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Yep, sleep when the baby sleeps. That is absolutely necessary!

This place may not save your marriage, but it could very well save your sanity!

That is great advice for yourself and definitely a great place to start.

Sleep well.

Hi Lovnlrn! I am also a military wife...well, I guess I WAS, H got out of the Air Force in January. We went through 2 deployments, one of which was 8 months and really tough for him. I believe he went through an early MLC...although the timeline has been a little short compared to others.

Anyway, this is a great place to vent and also to journal your thoughts. Friendship is a great place to start, and it seems that worked for you before. No R talk, and I would say little contact right now. Let him contact you unless there is something going on with the kids.

I know it must be hard with 4 kids...but what kind of things are you doing for yourself?

Well, I've been keeping myself busy. Not that I have much choice in that department. lol The kids always keep me on my toes.

For myself, though, I have a hobby that I am passionate about. I do digital scrapbooking. I love working with Adobe Photoshop. I have a couple of online galleries and my work has been published in several scrapbooking e-zines and one book. I'm part of a couple of design teams. I do a lot of photography. In fact, I just finished my oldest son's baseball portraits (I don't like the school's hired photographers work as much as my own. lol)

I'm a photojournalist at heart so while I'm a stay at home mom, I use that talent/passion to document our family's memories, history, every-day happenings, letters to my children for different things, etc. Also, I document major events/achievements in my husband's military career & even have an album dedicated to that for him. I even had a font made out of my own handwriting so that their albums will feel more personal.

Plus, I often use digital designing as art therapy. Like when my son was stillborn, it was very hard to keep going on and to figure out how to process all of the emotions. So, I played around in photoshop...with color, imagery, journaling, etc.....whatever I needed to do to express the agony in my heart.

I also blog a lot. I love to write and it provides a great outlet plus a place to showcase the photos I take of the kids (for our extended family out of state). I don't really have a lot of time to do much for myself, not to mention that I have very limited funds. I do have coffee at my neighbor's a few times a week which is great for me to get out of my house and be with someone whose company I enjoy. :-) I love flowers and gardening but that hasn't been in the budget for awhile.

So that's about it for what I do for myself....for now. :-) I have to be careful with the designing, though, because it is VERY addicting. I enjoy it so much that I could be on the laptop for hours if I didn't discipline myself.

My husband is actually the one who introduced me to computers and photoshop. I really didn't know much and he, on the other hand, is quite the computer "geek" plus he's an artist. He combines the two and taught me a lot of things. I think it started out because he saw how much money I was spending at the scrapbook store a few years ago. lol So, he would give me "lessons" & I would joke with my girlfriends about how I got to "sleep with my professor". Also, the joke was that, while other men showed their love through flowers, diamonds and gold, mine showed his through Nikon, Mac and Epson. :-) He's also been my number one fan for my work. Last Valentine's day, he designed a digital scrapbook kit for me to use with the Valentine's pics I took. His idea was to take me out to dinner, take pictures and have me scrapbook them with the kit he made. That meant a lot to me. He isn't usually so thoughtful or, for that matter, doesn't often remember/acknowledge my birthday or holidays. But that was a very nice v-day.

I realize that I usually only call him when I'm bored or to share something with him about the kids (trying to keep him in the loop of the happenings in their lives). But rarely do I really just feel like talking to him. It seems futile to try. It's difficult to decipher whether he's telling the truth or not, even about mundane things. He doesn't like to be "known" so he's kind of evasive. Or he thinks I'm prying or trying to trap him or buttering him up to get something. It's hard to talk to him like I would with other friends (although I don't view him much like a friend anymore). He's in his "cave" so often so it's hard to get him to open up without him feeling suspicious. He's pretty much been like that for years.

Plus, I never know when he's in his good phase or his bad phase. I could say something completely innocent and it'll set him off.

When I want to hammer a concept into my brain, one of the things I do is to take index cards, write on it what I want to "tell" myself and put them all over the house. My friends like reading them, too. The most recent one is "GET A LIFE!" lol I realized how much time was spent lingering around the phone or computer in hopes of contact from him. Then I'd break down & call or text him. I hated that. One of the things I did to challenge myself was to set a goal of not contacting him for 7 days & rewarding myself with a full body massage (I have fibromyalgia so this was more than just a luxury). I still haven't made it. :-(

Hanging out here & reading through this forum has helped me tremendously to keep silent with him. I believe that if any great "realizations" are going to happen on his part to spur him on to change, it will come from really feeling the absence of this family (& particularly me & all of the positives I bring to his life). He needs to really understand what his life will be like without us in it on a regular basis. I mean, he will only see the kids a couple times a year because we will be living in separate states. I know that he relies on me for things and really doesn't have any 'real' friends (I don't count the ones he plays Warcraft with online or the women he meets on Myspace). When/if the divorce is final, I will not be his friend anymore. I will be civil, respectful & mature for my children's sake. He is throwing me into the hardship of being a single mother of 4 kids (one being an infant) & having to go back to work full time (when he knows how passionate I am about the importance of being a SAHM). He not only deprived the children of a 'regular' father when he abandoned this family, his actions are depriving them of a 'regular', available & attentive mother as well. I can't be friends with someone like that. He's not going to have the perks of the marriage/family without the commitment & sacrifice. I want a partner in raising this family. One that is dependable & available & sacrificial, not one who does the right thing when it's convenient for him or makes him feel good.

Hey Lovenlrn,

I am sorry you are here. As you know, you will get a lot of good advice.

I am newbie as well, my sitc has been going on for about 6 weeks. I think the best advice I have been getting is patience, patience, patience. I keep thinking if I could only just KISS my wife, everything will be okay. Although there are some success stories, the most important thing to remember is to treat yourself to GAL and doing things for you and your children. Keep a positive mental attitude and don't drag yourself into R talks. Much of the advice you will recieve will be counter to your thinking - at least I am finding this big time. But follow what the posters are saying, read the DR book.

Remember, this is about you and your children, and whatever is meant to be, will be.

Peace,

CBK

It is great that you know what you want from your M and have boundaries about what you are willing to accept.

Give him a chance to miss you and face the reality of what D will be like.

DBing is rather counter-intuitive most of the time (but since what you were doing before wasn't working, they are necessary changes). Keep the contact to a minimum for a while and let him deal with his thoughts and emotions for a while. And remember patience.

The scrapbooking sounds awesome, but also remember how beneficial it can be to get out in the sunshine and get some exercise.

If you miss a call from him it won't be the end of the world. In fact, it'll probably make him wonder a bit. A little mystery/uncertainty is good for the WAS sometimes.

Also, to hope or not - I always choose hope. Hope brings me smiles, hope brings me happy memories, hope brings me out of my funks. I am also a realist and get that, but hope is what I hold onto, very tightly right now! :-)

I'm feeling sad thinking about moving out of our house in a couple of months. We lived in a smaller house here on Post and then they started building these beautiful, large 4 BR houses. I prayed and fought with housing for a year to get our family into one. They were only giving them to the people living in the houses they were tearing down, regardless of rank or family size.

When I found out I was pregnant, they put us in this new house and it is perfect in every way for our family...from the size to the location. I love it. We had 7 days to clear and move ourselves. It was a horrible week. We fought like crazy and I found out about a woman he was having an EA with. We had just had the 1 yr anniv. of our son's death, he handed me sep. papers when we were moving and then that night I found out I was pregnant. He put me through hell, acting incredibly hostile and unreasonable which ended in the MP's & his command remanding him to the barracks for 72 hrs. My heart was breaking. Here, we finally got the house I had been praying for and it looked like we were only going to live in it for a month.

I have to finish this later....the baby is very fussy right now. <sigh>