Dear PJ:

I don’t know if you still intend to reply to Valora- but her post is very worthy of reading and re-reading, insightful, thoughtful, thorough. Valora wrote about your wife: “she had to handle (stillbirth) in whatever way she needed to handle that, even if that meant her pretending like it didn’t happen.. the only way she could function… she wasn’t there for you, walking beside you in your darkest moments….it’s likely she was going through something darker“.

– “the only way she could function”, is to be that “great mother.. and an extremely hard worker at home and her job“- that you wrote about your wife.

If she fell into depression following the loss of the baby, her two living children would suffer a lot, and she wouldn’t be able to work at home and outside, keeping a well maintained home for you as well as bringing in money.

Maybe she thought you will feel better if you saw her feeling better and functioning well- maybe she thought moving on was going to help you too.

Let’s look at this: a great mother, an extremely hard worker at home and at her job- that is a lot to be thankful for in a wife, isn’t it?

While your wife was parenting your children so well, keeping the house clean, cooking, earning a paycheck, another woman who also has a husband, a home and two children is busy- not parenting her children, not keeping her home but adding some fun into her work day by having sex with .. you. She gets a lot of credit, this other woman, in your mind. She gets that credit because she is ‘hot’, sexual, makes you feel sexually/ emotionally wonderful.

That sexual/ emotional good experience is why you had the six months affair.

I don’t think your wife is aware of this sentiment of yours:  “The years of dating my wife in my book were just ok”, and that after marrying her, she got to be even less than just-ok in your book.

She doesn’t know. Or maybe she does. What if she knows it but.. pretends she doesn’t, because pretending is how she keeps functioning well?

anita