Me: the BH
Her: the xWW
Married for 10y, 2 children
AP, OBS close friends of many years
Currently divorcing.

Working parental relationship with unremorseful spouse

How does one actually build a parental cooperation with xWW when I find her essential attitude unacceptable?

She says we should be on the same page when coparenting, but I find that really hard to reconcile with her "quest for happiness" and how it affects our kids:

- Our friend had to "lend" her husband for cheating.

- I have to give away our common apartment for a fraction of the cost because she doesn't have the money and because "You can't throw out the mother of your kids".

- Her parents have to sell their summerhouse to help their daughter if the manipulation above doesn't work out (I don't care if they do but still Wow!).

- Kids must lose friends and adjust to her new boyfriends because "kids are happy if a parent is happy"

A couple of months I drew the line on coparenting with "I don't tell you what to do, you don't tell me what to do" and trying to preserve the same rules we had before we separated. That is not ideal, but I couldn't think of any better atm.

On the bright side, there has been no badmouthing or alienation. The shared custody schedule works fine, especially after I drew the line.

7 comments posted: Tuesday, November 29th, 2022

Can't wrap my head around reconciliation

I'm divorcing so this might be for a future relationship (hopefully not), but I can't understand both discovery and reconciliation advice so much.

Short backstory - double betrayal. I suggested R but she wanted D, and after hanging around for about 6 months I decided to move out. My WW was pretty content about it. We are separated and sorting out divorce, while she already has a new boyfriend. The other couple is in R.

Now reading this forum, I see a general train of thought:

- Hire a private detective if needed to have more facts

- WS has to give all passwords, accesses to social media, GPS tracking

- Written confession and/or polygraph

- R takes years and there are no guarantees

This all sounds like a lot of hassle and humiliating also to me as BS. I wouldn't want to be policing my WW or make her jump through hoops to "prove herself". Tbh should we had chosen R I wouldn't have known how to proceed about this. In our M trust was implicit. I never had a single thought of worrying where my W was or with whom, neither did she, I trusted her to consider my well-being. She confessed about her feelings before doing anything about them, I trusted her to keep them at bay and just tried to be supportive and understanding. I was very naive, but I would not want it in any other way.

Since I am friends with OBS, we discuss my and her well-being (her with a remorseful spouse). She outed her WH's A (not their first time), is monitoring her WH in order to feel safe. Her recovery is much slower than mine even though she is very pro-R - low spirits, what they call POLF here. I attribute it to the fact that in R you have to convince your whole body and mind that the most dangerous person that caused trauma and abuse is going to be the safest and the closest, and that is constantly triggering and exhausting. I live in a new place, talk to my xWW mostly through IM only about kids, and after getting over the loneliness of single life, I'm doing ok after about 9 months. My relationship with kids is better than ever before. I am not actively looking to pair off again.

I hope I could convey the gist of my confusion. I never had a chance to do R, but those of you who did, how did you get over the fact that you were down/depressed for 2-5 years (and that is probably almost just as bad on your kids as D), and perhaps lost that implicit trust that your spouse would have your back?

16 comments posted: Wednesday, October 12th, 2022

Got an apology from the other man

I got a visit from the OM a while ago. It was a year after D-day, several months after I separated from my WW, several months after they ended the affair, and a couple of months after he went NC with my WW, and he and OBS started R. I posted the story in another thread.

He didn't try to blame shift or anything and apologised, but I asked why did he start the A and why did he start R, and got an answer that "I thought A would make me feel good, but actually my family makes me feel good, and my wife wants it too". I was guessing if an apology was also making him feel good. I was as if priest hearing a confession and forgiving sins. Since I was close friends with OBS, I know she thought it was not nice that he wouldn't apologise, so after several months of R he did. OBS also said in another conversation that he was not to blame for my M to dissolve, it's between me and WW. I guess we'll never know now.

Even a few months later I still feel kind of used by both of them to restart their M.

To cheating people, maybe if you don't feel like apologising immediately after disclosing/being discovered, leave everyone alone and don't use them to ease your conscience.

What are your thoughts/any similar experience?

11 comments posted: Wednesday, September 21st, 2022