OK, so the topic is what to do about cake eating wife who plans to do just that for a year, besides just LRT and hoping the A ends before W loses all respect for me for watching it all happen.
What if I were to do something like this?
W, you are a grown woman, free to make your own choices. I respect that. It is not for me to judge your choices, you must live your life as you see fit. I would not have it any other way.
Equally, I must live my life as I see fit.
I realize that I have certain expectations of a marriage that must be met.
We took our wedding vows in this house. I am, if nothing else, a man of my word, and I stand by you to this day. I knew there would be good times and bad as we both continued to grow and mature into what we were meant to be. I signed up for that. I fully expect to be able work through any bad times with you, purely out of my love for you, and my desire to see us both happy.
My wife must be willing to speak up for her wants and her needs, which will change over time. I will do the same. There can be no repression of feelings, internalizing or build up of resentment.
We must communicate clearly in language that each understands, as bluntly and repeatedly as is necessary to make ourselves heard. We must commit to always be willing to listen to the other person.
Neither of us can be held to blame for any decision that the other person did or didn't make throughout their life because they didn't make themselves heard.
We will work constructively together to find ways to satisfy our wants and needs, because we want each other to be satisfied, and we want each other to be the best person each can be.
When there are problems, we will turn to each other to resolve them openly together, because we have committed to support each other. We will not ignore problems or turn to outside parties, except together as one team.
We will learn from the past, but let it go, and never use it to hurt each other. Each day, we will do our best from that day forward.
We will be absolutely honest and open with each other. Honesty is the foundation of trust. True love depends on absolute trust. There can be no secrecy, no locked or secret phones.
To my wife, I commit my whole self, my undying devotion, and my full support. I pledge to continue improving myself, and to loving her more each day, and to learning to express that love in ways that are meaningful to her.
I cannot accept anything less from my wife.
I realize you may choose not to be that woman or may not be able to be that woman. I can accept that without judgment.
This is our marital bed. A marriage can only have two people. If there is another man in your life, you cannot be that woman and cannot stay in this bed.
You will be welcome back to this bed without judgment when and if you are willing to commit to the marriage from that day forward.
I think I managed not to be judgmental, and not controlling. She is free to choose. I didn't box myself into any ultimatum or timeframe that I can't follow through on. I can continue LRT on my schedule. Of course, she will deny the A again, and I will not engage. If she comes back, she must accept open phone, etc. The upside of this - she is telling me daily quite clearly what her choice is. If she doesn't come back after time x, well I pretty much have to move on, don't I. What if she's ballsy enough to not leave the bed? Could re-ask the question daily.
What's the downside? Does this kill any LRT progress? I'm sure this may break a few rules. Does this fuel the A or make it uncomfortable?
If I write this, it will go to every enabler to be ridiculed and discredited, and will also show up at her therapist to be psychoanalyzed, and eventually to her L.
But that puts me back to LRT and waiting for A to implode, and the whole concept of me being unable to influence anything but me.
My but you DO so much remind me of myself!!
I too have always been an introspective guy, and a bit of a wordsmith. And I liked to think that if I could just put the riiiiight words together, in juuuust the right way . . . then my wife would see the error of her walls, re-fall madly back in love with me, end her foolishness and return to the marriage.
WORDS will have NO EFFECT on her in her current state, bro. At BEST you can land a little "truth dart" or two every week or two. That's it. You can't teach a wayward!!!
Eliminate 90% of the words from your -- frankly -- holier-than-thou sermon above, and distill it down into just the 10% and then convey that to her in the form of your ACTIONS (and not your words), and MAYBE you've got something.
Zew, I'll try to give you a longer answer later, when I have more time, but my SHORT answer to your "What should I do?" question would be to KEEP DOING WHAT YOU'RE DOING (although maybe with some firmer boundaries in place), but just remove ANY thought your wayward wife might have as to how long your "deadline" is.
If you keep doing what you're doing, give it say the rest of this year, but make HER think that your love for her is slipping away every day she continues on this destructive course . . . (and keep in mind, eventually it WILL, regardless of what self-imposed time limit you give yourself -- you won't be able to control how fast her deceit and lack of respect for you and your marriage will erode your love for her) . . . I think you have a shot.
I don't see you doing a lot wrong, I really don't. I know that's rough to hear, because you want some "magic button" you can push, but if I saw it, I'd tell you (as you can see to my frank response to your sermon, above! LOL)
You're looking at this all wrong, Zew. It's not your job to make her "face consequences." That's for the Big Guy upstairs.
Your job is to live your own life (including improving the things that contributed to the marital dysfunction), figure out what your non-negotiable core boundaries are, communicate them, and then leave her be.
In geopolitics, it's not the actual use of force that governs. It's the CREDIBLE THREAT OF the use of force. You may or may not need to play the D card at some point, but for now your wife needs to only know that:
a. It's one of the options on the table; and
b. You won't wait forever
Your posts above use the phrase "without judgment" several times, and yet it is judgment that is just OOOOOZING from every pore of those two posts.
