Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums For Newcomers Time for LBH to move home? WAW can do the walking.

sounds as if it was a bad decision by both of you. that type of decision has to have agreement by both parties, whether explicit or implied.

The "decision" was this: find the most stable place for my daughter. My daughter, aged 15, struggles with life. She never healed from my first divorce (when she was 2) or her mother's abandonment and presenteeism in her life. She needed someplace stable and home-like to stay, and my friend seemed like the best place to do it.

D15 really wanted to live with W (her step-mom) and me full-time, but having just lived (a little too closely) through her mother's divorce, she couldn't live in a house with us separating.

I wasn't for D15 living with her non-parents, but W felt it was best and I didn't feel like I had a lot of power to stop it.

DeadToMe was my closest friend. We've known each other for nearly 20 years. I certainly didn't foresee him making a pass at my daughter. And neither did my wife.

My wife changes her primary reasons for the divorce. When we sent D15 to dead's house, it was because she was afraid that I wouldn't be able to take care of my mental health, essentially. Now it is because of this.


Yes, W needs to forgive herself. Part of the problem is that this incident between Dead and D15 is harder on W than it is on my daughter. D15 is mostly over it. Nothing happened. It was a bad situation, she got out of it, and we don't talk to that person any more.

It is apparent now that my W feels a lot of shame still from the incident in 99. And she feels shame that I was able to get past it and start talking to him again. She feels betrayed by me.

She's not a happy woman. I want to be her protector and instead, I just seem to hurt her more every day.

I can't do anything right for her.

Thanks for speaking up. 2 posts since 3/22/2008 and one of them is on my thread!

Unfortunately, the EA fantasy started before the incident between Dead and D15. I called her on the EA yesterday. I told her about the texts I'd seen between them months ago when I was snooping on her. 2x4 me if you must - this was during a long conversation where I said every wrong thing I could think of.

But I called her on it and she feels shame about that, too.

I don't want her to feel shame. I wish she would stop running from her problems, though.

I really want off of this ride.

Having a higher level of education doesn't necessarily mean a person is smarter. I actually know many people who hold a higher degree than i do, but they sure aren't smarter than I am.

So last night at the house... I just couldn't stop. I provoked my wife on subject after subject. I felt like it was my last chance to come up with some other plan with her than all-out war. I was unusually direct. She cried at several points. I followed after her and continued.

I don't even really want to talk about it because I know it was terribly bad form. Such bad form that I knew she'd be sore and that it would be better if I didn't come back to move into the house today. This is my normal night to be with the kids, but I thought she'd prefer to be left alone.

Halfway thought the day, she said she was too tired and just wanted to sleep could I come home at the usual time to take care of the kids. I said OK. I played with the kids in the back yard, made dinner, put them to bed, did dishes, etc. She never slept. She just stayed on the sidelines the whole time. At one point when I came into the kitchen from grilling, W was standing by the sink, turned around and pulled me in for a big long hug.

Earlier that day, while I was in the middle of forgetting how to DB, I sent my W a text that said, "Please, for the love of all that is good, put this divorce on hold."

She replied, "I'm too tired to think about this right now. I didn't sleep well last night."

I feel like I did everything wrong yesterday and got a positive response. After the hug, we silently went in our opposite directions.

I wholeheartedly agree.

My wife, on the other hand, loves her degrees.

A week or two ago, W was in a bad mood and decided that my attitude about my own education was so poor that I would have made a horrible home-school student. It was a weird fight.

How are you going to soften your heart? Do you want to?

The other part is not compassion it is tolerence.

Listen man you don't have to convince me or Sandi of what your reasons are but look back at what you wrote.

You should not make decisions out of fear.

Fear is the worst of all emotions.

What we have been saying and I won't speak for Sandi is to start thinking about your goals.

About the man you want to be. Your values. What you want your life to look like beyond this.

Here is not the destination. But what is yours?

How will your choices get you there?

Don't let your lawyer scare you either. I am not a lawyer but if you have a goal of getting to a co-parenting situation with your W how do you think you can achieve that?

Children want to see their parents dancing together in the living room

not ignoring eachother at the breakfast table.

You don't have control over the former but you do over the latter.

And your friend for making a pass at D15 AND raping (yes I said raping) your W when he had unconsented sex with her...

Defending him is an afront to her and should be to you to.

You need to figure out what kind of man you want to be. That behavior doesn't make your W feel safe do you think?

You talk about boundaries- a good one might be not having Dead in your life.

DeadToMe is not in my life and never will be again. I don't defend him. I wish I hadn't let him back into my life. I thought W and I both were ready to put what happened in the past. It was a big mistake.

I feel like I am softening, but I still don't know what to do. My court date is June 1. I can't pay my mortgage and my lawyer.

Always

Listen man this is the toughest thing you will do in your life I promise.

But it does mean looking at the cold hard facts of what is going on and making different choices.

You can't pay your mortgage right now? Not the end of the world welcome to a very big club in the US today.

These are extraordinary times we are living in economically.

Can't pay a lawyer? Why do you need one right now? She wants a D?

Let her lawyer do the paperwork. Can you agree on things? Don't have to pay a lawyer if you do.

Other than these things how are you doing?

Thanks for asking, TG.

We can't agree on custody. I want 50/50 and she's convinced that will hurt the kids. I'm convinced that divorce and splitting their time between parents is going to hurt the kids, but spending a couple of weekdays here isn't.

So now I need a lawyer. I just asked my lawyer to adjourn out 6/1 court date because we haven't been able to meet. That should make it easier for me to get her fee together.

I spent the night at the house yesterday. W cried and threw a small tantrum at first. Then after kids went to bed, she opened up a lot more. I'm not entirely sure that... I know she doesn't want me here, but I'm not entirely sure that there isn't something useful coming out of it.

At some point late in June last year, my wife stopped wanting to communicate with me and I knew it was a problem right away. Coincidentally she started her "not an emotional affair" with her high school buddy at the exact same time.

She's said that she wanted the time away from me so that she can feel her feelings completely and be herself before she thinks about the marriage. That's not what she said at first, but I think that's what she was thinking at first. What she said at first was that I needed the time to figure myself out.

At some point, that really switched to being angry about how I had accepted Dead back into my life and how that invalidated her feelings and experience. Her desire to not communicate intensified.

All this time, she has wanted to not want to be divorced. She has wanted to miss me and wished that she didn't feel the way she does - but she doesn't think she can change the way she feels about me.

And I think that's the absolute insanity of what she's been up to. She's waiting around for her feelings to change, but has been unwilling to communicate with me about it to work through all of the misunderstandings and the mistakes and allow us to get a better understanding of each other.

I'm going to ask her if she will come to another session with me just to talk about how she feels about the way I invalidated her. I sense that there is still a desire to make things better, but an intense desire not to *do* anything about it.

She says, "I don't *think* I'll change my mind."