Newby here, desperate for some advice (thread 4)

[ForGump]

OK, now we have to send out a search party for you? 1500mi radius from DEN, sort of like Malaysia Air 370?

[ForGump]

... ping ...

[JRuss]

Rough few days.

Friend copped to having screwed up and not told me, but he says W mainly talked to him about his marriage, not mine. Said she vaguely mentioned "ups and downs" with me but didn't divulge details, didn't ask for advice, and he didn't really even think that much about it. Apologized profusely and sent me (I think) 6 months' worth of cellphone usage showing the times the talked. It was about once a month for 20 minutes or less. He said he thought of it as her being nice supporting him in connection with his troubled marriage and didn't think much of it -- like me, she's been friends with him and his wife for 20+ years.

I'm not sure what I think. If he's being truthful, and I lean toward thinking he is, then W for some reason oversold the nature of their talks. Maybe she wanted to hurt me by driving a wedge between me and my friend?

In the course of talking to her about it over the weekend, I broke DB, and we got into R talk. This never goes well, I know I shouldn't do it, but every 2-3 months or so, I react instead of responding (usually after days of W slowly escalating tension and spoiling for a fight), and off we go.

Net result is she's been in the guest room the last four nights, and I don't expect her back in MBR anytime soon. Or ever, really. Which is a blow. The upside is I'm actually sleeping better without her in there. I had gotten to a point where I'd wake up every night, whatever time it happened, and not ever be able to go back to sleep. I'd sit there listening to her breathe, think about how far over to the edge she's sleeping, etc., wishing things weren't so out of whack, etc. Trying to find a positive in it.

My anniversary is Sunday. She hasn't mentioned it, and I don't expect it to be marked in anyway. Another blow. We used to take a trip every year out of town to someplace cool, just the two of us; as late as last year, even. THis year, I doubt we do dinner or even verbally acknowledge it. What can you do except keep trying to forge ahead?

[JRuss]

I'd be interested in people's thoughts on desire. Is it actually possible for this to be rekindled in someone who had it -- at least some number of years in the past? Or is all of this already fatal? My W seems to have determined that there are only two possible paths: (1) stay married and be unattracted and unhappy, or (2) divorce and possibly be happy. I've tried as many ways as I know how -- BD and otherwise -- to show her or suggest to her that there is a third path (work on the R, try to rebuild something worth having that could be the source of mutual happiness), but I have to admit I'm not sure I'd want to stay in or even work on a marriage where I honestly didn't feel attracted to my spouse.

The hope has to be that the loss of attraction is driven by some as-of-yet unresolved hurt, anger, loss of respect, doesn't it? Because those in theory could be healed, forgiven, etc. But if it's just biological or a matter of "chemistry", how would it ever come back?

[ForGump]

OK so we've located you at the bottom of the sea: the Mariana Trench.

Sorry man. Sounds really rough. I mean, for me, just a slight warming or slight cooling by my W and I'm all messed up for days. So the kind of confrontation you had ... I'd be psychologically six feet or twenty fathoms under. Seems like you're holding up better.

You mentioned some upsides -- let me restate them slightly differently. Maybe the big shakeup in the status quo is necessary. And in particular, maybe her physically being separated from you while sleeping, is in fact something that could help her feel more viscerally what the divorce would feel like. Maybe this is some of the loss your W has to feel before she realizes what she's throwing away. I don't know.

As for your friend, it sounds to me like there was mainly some poor judgment. Who knows, maybe he got a kick connecting w/ your W that way, even if on the surface all was above board. I guess I'd probably give him the benefit of the doubt. Shitty thing to do, though, what he did. I mean, if it really was all about *his* marriage, why does it have to be all surreptitious?

Anyway. Unless there is something truly substantial there, I would say let it go. Heck even if he is an OM -- we're supposed to let it go, right? Whatever dysfunctional, distasteful thing our WW engages in, that's her circus, those are her monkeys.

[JRuss]

Thanks for the response, ForGump. On your question re if it was really all about his marriage, why does it have to be surreptitious, I asked him about that. He said he definitely WAS trying to be surreptitious about things with respect to his W, because they're in even more dire shape than our marriage is, he views everything these days in terms of Hail Marys, and he didn't want his W to know he was getting help from our mutual friend. So there's some "infidelity" type stuff going on there, at least in that direction. With respect to the other direction and my W, he falls back on the point that he didn't have any idea she was really doing anything to reach out or get help or advice w/r/t our marriage, and that's why he didn't tell me. I still think it's maybe not entirely kosher. Keeping my eyes open on this but, honestly, I'm so F-ing tired at this point that I just don't find myself even wanting to run it all down. He knows how I feel (I made very certain of that), and the contact will stop (at least on this level), or it won't, I'll eventually find out it didn't stop, and I'll be down not only a W but also a best friend. Cest la vie.

On your point re no more MBR, I've tried to tell myself the same thing. Things weren't getting any better when she was still in the bed. Maybe this way she'll get some space I wasn't physically able to give her and it will help in some way. At the very least, I've slept better the last four nights than the large majority of nights over the last 2.5 years. That can only help, too. Exhaustion sets in, you know?

[ForGump]

Sounds to me like that friendship (your bf and W) was in a bit of an ethical gray area, but I think when divorce starts to tear apart marriages, families and friendships, that kind of hushed talk is inevitable. I think as long as it hasn't clearly crossed into something nefarious, I'd let it go.

Yes, exhaustion. It still hurts whenever I think about losing my W to someone else but I feel so hollowed out from having thought about it for so long. Albac likes to say gutted. I feel gutted and hollowed and the insides all burned out, nothing left inside to suffer and wretch, just dead, just hollow.

Your sig says "03.03.15 Not attracted to you." Mine's roughly the same. Our only chance for reconciliation, I think, is for our respective wives to be able to just imagine being attracted to us. Unlikely to happen, but if it were to happen, it's not going to happen by having more of the same interactions.

[JRuss]

One thing holding me back is I'm not a good actor. I know it would really help if I could act like I don't care or that my heart isn't broken. But I do care, and my heart is broken. Making myself scarce and GALing is obviously one solution. But I also really want to be home with the children, so that puts a limit on how much I'm willing to be gone, and when she's there, it gets progressively harder not to clam up and look the LBS part. And that's a further turn off, it makes her feel guilty, I think, and she doesn't want any part of feeling guilty, so her anger/resentment grows.

Does anyone have any tips for "acting like you're moving on" as MWD puts it?

[JRuss]

I could also use and would really appreciate some advice on my approaching anniversary (Sunday). Do I say anything? Mark it in any way? I dread it coming and going with no acknowledgment from her, and it chokes me up thinking about it. She hasn't mentioned it, and I'm not even sure she remembers it's coming up. We certainly don't look like we're going to be celebrating it in any way. With the move out of the MBR this week and the anniversary fast approaching, I'm really feeling like crap, and it's showing, and I know that undermines all of what I'm trying to do. It is rough.

[JRuss]

I do have two GAL activities lined up for Sunday -- taking D12 to church, then Starbucks (her favorite, but I make her have decaf). Then I'm volunteering at the hospital for several hours shadowing a nurse to help patients and their families with non-medical things to make their experience better. There will still be a bunch of time in close proximity to W that day, though, and it makes my stomach do that flopping thing just thinking about it.