Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums Midlife Crisis Wife in Major MLC...Looking to Vent

Bomb,

Sounds like you handled it tactfully to me. No accusations, no hints just "I dont know." Let her answer for her own actions, she owns them, you own yours and your actions sound very non-confrontational. Good job.

NH

Good Morning Bombadier,

Bad news: The truth hurts
Good news: The truth will set you free

First, the BAD NEWS; Your wife is exhbiting major OM behavior. I and many others can speak fom experience because mine did the same thing. Mine would turn off her phone or another trick was to leave her phone in car (so she said). She also would have chunks of missing time, especially at the evening meal time, would not come home when she said she would, would say she was going one place for a quick errand and be gone for hours, etc. It is normal to respond with some degree of denial on your part at this point but you will better serve yourself if you accept and face the truth.

The GOOD NEWS; The woman you are now observing is not your wife. She has already checked out, broken down, mutated, surrendered to her inner fears and demons. Elvis has left the building. That's why talking to her, pointing out the errors of her ways (either by you or your son), trying to reason with her, etc. will accomplish nothing but irritate her, push her further away and make her want to run away faster and further. She is not "playing games" she is doing exactly what she wants to do. Where's the "good" in this? What's lost can be found, what goes up will come down. Newton got all fancy with it when he said for every action there is an oposite and equal reaction. Your wife will be back one day. You can't find her, or even help her to find herself as much as you and all of us wish we could. She has to do this alone. you can only control your response to the situation. Will you be waiting when she literally "finds herself?"

You will be greatly tempted during this time. At some point your pain will turn to anger and you will be tempted to lash out at your W and even at OM. Most of my anger has been felt toward OM, I guess because I still love my W. OM (all of them) are pieces of s**t and they know it on some level. W's OM cannot look me in the eye, but W will tell you what a "great guy" he is. Yeah, so "great" he is helping to take a mother away from her two small children. Guess he needs her more than them. How sick and pitiful is that?

Use your pain to detatch from W. Take these negatives and turn them into positives for yourself. Do all the things you've been meaning to do but couldn't find the time to do. Get yourself in shape physically and financially, pursue a new (or old) hobby, focus on the parts of your life that are working. Determine YOUR objectives and achieve them. I get the feeling you are experienced in achieving difficult objectives in light of your military experience. Let her go. She's already gone. She'll be back one day. It's up to you to decide if you'll be waiting.

"Ain't no step for a steppa", Percy Sledge

Thanks NewHorizons and Sleeper. I'm concentrating on letting the natural consequences of her actions bite her in the ass. It allows me to fade into the background, and it's serving to alienate people she cares about: her kids.

Sleeper...I'm with ya man. No denial here. She's already deep in an EA with my former best friend. Now it looks like a PA has started. What's interesting about all this is that her flailing around in this MLC seems to be taking a physical toll on her. She just doesn't look good lately. Tired, lines around the eyes, clothes are a little gaudy/suggestive, she hasn't exercised in weeks. It's really kind of hard to see. Has this been anyone else's experience?

Funny thing. I don't feel any anger any more. Maybe I will again...don't know. There are brief moments during the day now where I feel weirdly at peace. They're brief...but still there. I'm not crying anywhere near as much, if at all. What's happening here? Am I detaching?

The memories are the hardest. That's what kills me. I was reading FaithisBelieving's entries and he talked about an episode in the old Star Trek series where Kirk was busted up over his woman. Spock found him sleeping and did the mind meld thing and whispered "Forget" in Kirk's ear.

I could use Spock right now...

Pain is the fuel for the fire in which our character is forged.
F Spock and his pointy ears.

That feeling of peace happens. I do not know that I would call it dettaching, as for me dettaching as an active process, with that feeling of peace being the goal.

Bomb you seem like a sci-fi fan, yes?
I make many references to a book by John Steakley called Armor, any chance you have read it?



Yup. All of it.

I'm with Jack, all of it.

My W?
-Looks like crap, and she used to be THE most beautiful woman in the world. No lie.
-Is in debt up to her @$$.
-Has a horrible credit rating.
-All but quit her job, as she took a demotion to a job she hates. And a LOT of her self esteem is based on her career.
-Has a OM who lives 300 miles away and is about to sign an agreement that if she moves more than 10 miles away, I get full custody of the kids.
-Corporate credit card is suspended due to not submitting expenses. Hopefully nothing funny is going on because OM is a customer.
-Had a beautiful home, kids, family, church, and social life.
-Never owned a home by herself before, now she's going to try and get a mortgage.
-Has alienated everyone but her kids.
-Need 3-4 Tylenol PM's just to sleep. EVERY night.

They are aliens.

BTW b50, I think your actions were spot on.

Well, her head is pretty nice, and her teeth looked fine to me before, as your W's probably did. She picked the dentist of the Phoenix Coyotes, the pro hockey team in Phoenix...
If this link is still good, here's a pic of her doing a testimonial for the dentist who did the procedure. You can guess who drove her back and forth to appointments, while she was sedated.
BTW, she felt that I was not entitled to any of the same retirement fund she drew the money out of for her teeth...

They are very strange. I feel for you. I checked the link. It's still good. Yes, that's my wife, at least for a bit longer.

David

http://www.drhoskyns.com/valorie.html

Don't want to undermine you, but those teeth look scary to me!

Who does she bite?

Drew, by my estimate, my wife is about six months away from where your wife is if she doesn't wake up.

Tamashii...those teeth are so white you could see them from the space shuttle. Geez...why?...

Also, Tamashii, I think my wife has hooked up with her recently-divorced dentist. Yup. So she's having an EA with my former best friend, and now a probable PA with her dentist.

Jack, I know of Steakley but have not read the book. It is now on my list. As an aside, I'm a big Joe Haldeman fan, have an autographed copy of The Forever War. Other than that, don't read too much SciFi. By the way, love the pain quote...that's a keeper.

Funny thing about pain...I'm a serious amateur photographer...landscape type. One of my email buddies is a retired Nat. Geo. photog who critiques my work for fun. He has no idea what's going on in my personal life. He sent me an email today saying that my latest stuff is "very dark in feel, moody, lots of emotion. Love it. Some of your best stuff ever. Keep it up."

Anyway, as an initial self protection move, I drastically lowered the limit on the credit card. Fortunately, it looks like she's calmed down on the spending quite a bit. Probably because I didn't say anything about it. I'm sure if I had, she would have charged me into oblivion for spite...

Question: When long term marriages go south, is it because one spouse wonders what life would have been like with someone else? Do they have to see this life and reject it to come back?

Mid Life Crisis, the final frontier.
These are the voyages of the Spouseship Leftbehind.
Our 2-5 year mission; to maintain sanity in the face of alien posession of our spouses.
And to boldly go where we've never gone before!

Remember the Prime directive; No interference with the developement of alien races (our spouses). We must let them find their own way.