Divorcebusting.com Forums Divorcebusting.com Archives For Newcomers Archives Hoping to find some peace

Karma,

Welcome to the club everyone loves but no one wants to be a part of.

You've done a pretty good job of identifying the things you W does not like. Well done. Now what?

Now you begin the journey of correcting those things.

DO NOT:
Ask your W to go to the website
Ask her to read the book
Cry and seem weak in front of her (this will only reinforce her opinion of you according to your own self analysis)
Panic
Be ashamed
Listen to people, family or otherwise, that tell you how you should and should not feel.

Do:

Visit often and post often we help each other sometimes I am weak......ok often I am weak but my new found friends here lift me up. They will do the same for you.

You are in a new country. How AWESOME is that. Get out there man and explore. You just might have a good time and it will help you heal.

Prepare for the emotional rollercoaster from hell! We are on it together and sometimes we are up and sometimes we are down.

Figure out who YOU are. Are you weak? Do you see yourself this way.

Sounds to me like you have a pretty good outline of what you need to do. The single hardest thing I have done is attempt to detach and have no expectations; I stink at both although I think I am getting better at detaching.

If you have the blue print then it is up to you to correct it. I am the opposite. My W wanted a teddy bear and she got an A$$hole or as you so politely put it a lion. Now I am trying to soften up but it is all baby steps. The important thing is I am softening up because I realize I need to, has nothing to do with her.

I know it stinks right now and it is hard to figure out how you will get through tomorrow but hey today was the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

Get out there and live it up and you will be in a better frame of mind when W does decide to call.

MrBond: Thanks for your feedback. Yup, bought DR from B&N yesterday. Just started reading it.

Yup the things she was frustrated about.

1: That she put up 11 years with me and did not get a break. She felt that i always had one emotional issue or the other
2: That for 3 years i was depressed and never made effort to get myself out of it.
3: That she did not want our D to see our arguing.
4: That i never used any of the existing support system that i had in the U.S. (i.e., my MIL, SIL etc)

Just to give you lil background. I have no family in the US. All of my W's family is here. Yup, in '08 after my daughter was born, due to the usual friction between W and my parents, the relations between my W and my parents soured. I failed to stand up to either and be strong for my new family. Wife hated this and early '09 she left to stay with her mom's for 6 months. I tried to become little strong during that time. Wish i discovered DB then. Instead i went to C and they put me on meds. When she came back, I never brought up the issue my parents again. But the fact that my D has no good relations with my parents bothered me. So there grew an emotional distance between us where we could not talk personal details about families to each other like we did before. This creeped into our personal relationship as well. I thought this was all my problem and began personal counseling in '10. Counselor told me my panicky/depression issues were childhood related to my parents fighting. I was way too frank to my wife and told her about this (i hoped that if i told her the core reason, maybe she'd give me some time to work on myself). W talked to counselor about me(i let her). This was in nov-10. December i visited my parents as my dad had surgery(i respected my W's decision not to visit them or allow my D to visit them). Then my W drops the D bomb on 01/03/11 and here i am...

At the end of the day i realize that my mistakes were that I was not an emotionally strong person and i constantly tried to be a person that my W wished for. I failed at it and never realized that i could not be that person. I'll have to make peace with who i actually am and i dont know that.

After reading your post, it sounds like you're taking on blame that really isn't your cross to bear.

"That she put up 11 years with me and did not get a break. She felt that i always had one emotional issue or the other"

You only detailed 3 years worth of "emotional" issues. Was it mainly depression? How would you act during these times?

"2: That for 3 years i was depressed and never made effort to get myself out of it. "

Weren't you in C and on meds? This sounds like you were trying to get out of it. Was your W supportive or was she like, "get over it already".

"3: That she did not want our D to see our arguing. "

Who would start these arguments? It sounded like you were withdrawing and so to get a response out of you, your W was the one who was arguing to you.

"4: That i never used any of the existing support system that i had in the U.S. (i.e., my MIL, SIL etc)"

How and where you choose to get support from is up to you. Not your W. They are her relatives, not yours. It's understandable why you wouldn't feel comfortable opening up to them. Your W is at fault here sounds like.

IMHO, right now you're suffering from an extreme lack of self-esteem and self-worth. Whether its caused by your parents or past abuse, or whatever, your past doesn't have to run your future.

Make the choice now to BE the man. Your depression will have you convincing yourself every reason why you can't do or achieve things. The fact is that you can. Maybe take some kind of meditation exercise where you can clear your mind first of all negative thoughts and start with only positive ones.

Your past is your past but it doesn't run your life. YOU do.

"Your past is your past but it doesn't run your life. YOU do."

Yup, i really have to nail that thought in my head.

During most of our marriage, my W tried to get me to be like her dad and our relationship like her parents. I tried being like her dad(cool and letting things slide of the back), but that was not who i was. I was the complete opposite. So i failed. But since i already setup my wife's expectations, she felt like i failed her there. She always compared our R to her parents and I just could not live up to her expectations. But the problem was that i kept promising her that i would try and try again. she just got fed up i guess.

In the R i am lot more timid. I always took a decision and backtracked to match my wife's even if i did not like it. I just did not want to disappoint her. But sometimes that disappointment caught up with me and i would withdraw from my wife.
Looking back now i realize that the relationship was very unhealthy.

Oddly, outside our R i am quite confident person, sure of my decisions.

I guess i just became an emotional burden on her over the years. Yea so i am right now trying DBing and trying to work on my own emotional issues.

Journaling:

While i was driving home yesterday, i just had this sudden realization. I am not sure if any of you have gone through this. But i think it better explains why my W decided on a D.

My W loves her dad very much and is very proud of her parents. During the beginning years of our marriage, she often told me how good her dad was. When we had our silly arguments, she used to ask me to 'be like her dad' and let issues roll of the back. I on the other had no experience in R. My wife was the first girl i met and married. So i agreed and tried to emulate her dad. I somehow think that sowed the seeds of destruction of our M. The problem here is that rather than looking at my personality and trying to soften some of the rough edges and expecting my W to accept me as me, I tried to be some one else. Problem was that i truly believed in that metamorphosis. Naturally i failed. I kept trying, i kept failing. However i would say that yup, i was able to soften a lot of rough edges. That was good. But the big mistake was that i setup the wrong expectation for my wife. Adding to the trouble was that my W's family who was helping us in our R issues also believed that i should emulate my W's dad...

So i think at the end of the day my W finally realized that i could never be the person she expected me to be. That is why when the C told her that she needs to accept me as me, she said that she could not do it... and here we are on the D path.

I dunno, maybe lot of people know this, but yea if your spouse cannot accept you as you and expects you to be someone else, that might spell disaster later on...

Just wanted to know your feedback on this one.

So my wife called my cell yesterday morning. I was too stressed out to pick it and talk to her. I let it go and called up the evening. She said that D wanted to talk to me. Then she asked me if i could send her 3 yrs tax returns as her lawyer wanted them.
Then she started telling me how we should liquidate what assets we had. I just kept quiet and listened. She asked me about the house and i asked her what she thought. Then she said how we should try to make some money off it. If the divorce issue was the background, it would have sounded like she was talking about our future financial plans. It was too painful to listen and i told her to make the decisions and said bye and hung up the phone.

It seems like she is so ready to just move on and enjoy her life. Why am i on the other hand such a mess? I cannot sleep, work nor live properly. try to pick up strength sometimes and convince myself that i must move on but it is so hard. It actually snowed today and i saw some kids outside playing. My D and i would have been doing the same...Instead here i am looking at life while the best years of my family and I pass by...I am loosing hope that she will never come back. That this thing is going to change us so much that we might never converge.

sorry for the negativity. Had to get it out.

^

wife and i just talked today about the terms of the D. I opted not use an A so we discussed how the assets would be broken and how we would take care of our daughter.

It was horrible. But my W is quite anxious to get all of this settled in 2 weeks and get the D and move on.

I violated the DB rules and again asked her to consider any kind of reconciliation. She's quite set on moving on without me. She just does not want our D to grow up with us as a family because she thinks i am always depressed and never happy and so i would also make my D unhappy.

This has been a horrible day knowing that the Divorce train is reaching its destination and there's no way i am able to stop it. I just feel so down about this whole thing. I am trying to keep my spirits up about pursuing this relationship even after the divorce, but seems like W is totally repulsed about the thought of living with me again...

Maybe i just need this thing to go through and find myself as a person and then see if i can get her back. But the impatient/panicky side of me tells me what if thats too late??

help!

Karma:

Sorry to hear what you are gong thru. I am in a similar part of my journey as you. My day is getting closer too. I have resolved that this is what my H needs to have that finality. Onece the D dust settles, I honestly believe that he will see the error of his ways and that the grass is not greener. If this is how HE needs to get there by going thru the D, then I love him too much not to give it to him. And he is clear that I don't want this but he says it has to happen. So, I'm not going to continue ot fight it. I've tried and it made the sitch worse. It [censored].

You've got the skills for DB. Just because the D comes thru doesn't mean you have to stop. You just have to decide how long you are willing to keep that door open.

ZG. I can get an idea as to how you may be feeling. Thanks for your kind words.