Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums For Newcomers What do I do next?

Luvhurts49,

Your situation is super difficult, I didn't want to come across as unsympathetic or non-supportive above. I can understand what you're going through and it's brutal. I do identify with you, I have had issues in the past with needing to be right. I like 25yearsMlc's tag line on this forum, it says something like "Be right or be happy"

It seems like you are doing lots of things right, you should feel good about yourself for that, and you should also feel good about recognizing the reason to change.

One suggestion I would have is that you need to start validating what your wife is saying. When she says "I can't trust you", and you say "what is it that you can't trust me with", you are arguing. That question is your way of telling her she's wrong.

What I learned to do in that situation is say "I understand that you feel you can't trust me. I'm sorry you feel that way. I believe I'm a trustworthy person, and I would like to earn your trust". See, the point is, *she* can't trust you. That's not something you can argue with, you can't bridge that gap for her. It doesn't mean you're not trustworthy or that you're dishonest. She can't trust you, that could be completely irrational and undeserved, but that doesn't change how *she* is feeling. Make sense?

The key to marriage is connection, not communication. Connection comes from feeling that the other person knows where you are, and loves you unconditionally. When you don't acknowledge her feelings, you are not connecting, and to put this back, she will need to feel that connection is possible with you. Right now she doesn't -- that's her issue, she's telling you that.

Acknowledging her feelings doesn't mean you need to agree with them. The other thing is that as a man, we will be tempted to try to tell her how to fix the situation, how to get to a resolution, and that's not what she wants, she just wants you to hear her. The worst thing you can do is judge her feelings -- "that's crazy", "you shouldn't feel that way", etc., purge that line of commentary from your conversations entirely. Don't evaluate her feelings, acknowledge them. If your feelings differ, let her know how you're feeling, but not in a "you are wrong, I am right kind of way". You feeling that you are trustworthy is not incompatible with her not being able to trust you.

I don't know if you've tried MC, but in your situation it would probably help if you found a good marriage-friendly counselor. They teach you communication exercises that will help you make these conversations more productive and more "connected". I don't always recommend MC, honestly it didn't really help my W and I as our issues were not really related to communication, but based on the exercises I did when I went through it, I feel it may help the two of you.

Hang in there, this is brutally hard, but based on your write-up above it sounds like your W's mind is not as made up as she is trying to project. She's upset, she probably wants it to work out, but she absolutely doesn't want to go back to feeling the way she was. You need to pave the highway home for her with your changes, and it sounds like she might be willing to try it on if she feels you can make it stick.

Accuray

I've asked my W if she would go to see a MC, but she flat out won't. Eventhough I am see one myself, she simply won't go. I understand what you are saying about agreeing with what she says instead of refuting it and is something that I try to do, but it is something that doesn't come naturally to me. I know I'm not suppose to believe anything she says at this point, but I'm not seeing anything positive that points to her wanting to come back at this point. Before she filed, I felt that I hadall the time in world to get this worked out, but now that she's field, it seems like I have this deadline which adds more pressure to the situation.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying you have to agree with her, I'm saying you have to let her know that you have heard her, and acknowledge her position. That's different than agreeing with her. You don't have to agree that you can't be trusted, in fact you shouldn't, but you can acknowledge that she feels that way without compromising what you believe. You can also ask her to expand on why she feels that way, without being confrontational -- but don't do it if you're going to argue (i.e. "tell me more, when did you start feeling that way"). The point is that you need to listen and not talk and realize that she's talking about her feelings and not condemning your character. Make sense?

WRT the deadline, there are two things to think about -- first, there's nothing you can do about it. Second, it's not really a *deadline* per se, it's an event on a certain date. What you choose to do after that event passes can be the same as what you choose to do before it arrives. That date is on her agenda, not yours, you live your life according to your own plan. If that includes reconciling, focus on that and don't worry about her deadlines if there's nothing you can do to change them.

--Accuray

Accuray, when you say "WRT the deadline", what does WRT mean? I couldn't find it in the list of abbreviations.

I'm still trying to understand on how to listen to her without talking--it isn't something that comes naturally, but I know it is something that I have to do better with. The problem of course is getting my W to actually talk to me. She no longer asks me about my day or talks to me about the kids. In fact, I only see her for a minute or two when she drops off the kids and that really isn't enough time to talk about anything other than our hellos and goodbyes.

Unfortunately, I see the D as a deadline--I mean, I won't give up even after D, but I know it makes it that much more difficult. I think I understand that she has to have this for her, but at the same time, it just drains everything from me knowing that it has actually come down to us getting a D instead of allowing time to really figure things out, but maybe that is self-serving, I don't know.

One other bit of info that I found out over the weekend, my W has on occasion talked/texted with my best friend of 26 years--this is usually just her venting to my friend. Normally this wouldn't be a problem as he is her friend too, but lately I have found out that he hasn't been as upfront with when she has talked to him. First off, my best friend doesn't have any interest in my W and my W doesn't have any interest in my best friend, so I will squash any thoughts (from other people) of them being together right now. My concern comes from him not telling me right away that she has talked to him--I usually find out the next day or so. Now this usually wouldn't be a problem, but considering the situation that me and my W are in, any info that I could get could prevent me from doing something stupid or saying something to her that would make things worse. I would also like to present this problem to my friend, but I also don't want to strain our friendship any more than I already have.

Just wanted to provide a little more background on my situation. The first 2 weeks after my W dropped the bomb (8/18/11) and decided to move out, she would come over to the house a couple times each week, have dinner with me and the kids, watch TV, and do normal family stuff that we have always done. Now during this time, my W was letting me rub her back, neck, feet, etc without any problem. She would also let me kiss her (not passionately) on occasion and she would even tell me ILY when I said it to her.

As the we got into weeks 3 and 4 of our separation, she pulled away more and more while giving new reasons as to why she left. The excuses started with problems in the present time and started going further and further into the past all the way up until we first started dating--like she was trying to find more reasons to justify her decision to leave.

Around week 7 (2 weeks ago), I decided that I needed to give her space and limit my contact and communication with her because I was driving myself nuts by always wanting to touch her and talk to her in order to "fix" our M. Unfortunately, all that the space accomplished was her filing for D on 10/20/11.

Now I feel I'm under a deadline to get her to see that we can "fix" our M. I know that there is still hope to repair our M all the way up to and beyond the date of D, but the chances diminish greatly after the D is final. My W is a very stubborn woman and I feel that if we cannot work things out before our D, then there probably isn't any hope for us.

There is some more back story to our R and M, and I will be updating as I go along, but I'm hoping to get off this full moderation so my posts are available immediately instead of having to wait 12-24 hours.

Ok, more drama and confusion. Haven't talked to my W since finding out she filed for D. She texted me on 10/25/11 asking if I can watch the kids until 3 on Saturday (her day with the kids) because she has. Well, I didn't get the message as my phone was in another room and by the time I got back into the room (like 10 minutes later), I get another text message saying that since I didn't reply that she would have her dad do it. So I texted her back saying that of course I would watch the kids as I want to spend as much time with them as possible. She replied by saying, that's fine as long as its not an inconvenience. My God, what would ever make her think that our kids would ever be an inconvenience to me?

Alright, so this morning my W drops of S3 and as she was about to leave, he asks her for a hug. I'm hold our son at this time and she comes over and gives our son a hug and puts her hand on my arm. Then she turns around and he asks for another hug and my W turns around and gives him a hug again, but this time she puts her arm around me. She then leaves to go to work.

I know that I read too much into these things, but I really miss any kind of physical contact from my W, even the smallest touch. Between her coming over for dinner last week, then filing for D, now giving me a pseudo hug, I wonder what bad thing is going to happen next as this seems to be the pattern.

^

LoveHurts,

WRT = With Regard To

Sorry about that. Yes, your sitch is tough, are you sure there is no OM? In terms of your best friend, he is stuck in the middle, I don't think you can ask him to spy for you.

A few key principles here are that you cannot talk your wife back to the table or change her mind. You have to drop the assumption that you can control how she's thinking about this.

You can certainly tell her what you want:

-- you want the marriage to recover
-- you want to be a better marriage partner
-- you are willing to do the work to change yourself, and to prove those changes through action
-- you wish there was more time to work on things before D is final

That's all about you, you're not asking her to change her mind, agree with you, etc. Don't say "what do you think at the end", just let her know where you are and leave it at that. If she had questions answer them, but don't argue or ask her questions right now.

Make sense?

Well, just got served my D papers today and boy are they a doosie. Despite my W and I having agreed to certain things such as custody, child support, and marital property, she has decided to have the D papers basically say that she wants sole custody of the kids, with full child support, wants to take just about everything else, and wants me to pay for her freaking lawyer, WTF!!!