Let me say first that I really value everyone's support and advice. Even if I argue against it please know that I still appreciate it and, as so many of you have said, I'm not in a great place mentally and that's probably making me argue against my own self interest.
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It's been a two steps forward, one step back kind of week.
Tuesday after work I took our daughter to her riding lesson and then came home and made us dinner. We all ate at the table for the first time in a while. She initiated conversation; not about anything serious just life and kid and work stuff. It was nice.
Yesterday I followed some advice I'd gotten elsewhere and told her
1. That if reconciliation doesn't work I'm not interested in raking her over the coals in divorce proceedings. This is to ensure that she doesn't stay purely for financial reasons which, to my mind, would just mean another affair down the road.
2. That I recognized that part of having tough conversations was trusting that you could say something that would be hard for your partner to hear without having to fear that they would blow up or freak out.
Those two things seemed to really reassure her and she said she didn't want a divorce and gave me a long hug.
But then came the step back. We were laughing about the crazy sex toys on Ali Express (we do an annual white elephant with friends where we exchange sex toys and sexual gag gifts) and she jokingly suggested that she gets me an automatic blowjob machine.
My stomach dropped and I clammed up. I'm lucky, I've never had a trauma that could actually trigger me. I was shocked at how sudden and uncontrollable it was. It took me a while to examine that feeling and figure out why that hurt and even more to work up the courage to tell her how much that hurt. But I did and I told her that I needed to say this and she needed to hear it because we needed to talk about the landmines so we didn't keep stepping on them.
At first she was apologetic, she didn't think, it wasn't appropriate.
Then I mentioned that I better understood the situation when she had once because of being triggered punched a respiratory therapist that startled her at work.
And that's when things went off the rails. She told me she was triggered that day because she had been trying EMDR therapy for her trauma and it had really fucked her up. And it turned into a marathon conversation about our marriage, our sex life, all of OUR problems.
Eventually, I told her that I wanted to hear about this stuff and I wanted to work on it but we couldn't even start without addressing the affair.
And I gave her a single boundary, don't go to the casino where you met the AP, which he probably still frequents, where they went together frequently. There are two other casinos in the area; I'm not robbing her of a hobby.
I wanted access to her phone if and when I felt I needed it. And I wanted her to turn on location history on her phone. I wouldn't be tracking her in real time but if I needed to I could see where she had been.
Finally, I needed her to really express remorse for the affair not just for hurting me. Because if she isn't sorry about the affair then there's no reason to think she wouldn't have another.
She complained that I was treating her like a child (I understand that's a classic response).
She wouldn't commit to any of it. I told her she didn't have to decide right away, shouldn't decide while emotions were high.
I think she honestly thought I was just going to let the affair go. That it would be without consequences. I'm flabbergasted that she would think me so spineless.
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Man, that was a lot to get off my chest. I'm keeping up the 180 and spending time cleaning up what has been kind of our junk room so that it's ready for me to move all her stuff into it if it comes to that.