Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums Midlife Crisis H deep in A & MLC, need support 4 roller coaster!

I know, I keep telling myself, "it's not real, it's not real, it's not real" which helps sometimes but not all the time. I think I'm (a) worried it will turn real, mostly because there is phone conversations happening as well as stuff I've read about eventually getting together and being soulmates, etc. and (b) the whole emotional component of it, especially if they are "married" in SL...

But it is messed up. And I just keep repeating that to myself. And there is a part of me that says sometimes "can I be with someone so messed up?" But it's like so many others say here: "It's an alien." And it is. Because I think I know my H better than anyone -- including his parents -- and this is totally not him. At all. Or it least, it's not who I thought he was.

Hope your day is going well.

Hi Dawnofhope. Thanks for your insight into depression. It's great to get another perspective. I know my h is deep into depression and that is so much of what he is going through at the moment. Thank you!

Just caught up with your sitch, Dawn! Sorry to read of how your H is treating you. During my sitch, when I found out about the EA, I insisted that my H refrain from using our home phone, or space to keep in contact with OW. I had children to think of, however. I didn't want them overhearing him.

I do think you have a right to not have OW sleeping in your house. That is so disrespectful of you and the vows you and H made. I think he is sitting on the fence because he is probably not absolutely sure about the OW. She is young, and probably very insecure. Maybe, your H doesn't fear so much that your changes won't last, but that they will. So, he sits on the fence, eating his cake, and waiting to see how long you will keep up the changes.

Have any of you thought about going onto this SL game, and enticing your H's away from OW without them knowing it's you? You know your H's best, and you could possibly keep them dangling for years, until the MLC is over. Play them at their own game, IOW's. You could even set up a separate email account and have an ongoing A with them that way ... no phones of course, unless you know of a way to change your voice, and you would need a separate account for that. You could pretend you live in another country, making calls costly, and visiting even more so. You could send him fake 'pictures' of you. Ooooh! This would be so awesome.

Just a thought! A naughty one, but an intriguing one, perhaps?

LHF, Glam, and BeingMe,
Thank you all for visiting my thread! I so appreciate the feedback and fellowship--we may all wish we didn't need to be here, but at least we can all help each other!


LHF, I could have written that first paragraph myself (except that I omitted the SL "marriage" part from the quote) back in September, except that I KNEW they would be meeting in RL in mid-October. I developed a sudden, raging case of anorexia AND bulimia overnight, I was so upset. There are other people here who have been doing this a lot longer than I have who can give wonderful advice, but what has helped me most is to DETACH. I'm not there yet, but I'm doing better all the time. Keep rereading your second paragraph, which I also could have written at many points during this ordeal.

Hey, don't you wish that there was some kind of visual litmus strip that would tell you whether he was still with the aliens?? Like, hmm, his earlobes are still bright green; his brain is not coming back anytime soon!

LHF, hang in there--we are all hanging in together!


Glam, you're welcome--since I have had to go through this anyway, other people might as well get the benefit of my experiences. I certainly don't mind sharing, although of course everyone's experience of depression is a bit different. I'm not sure whether having acute depression is worse than having a S who is having an A and all the other stuff we deal with on this board, but they are both pretty horrible and there are certain parallels. In both cases everything just seems so incredibly difficult and hopeless and your control of the situation seems so miniscule as to be useless. You figure Sisyphus had it pretty good, because at least he actually got that rock to the top of the hill every day, even if it did roll back down again every night! For both depressives, and people like those on this board, who are trying to save their Ms singlehandedly, it usually seems like the rock is permanently glued in the mud at the bottom of the hill!


BeingMe, thanks for the support! It's still pretty quiet most of the time in my house, but that's partly because I bite my tongue a lot. H only uses his cell phone to contact OW. No wonder he decided to go to a more expensive cell phone plan--it allows unlimited minutes (and texts) for no charge anywhere in the country! Before OW came on the scene, we were accumulating hundreds of minutes per month that were allowed on our plan but we weren't using, and texts were 5 cents each. After he blew through all the accumulated minutes, within a couple of months of getting involved with OW, and started racking up $15.00 a month and up in text charges (that's 300 texts a month!), he changed to a flat rate for unlimited everything. I haven't insisted that he take his discussions with OW elsewhere, so that I don't have to hear his voice coming from the basement for a couple of hours a day, because I've finally gotten to the point that I don't really care any more. I mean, I do, but not very much. No kids to worry about in my case.


I don't think he will have her here again (although I have no guarantees), so I'm going to leave it alone for now. I agree that it's tremendously disrespectful, but so is having an A in the first place. I guess I just don't have a clear idea of when and how to set boundaries. I know there are certain things that I would immediately put my foot down about--like if he ever hit me, for example--but there aren't nearly as many of those as I used to think there were.


Based on what I know about OW, you are right that she is very insecure. It's my understanding that she has had a major weight problem for a long time (she probably weighs twice what I do, or maybe even more), and has had difficulty attracting interest from males for that reason. I think H even told me that she dated a guy for a couple of years and they broke up when he decided he was gay. If she weren't screwing my H, I would probably feel sorry for her, but I'm not quite that good! So now she's got a married man twice her age very interested in her--seems to me she's made up for any past issues.

BeingMe, I REALLY want to hear more about your thoughts on H maybe being afraid that my changes WILL last. I'm not sure I'm following your train of thought there, so could you elaborate? Please give me the benefit of your thinking!
I've actually thought of this! And if I were going to do it, those are some great ideas! But I don't think H really spends that much time on SL anymore, now that he has what he seems to want in RL. He now has a laptop of his own, so I can't really track his activities on the computer any more because he almost exclusively uses the laptop, which last time I checked was password-protected. The other problem is that unlike LHF's H, mine is of the "loyal 'til it hurts" personality type, which was great when it was applied to me, but isn't any more. So I don't think it's likely that anyone new in SL could pry my H away from his current OW. But even though I don't currently think that would work with my H, I think it has definite possibilities, and maybe LHF and others with H's lost in SL would find it useful! It definitely gets the "naughty but intriguing" vote!!

So, in other news...I had dinner last night with a long-lost friend. I met this guy when he worked on the student newspaper with H and me, when we were all in college together (H and I had already been dating a couple of years by that point). He got married a year or so after H and I did, and we lost touch after that. A week or so ago, he e-mailed me out of the blue--first time I'd heard from him in almost 15 years. He said he'd been in touch with H through a business networking website. Come to find out that he and his W had a daughter who is now 12, but they got D after about five years of marriage because...that's when he finally admitted to himself (and others) that he was gay! Has been involved with his current BF for 8 years now. Whoa...major head trips there!

Has been living in same city with H and me for 10 years but had not gotten around to getting back in touch. So we talked on the phone last week and I told him about sitch with H, and then we met for dinner last night and talked some more. He was very sympathetic, and it was nice to have someone else to talk to about all this. It was really good to see him. It's been a while since I had the opportunity to see anyone I hadn't seen in 15 years. His voice is exactly the same, but he has gained enough weight--especially in his face--that I would not have recognized him if I hadn't been expecting to see him. Not an enormous amount of weight, but he was rail-thin before. He has not yet seen or spoken with H--just brief e-mail exchanges, as I understand it--so it will be interesting to see what his take on things is after that happens and he hears H's side of the story, or whatever he's willing to tell of it.

Okay, the length of this post got WAY out of hand. Sorry about that! Now I REALLY need to get back to work!

Thanks again for stopping by and reading my ridiculously long posts! Talk to you soon. Best to you all....

Peace,
Dawn

Just imagine if he is sitting on the fence thinking if he leaves you, and goes with OW, and 10 years down the road, finds out that you are still the intriguing woman you are now, after all your changes. Won't he feel a fool then? While he is stuck with an insecure, overweight woman, (and maybe a few kids), and she will not trust him very much ("if they'll do it with you, they'll do it to you" quote from Dr. Phil), so will be somewhat clingy.

So, he is possibly thinking "if I stay, Dawn might go back to what she was before, but if I leave, I might lose out on a wife the way she is now". MLCers tend to be quite a confused lot, if that is what he is suffering from.

Hope I made sense here.

BTW, you could pose as a man, and entice the OW away from your H. Hehehehehe!!!!! Wouldn't that be soooo delicious! You could play the knight whose into young, voluptious wenches ...! Okay, I think my brain is getting outta hand now. Your H may be the 'loyal' type, but she might not! Bye for now.

Yes, now I understand...I think you are right! He did actually say, about 6 months ago, that if we didn't have all of this negative history behind us, he'd be really intrigued by me...


That's the best laugh I've had all day!! Thanks so much!

And now, back to work....

Peace,
Dawn

I actually thought about this a while ago, and started to set up an SL account but realized it was going to take a lot of work to figure it out. I kind of gave up.

I still consider it every now and then, but I'm not sure how I feel about doing it since I hate it so much now. I'm also afraid of what I might find, although I think I've found most of bad stuff anyway.

I do know that if our marriage is to survive, I don't know how SL can be allowed in this house. And that's something that won't be given up by him any time soon.

Hi, all,
Thanks for visiting again! I have been working like crazy for the last few weeks, so I haven't been posting much, but I get on the BB and read every day. (I'm a professional calligrapher, and I had 650 wedding invitations to address as of last week, and need to be done with them in a day or so--I still have almost 300 to do. Insane!!)

I have basically been working until I collapse, sleeping a bit (often on the [carpeted] floor of my office, to limit the time I spend asleep), then back to work. It's been a week since I actually had a decent night's sleep--even by my night-owl standards.

Then yesterday I came down with what I think was food poisoning. This is the second time in about two months, and before that I had never had it in my life, to my knowledge. I can't figure it out--I'm not eating anything unusual for me. I feel okay now, but it was kinda ugly for a few hours there. And it put me behind on my work, so now I'm scrambling to get things done.

Anyway...I have a bit of news about my sitch. I talked with my DB coach on Friday, and she said it's time to start opening the door to H a little wider, since lately he has been expressing interest in some R discussion periodically. I have been following her (coach's) direction in avoiding such things and giving him about as much space as possible while living in the same house and sleeping in the same bed (which still seems totally strange to me, but whatever). She thinks that this space has been necessary for the old M to die, but he is now peeking in to see if there is any prospect of a new and improved M. So, as per her instructions from Friday, I began encouraging a bit more conversation, although still in a casual, non-pressuring way. No major shift in my behavior, just a little more openness to talk.

So in the four days since then (following hints of this in the previous week or so), I have noticed a slight but definite improvement in his openness to me as well. He actually volunteered tonight that he had seen his IC today. (Normally, since all this began anyway, when I ask what he experienced that day that was interesting, he says "Nothing," and I don't press the issue.) This mention of the IC is noteworthy because I happen to know that he has seen his IC fairly regularly for about 6 months (although I'm not sure exactly what frequency), and this is the first time he's said a word about it since first telling me that he was starting up with IC again. And tonight after mentioning that, he asked me if I was still seeing my IC, commenting that he hadn't heard anything at all about that from me. My appointments with my IC are on the calendar, but I explained that yes, I see her every two weeks, but I hadn't mentioned it to him because I wasn't sure he was interested.

So this sign (slightly better communication) is so small that I'm not entirely sure it isn't just something random or within normal variations. However, unlike many people here, I have not seen any cycling from my H. He has been pretty consistently chilly to me for months now. No glimpses of the person I married except with other people. So maybe my coach is right and H is actually, finally, in the beginning stages of recognizing just what he's done. I don't know; I just do what I think I need to do.

Okay, the exhaustion from too much work and too little sleep is starting to get to me. I'm falling asleep while typing. I will catch up with you later, after I've gotten a little sleep. I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Peace,
Dawn

Dawn,
I think it's significant that your H asked if you were going to IC. If he wasn't interested in you, he wouldn't have bothered. I think even his going to IC shows some commitment to the R. And like you posted, he sees the appointments and yet asked - maybe to confirm that you are actually going to them.

Hi, PH,
Thanks for stopping by! It's good to hear from you!

Yes, I agree with everything you mentioned. It's interesting that you said "maybe to confirm that you are actually going to them"--I have been known to write appointments/events on the calendar and then change them later, or not go at all (the latter often because I only put it on the calendar so that I could would know when the event was IF I decided to go to it) and he has on occasion criticized me for that.

Anyway, it's like he's actually starting to be interested in at least the basics of my life again, after completely avoiding me except for the barest pretense at courtesy for months. He did say something a month or two ago about how "You apparently will talk to anyone but me." And then quoted some things I had told his sister, who had promised not to reveal them to him. It's a good thing she just moved halfway across the country, because I'm not pleased with her at the moment. I thought she would be more sympathetic, because her first H cheated on her for most of the 18 years they were married, and she finally gave up and divorced him, at which point he wanted to work things out, but she was done with him by then, and despite how I feel about divorce, based on what I know about her X, I can't blame her. She's now remarried to a guy who seems to treat her a lot better than her first H did, although maybe it's because her current H got burned too--my H's sister is his 3rd wife, and I don't know what happened to his W#1, but I believe his second M ended when he caught W#2 in bed with OM. Well, I digress, but you can see why I thought H's sister would be good to talk to. I still like her okay, but I no longer trust her, so I definitely won't be talking to her in confidence again.

I've been waiting for what seems like forever for any sign of hope whatsoever. I hope this is actually a trend and things keep improving, but I'm definitely not going to hold my breath. One discouraging thing about this BB is the number of people who have been standing for literally *years* with few signs of improvement in their sitches. I feel like this has gone on half my life by now, but at only 1 year/9 months (depending on what you count as the starting point; by some measures it would be more like 7-8 *years*!) I feel like my sitch is still in its infancy compared to many on this board. I do have endurance to go the distance, but I'm not looking forward to it.

H is still living at home, no legal moves of any sort as far as I know, still sitting FIRMLY on the fence, so I suppose I should count my blessings, as so many here are getting such nastiness from their S's. I am detaching, detaching, detaching--this little shift of the last few days is not changing that. H went to see OW weekend before last, rolling in at 3:45 a.m. Monday morning, about 3 hours before he needed to get up for work. I just let it go. Nothing new there. I do wonder how long this will go on, and whether it will ever improve. I am having a hard time seeing myself ever forgiving and getting past what he has done, even though I believe it is the right thing to do, and knowing that I may not get the opportunity to have any sort of continuing R anyway, so whatever I do will strictly be for me, not for the R or M.

I am actually doing pretty well emotionally, despite how I may sound in my posts today. I am discouraged about H and his alien-ness, but I feel much stronger and --I wouldn't say happy, but--at least more accepting of both the good and the bad in my life. I have done so much work on myself to get to this point, I'm not going to waste it.

Thank you for your input; I really appreciate it! It's so good to actually hear the take on my sitch from people who actually understand and appreciate what I am trying to do in my M, unlike many in RL! I'd love to hear from some of the other long-term residents of the board, too. Jack Three Beans, Bworl, sg, Amy C? Others? Any of you have any wisdom to impart to me? I welcome your advice and comments.

Peace,
Dawn