hasn't signed. Again, the mediator had my attorneys email a copy to her with the revision about the vehicle, and then confirmed over the phone that she had seen it and was content with it.

I'm expecting things to be signed next week on her side, and I will probably have to sign this copy with the revision about the car as well. WW didn't indicate any hesitancy over the phone and the mediator told me before I left that she was going to check in on WW next week to ensure she had signed/delivered it.

If she is truly living out of town (I think she may have lied about that in order to not attend), I would guess she is living with OM. The PIs report had her going to a house owned by OM's relatives about 40 miles away after I exposed. If she actually LIVES there, that's interesting. Would love to know how she gets to work, the city bus wouldn't help at that point. Maybe driving OM's car. Where OM lives is a tiny town, blink and you'll miss it. Only job there might be at their gas station, so I doubt she works there.

The comment about the starter actually made me chuckle after the call was over. I found out about this from FIL in October and offered to fix it for WW (with no disrespect!) and got a nasty email back about how she didn't need my help, knew how to do it herself, etc etc. Today the story was "it's fine but I don't have the money to fix it".

The general impression I got was more avoidance, which I don't get. Probably simpler motives to all this than I imagine, but it all strikes me as strange. It's interesting to me because it simply does not add up, and makes me curious about how smooth sailing things are in affair land. Hearing her voice was very odd after this long (last time I had spoke to her was a phone call in October) and that sets me back a bit. I understand what people say about breaking Plan B now.

She is wayward, why would you believe anything she says or even try to figure it out. It is a waste of your time and emotions.

Stay strong man.

Word.

I find myself doing that too sometimes because I can hear my WH's voice when he talks to my daughter on skype and sometimes catch a glimpse of him and he looks miserable most of the time. But then I think, "hey, I'd be miserable too if everyone I knew was aware that I was cheating, I never got to see my kid and my spouse wouldn't talk to me." But, of course he does nothing about it, so yeah, that's his thing.

Guys, I agree and I've even advised other people the same thing on here.

I just can't help being curious.

I get a separation bomb drop and then she leaves 5 weeks later after a very focused Plan A (during which she waffled on staying/going) and then D-day. And then after that, 6 months of no contact.

Not that it happens slowly for anyone, but this was quite abrupt from "she's a little withdrawn for some reason but we're making plans and she's telling me everything is fine" to "I can't talk to her, even if I wanted to. I have no idea where she is living, what she's doing, or what is happening with her."

She just stopped existing in my world, other than an occasional cryptic email. Our marriage wasn't the best, but I wasn't ready for that and I'm not sure how I could have been.

I know the speculation isn't constructive and really my situation is not bad compared to most on here, it's just hard to ignore these things for me. Mostly I don't think about her, but because she only pokes her head out of her hole every 2 months or whatever, when she does I'm very curious to try and get a glimpse into her world.

I'm close to not caring at all about her world, I'm just not there yet.