Traci chose (1) — which is also the arrangement we used while waiting for the divorce to be finalized.
For the first couple of months after the divorce was final I did some dating, and even on one occasion came home at 6:00 AM from a date with the attractive divorcee up the street, smelling like sex (which upset Traci considerably, helping her fully understand for the first time what she did to me when she spent the night with Asshole).
Soon after that Traci told me that with all the text messages and emails she had read on the Sunday after the fateful event, and our conversations and subsequent events, it hit home that what she did was terribly, horribly wrong, and she was very sorry and very ashamed that she had let Jackson talk her into it. She assured me that she would never compare me to him during sex, because just thinking about sex with him made her sick to her stomach.
I didn’t make a real connection with anyone I dated, and Traci wasn’t dating at all, as far as I could tell, and before long Traci and I agreed to have sex together once a week or so just to get our rocks off, sort of a friends with benefits deal.
Our children thrived in this situation, even though we hid the sex agreement from them. They had two full-time, loving parents who were on friendly terms with each other. We often did things as a family, and we usually went to school events and often to other events as a couple. They slept in different rooms, but were not angry or resentful.
We didn’t agree to be exclusive, but that was in fact the case as far as I could tell, and after a while the sex was often more than once a week. The lack of an exclusivity agreement was important to me, since I never did fully regain my trust in her, and I could not deal with always wondering whether she was sleeping with someone else or not. We always used condoms. Nonetheless, our sex got steadily better.
Finally, not long after the children had both left home for college, Traci and I moved back into the same bedroom. (We did not share a bedroom sooner, because we did not want to raise any false hopes in the children that we might get remarried.) We never remarried, and we never formally agreed to be exclusive, even though in fact we were, as far as I could tell. We stopped using condoms with each other, and we agreed to use them with outside partners, if any. (I had to always assume she might be sleeping around on me, so that I would not be devastated if she turned out to be doing that.) We never recovered quite the same trust and closeness as before the fateful night Traci stayed with Asshole, but things became much better than just OK.
We grew old together.
Postscript:
The unconventional child custody options near the end of this story are loosely based on my own life experiences. I was married in 1963, and we moved to the Montlake District in Seattle in 1969. My marriage was shaky at this time and it got shakier. We mutually agreed to get divorced in 1973, and we bought a second house a 30-minute walk away. Our first priority was to minimize the impact of the divorce on our two daughters, aged 7 and 9, so we strove for an amicable divorce, with equitable terms.
We split our assets 50-50, with my wife getting our first house and me getting our second house. I was employed full time, and she was just starting graduate school with an assistant-ship, so I paid enough alimony to give us equal incomes. We got joint custody, with the daughters spending equal time with each of us. We remained friendly, although not at all intimate. At first we split our time by weekends and weekdays, but the daughters found that too disruptive, so we went to a quarter system, similar to option (2) in the story.
The only difference was that each parent had his/her own house, and the daughters moved back and forth quarterly, instead of the parents. Since we were both working, we had a child-sitter, who went with the children. The daughters grew up happy and well-balanced, and have remained on excellent terms with both of us. The ex and I are still comfortable around each other, although not close. I remarried in 1980, and my second wife and I are still happily married to this day. My ex-wife never remarried, but has been in rewarding, very long-term relationships.