WAW says she wants to come back

[Grocerykartman]

Maybe the better question is, does anyone have any good advice for dealing with the impending thought that OM will have influence on your daughter's life? And one who would get involved with a married woman at that? This is the part the flat out sickens me, and is why I remain in the quandary I am in. I do not plan to go back on my stance of moving forward with the dissolution, which is scheduled for wednesday this week. But I just don't know how to get my arms around how this reality that he'll be around my kid. I will not pursue full custody, that would just make an amicable situation ugly.

It is as if I feel my marital situation maybe should not about what's best for me, it's about what's best for my Daughter. What if my wife is sincere enough with the letter she wrote? If it were just me an her I'd set her free. But with a kid, I think it begs the question, should I deal with all of the garbage, or some of the garbage, or triggers and renanats of the garbage, just to keep OM away from influencing my daughter. Has anyone done this or known someone who has done this and lived to regret it? How about anyone who did this and made the right decision?

M30
W28
D3
Married 5 years
EA began 4/09
Separated 12/09
Found out OM's major presence 1/10
Filed dissolution 7/10
Upcoming Court date 8/10

[Steve McQueen]

Maybe the better question is, does anyone have any good advice for dealing with the impending thought that OM will have influence on your daughter's life?

what sort of "influence" are you concerned about?

[Grocerykartman]

I think the bond between my daughter and myself is strong enough that she will never confuse him as her own dad, but I anticipate it will just devastate me if and when she finds out ways that she connects better with him too. I am not naive enough to think there won't be at least some instances where this will occur. It's one thing to lose your wife to an OM, but to lose your daughter too is the extremely hard part. Of course, I tell myself, welcome to divorce, kartman, there's nothing easy about this, especially if there's a child involved.

For months I have been doing my best to do everything as I normally would as far as disciplining my daughter. I know you can never worry about it being a popularity contest and the right thing must always be done in that regard. But I have tried to step up my efforts to show her a lot of fun things to do as well, stuff I did not do over the course of her young life. Of course its much easier now that she is almost 4 and can appreciate most places I take her. I wonder how I will get over the next time she, her mom, and OM do something fun and NEW together.

I have done my best to combat this so far, for example, we ended up taking her to Disney world this year. We agreed as parents to go do this so that we would be able to have that experience with her still as a family, placing no expectations on ourselves trying to work on anything. And we had a very good time as a family the whole trip. But, the more egotistical side of me said, look, over my dead body is she going to go there for the first time with her mom and OM instead of me. But I won't be able to do this with everything, and that's what I am having the hardest time with. Call it ego, call it fear, call it whatever it actually is, but I am unsure how to deal with it. I guess that is the kind of influence I mean. But, I want her to have my values, not this guy's. This guy's values fall into the homewrecking sort.

I wonder if this kind of worry is for nothing, or is it a real problem only if you don't do the right things as a divorced dad?

[Steve McQueen]

I wonder if this kind of worry is for nothing, or is it a real problem only if you don't do the right things as a divorced dad?

exactly. actually, it should be phrased:

"or is it a real problem only if you don't do the right things as Dad?

[Grocerykartman]

Well, that's very reassuring! Thank you. My concern, though, is how to act once OM has obviously influenced your kid? I assume I will always be the dominating male influence in her life, but how do you react when your daughter is happy because of something OM did? I'll admit, I suspect I will have significant jealousy here. I don't suspect I would feel bad at all if my WAW were to meet someone down the road who is not the OM. I would even be happy for her, or at least as happy as I could be, if she found a happy situation.

But NOT with this OM. I can't help but feel extreme hate for this guy due to all his pursuits of my wife. Yes, it is her fault for allowing it to happen, but I think this dude is truly the worst scum of the entire pond. So the same goes for my daughter. I could probably tolerate it just fine if some guy down the road met WAW and tried to do nice things for my daughter. But it sickens me that OM will. I suspect the best answer is just to be a gentleman about it and take it in stride, but I think that will be easier said than done where my daguhter is concerned. Anyone know what I'm in for here?

M30
W28
D3
Married 5 years
EA began 4/09
Separated 12/09
Found out OM's major presence 1/10
Filed dissolution 7/10
Upcoming Court date 8/10

[botanygirl]

GKM,

I am in the same sit. but the female version. I feel the absolute same way as you do. The thought of my daughter with the OW sickens me b/c she had an affair with my H. She knew he was married just as in your case with the OM. It tells you something about their character and morals...they have none. I have gone to the point of asking in the separation agreement that my D is not to be around the OW but it is very difficult to enforce this and you need very good reason that your child is in some sort of danger if they remain around the OP. The likelyhood is that your WAW probably won't end up with the OM and it will all fizzle out shortly. So i wouldn't put a lot of effort into worrying about your D being with the OM.

[Grocerykartman]

Probably should update this out of my own need to vent. Tomorrow morning is the court date. My wife emailed me earlier this afternoon saying she felt awful, was doing a lot of crying and definitely did NOT want to go through with it. She wanted to know what I wanted. My only response was: Did you tell OM you will never have any contact with him EVER again? She said yes, I told him. I asked when? She said last night, then she reiterated it again this afternoon. I asked why was there a need to REITERATE if she talked to hi last night. She said she just wanted to make sure they both understood. Makes me uncertain she went ahead and did it, but for now, I'll take her word for it.

She wanted to know how I felt and if that was enough for me to talk about things again. I told her, I honestly don't know what I want. I know I don't WANT to be divorced, but I don't see anyway to get past the future trust issues. In between this afternoon and when we talked this evening, she also finally made contact with her dad about the situation. Her dad is the only one who truly resonates with her, and she was avoiding talking to him this entire time since she was afraid he would be mad at her for not making this work. To her surprise, he actually seemed to understand and while he didn't by any means condone going through with it, he understood. I think that changed her mind considerably, which doesn't bother me. I am afraid to go back to how things were, if I simply tell her, OK lets work on this, because I don't see how could she want to or think anything is different now that we've been apart nine months? How could I be that much more of what she wants? I think deep down, she has major doubts about that and the connection she long sought but never had with me. In retrospect I feel the same way about the connection. I think she really was just scared of the court date and was afraid she'd lose me, though we both admitted our relationship overall has probably been better these last none months than it was while we were together. I think she is most scared about losing out on the opportunity to grow our family, as am I. But if we tried again, now with OM out of the picture, we'd feel 100x the pressure we felt last year when we tried to plan a couple of getaways and the spark just was not there whatsoever. Then what, are we right back in the same place? So, after our talk, we are reluctantly going ahead with this, but thinking it IS the right choice.

If my head is stuck somehwere it shouldn't be, could someone please let me know. I feel this could be a golden opportunity wasted, but it also smacks of 11th hour fear. And why did it take so long for her to dismiss OM? Rings kind of hollow to me, you know?

Thanks to anyone who could respond at this 11th hour.

[gutwrenching]

Why did it take her so long you ask...because before it wasn't real. She is a WAS, she lives in a fantasy world. Her fantasy world had options, but the D takes away you as an option.

People all over this board will tell you it often takes a crisis to snap a WAS out of the fog, this MIGHT have been that crisis, only time will tell. If she truly believed you let her go as Gucci advises people and she thought about what the court date meant, then maybe she snapped out of it.

From my experience, I had a WAS that I tried exposure and the result was deeper undercover. There were multiple crisis along the way, but she always knew I was there as fallback. When I finally drove away with the kids and listened to Gucci, reality hit her and she broke it off with OM on her own.

This is a tough decision. No one can tell you exactly what to do, but if you are here on DB boards, then there probably somewhere in you there is part of you that wants the M. If so, then what harm will a 3-month stay period do you?

[Puppy Dog Tails]

Probably should update this out of my own need to vent. Tomorrow morning is the court date. My wife emailed me earlier this afternoon saying she felt awful, was doing a lot of crying and definitely did NOT want to go through with it. She wanted to know what I wanted. My only response was: Did you tell OM you will never have any contact with him EVER again? She said yes, I told him. I asked when? She said last night, then she reiterated it again this afternoon. I asked why was there a need to REITERATE if she talked to hi last night. She said she just wanted to make sure they both understood. Makes me uncertain she went ahead and did it, but for now, I'll take her word for it.

Kartman,

You're at the 11th hour of a divorce, and you'll take her WORD for it???

WRONG ANSWER.

Ask her if she'll send him a no-contact letter -- the content of which is to be approved by YOU, and the letter should be DELIVERED by you (so that nothing is added or subtracted).

Ask her if after that, she will agree to FULL TRANSPARENCY with you. She changes her cellphone number and e-mail addresses; new cellphone bill has detailed billing and comes to YOU; MCing, preferably with a MC/FT who specializes in infidelity.

Absolutely NO CONTACT, and if she says she'll do that, you'll CONSIDER putting the legal stuff on hold for 90 days, but ONE STRIKE and she's OUT.

Do you think she'd agree to that? This could be fear on her part, it could be false remorse, or she could be sincere. The thing is, you don't want to go to your death bed having NOT given her chance, if she IS sincere.


If you could put a no-contact/transparency plan in place (and at least ONE of the transparency intel channels should be something she does NOT know about, for obvious reasons), and if you could get good family therapy, it might work.

What do you think?

Puppy