I have had a week from hell. A roller coaster of emotions again at the hands of my husband. Sunday afternoon he asks me to Berlin with him seemingly so earnestly. Sunday night he phones and tells me he is taking the mistress instead. I grieve all night. Monday morning he phones and tells me he has made a mistake and wants me.Monday afternoon he does not answer his phone - suspicious. I drop by the unit where he is staying on my way out to dinner and discover him perched on the edge of her car in the garage, she sitting in the car. I am calm and I walk up and make him admit to her in front of me exactly what he has been saying to me. Apparently he has said the same to her.I watch her treat him so condescendingly I can hardly bare it and I almost laugh at the man who I know to be completely intolerable of anyone telling him what to do, reduced to a small man, a school kid being stood over by a teacher.I ask her to walk away from our marriage. She asks mark if that he what he wants and he cannot answer. I look at the two of them and I turn my back "you know what" I say, "I am going to walk away from this", and I do.I went on out to dinner and asked my girlfriends for champagne.I was so angry and hurt.Next morning from him come the texts and an email telling me he 'has made his choice", he wants me. Please come to Berlin on Saturday with him.I figure she must have told him where to go. I know he has been telling us each a different story, so I send her a copy of the email that he sent me.She sends me a lengthy one in reply. Outlining in graphic detail the time they have been spending together over the past few weeks, while he was apparently 'getting her out of his head' or so he was telling me.Even included the detail of how that previous afternoon they had sex which was apparently 'the best he had ever had".I thought at least that was honest of her. In the end of the letter she said that she too was now going to walk away from him, as she could not bear how he was treating the two of us.I finally thought that she was showing some compassion, and some common sense. I sent her a return email applauding her decision, and agreeing with her that this man needed to end up with neither of us in the long run.Mark phones me and I tell him based on that email, that there is no chance of a reconciliation at all any more. I am completely betrayed and gobsmacked at the gall of him and his behavior when he was telling me the exact opposite to her. He had spent nights at his unit with her, and at her parents home. In fact, one morning last week on the way to my conference I called him and asked him what he thought I should do with the stuff that I learn from the conference. Should I use it to grow independently of him and move on by myself, or should I use it to help with forgiveness so that I may forgive him and we move on together. He just replied "the latter", then I asked again and he said "the second option". I asked him to elaborate and he said "just get on with it". Suspiciously I asked if she was there in his unit and he got angry and said that he was just in a hurry to go to work. I did not believe him at the time but did not do any more about it. Turns out she was there. While she was there he is telling me that he wants to get on with it with me. Appalling.Anyway, I was empowered by anger and encouraged by her support.Next day however, I find out that she has agreed to go to Berlin with him. I realise that the whole aim of the email she sent to me was for me to judge Mark based on her comments, her embelllished comments. To judge him with such anger that I simply had no choice but to tell him to go away for ever. Which I did.She said she was going too, but in effect that was just to suck me in so that she would get her own way. She stuck the knife in again - into me, and into the marriage of Mark and I. She has done this all along and again I fell victim to it.I had two days of absolute distress Tuesday and Wednesday. Of the betrayal. By both of them.I asked Mark that he please not take her to Berlin as it was a holiday that I planned for the two of us and it would hurt simply too much for him to take her to where I planned a special trip for us. He had a flight booked for her, which he phoned me last night to tell me that he had cancelled. He told me that he felt betrayed himself by her, by the contents of the email and how she had forced him into a corner and that he would have rather taken me to Berlin, but when I told him that it was over with us, he felt rather than go alone he may as well take her.Not the right answer. The man still cannot bear to be alone for some reason. And to take her simply because I would not go is ridiculous.I told him that if he took her, then I would never in the future even consider a reconciliation between us. never.He thought that through obviously and rang me to check that I meant it. So, he said, if he did not take her, then there would perhaps be hope for us. He does not want to let go of our bond or be forced into anything by her.I have told him that if he does not take her overseas, there is perhaps a chance for us in the future, but that I could not give him a guarantee of that.I sense that he is still thinking that I should just sit around and wait for him to see if his relationship with the mistress works out and if it doesnt then he can come home. dont exactly know what I am supposed to do if it actually works out!I have had a distressed week. Dreadfully down for two days but not so bad now. My emotions run up and down. From fear of loneliness and sadness and betrayal and failure, to anger and strength and conviction.Today he phones and says that he has not taken up a relationship with her and that he is doing as I advised and taking the trip to Berlin by himself to think. He said lots of nice positive things about our bond and our love and how he feels he has been shafted and manipulated by the mistress. yes he has. But he is not a child and needs to learn to stand up to it if it bothers him too much. Say no to her or tell her to go away. He never does that. It is like she is his mother and he cant upset her. I think it is that I used to be the mother figure and I stopped doing it. YOu cant run a relationship where you are a partner, lover, carer as well as a counsellor. You should pay for a counsellor and just let the relationship deal with the other stuff. Too much burden.I have grown emotionally, and he has stagnated. I think at times he is beginning to grow, but I dont really know. And I dont think I will until I see him able to stand up to that woman, as she treats him so poorly and he accepts it which I feel is unhealthy. i listened to him talk tonight, and what he says indicates he is growing, but whether he sticks by it is another thing.I phoned him tonight to ask exactly where we stand. I am in Brisbane with the boys and he has returned home tonight to Townsville at his unit 'on his own'. I asked him if he thought that it ok that he keep seeing her tonight perhaps, or if we are separated and that I have the same rights as him and can see someone too. I thought that that may scare him, as I know he is frightened of losing me.In a grumbly way he said that after tomorrow he would be away so he would not be seeing anyone, but I guess that for today we should say we are separated!!!!I think what that means, is that he can see this mistress tonight for another night and perhaps more sex and not think it wrong.I do not see that he has changed a bit.I am hoping the two weeks away from him will see me get much stronger and for me to be able to tell him to go jump when he gets back. I cannot see that two weeks by himself is going to get his head around two years of chaos in his life. And if tonight's plan by him to do exactly as he pleases and basically use this other woman for another night, then that reminds me of who he is and how in fact he may never change.He said something tonight on the phone about how the mistress had asked him to come clean about all the other affairs that he may have had and how he took great offence to her asking that. I suppose understandedly, as it is none of her business if she is taking up a relationship with him now, but in his own naivety, he cannot see that if a mistress becomes a partner and no longer a mistress, it creates a vacancy. She can see that already. How on earth does he expect her to be able to settle into a relationship with him and truly trust him. He cheated to get her, of course there is a greater risk he would do it again. It would eat away at her, and in my heart, although it is mean to say that, I hope it does.