aphexx, welcome to the boards. Sorry you're here but there are lots of very generous and experienced folks here who will be enormously helpful to you. Please listen carefully to their input.
Originally Posted by bustorama
Women want rocks of men who are strong enough to reject their crap behavior and comfortable by themselves or setting aside partners who mistreat them. Because they are sure of their value.
Not men who beg them not to leave them, who beg them not to cheat on them without giving them a heads up, who emote that they are shellshocked and hurt, and who say they don't want to be divorced.
This is very good advice from bust but it will be very difficult to practice at first. In your fear-driven desperation you will feel compelled to plead and negotiate, looking for any sign that your W is attracted to you or willing to work on the marriage. Ignore the impulse to do these things. Come up with a solid plan: "the next time I feel compelled to talk to my wife about the relationship, I'll go for a walk/do fifty pushups/call a friend" - whatever it is, develop these habits now. I speak from experience: at one time I followed my W around like a puppy dog, wrote her love letters, and planned alone time that she didn't want, all in an effort to bring things back to "normal". All that time she was hiding the fact that she had a PA from me. Your W (and mine) knows you are "desperate" to keep her around. The first 180 you can do for yourself is disengage from her.
Boundaries - not tolerating a woman who wants to walk all over you - are a whole different exercise and take practice. At first your boundaries won't mean anything because your W doesn't value you, so instead I suggest focusing on the harmful things you need to stop doing, as bustorama pointed out.
I know from experience that all of this takes time, so be patient with yourself. And as Steve suggested, get a life! Find time to spend with friends, family, etc. Sometimes that is not an option - many of us were so devoted to our MR that we didn't have much of a life outside of it. So build one! Reconnect with friends you haven't spoken with in a while, or at the very least just leave the house and go sit at the library, local restaurant, whatever. I take a weekly yoga class and while I don't do it with friends, it gives me an opportunity to talk to (attractive female) strangers. You need to create physical distance on a regular basis so you can think clearly and begin to see yourself as separate from your W again.
I'm writing all of this from the perspective of someone who has gone through it for 2-3 years. When I first sensed that my MR was in trouble I panicked: my entire social life revolved around my marriage and I told myself if it ended I would be a lonely single loser. This was only true in my own head, and I spent the next couple of years building a life away from my "MR circle". 2 years after that period I discovered DB and kept the momentum going. My MR is still up in the air, but my life isn't. I have and continue to GAL and reap those rewards. My W had cast me in the role of "boring, uptight husband" to her "fun, party animal wife". But the more time I have spent with people who I connect with, the easier it's been to rebuild my old sense of self.
Take it one day at a time - one hour at a time, if you need to. And keep posting here.
