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Some days, I wish I were a superhero because I would almost rather be punched and thrown through a building than to have to go through the emotional pain of the last year.

I apologize for the length of this post. I initially posted in the WAS forum, but it was suggested that I post here as I am new the forum.

My W and I have been married 11 years as of yesterday. We were young when we got married and best friends. We had 2 children together S, 8, and D, 4. Things weren't always perfect, but we had each other, or so I thought. What I didn't realize and wasn't listening to, was that there were things that I needed to change and wasn't. To me, none of these things were serious things to change. There was no abuse of any kind and I always tried to support her in everything she did. When we got married, she was scared of her own shadow and had very little interests of her own. I wanted our home to be a place where she could cultivate interests and talents. I taught her to play the piano, we got her a bassoon so she could start playing in the community band, and she discovered she had a real talent for party planning and baking. She was a wonderful mother and our children were always blessed by her creativity.

In 2011, I was offered an opportunity to move to Los Angeles to work on a production, using skills that I had been going to school for. It was for a spin off of a show that we were both fans of and the prospect of starting a new chapter in our lives was exciting. Because we still had a house in MI and it was such a fast tracked offer, we both felt it would be ok for me to go out ahead and once we found out if the show would be picked up for a first season, we would work on moving the family out. Needless to say, that's not how things worked out. The show never went to series and that November, I was out of a job and we were quickly running out of money. Paying for rent and a mortgage had really taxed our finances. Had I been smart, I would have just gone back home, tried to get my old job back, and chalked this one up to an adventure taken. We had been apart for so long and I knew that my family needed me, but I stayed because I thought the prospect of a new job was just around the corner. That new job didn't happen until February of 2012. We survived by tapping the 401k from my previous job. In March of 2012, the family finally moved out, but it was clear that a lot of damage had been done.

When I first came out, we would text daily and often. I would call everyday and talk with my W and my S. My D was too young at that point, but would occasionally listen to me. We emailed and even setup a blog to chronicle our time apart so that we could look back at it with fond memory. As time went on, the communication became less and less. I was working 10 hour days at the studio and the 3 hour time difference really made it tough to match our schedules. Frustration started to set in because I was here by myself, missing my family, she was there by herself, trying to take care of two children. I was accused of not moving fast enough to get the family out there and that my actions were showing that I really didn't want to be a part of the family. To make matters worse, when they drove out, I was not at the door waiting for them to arrive because I had mismanaged my time and misjudged how long it would take them to get there. As you can imagine, my W was not happy and a week after they had arrived, she lashed out at me, telling me what an awful husband and father I was. This launched me into immediate panic mode as I tried to compensate for my failings.

In the time we were apart, she had started to take better care of herself, losing a lot of weight. I had gained a lot, most due to the nature of my job where I am sitting in front of a computer 10 hours a day, but also some due to the depression that came with not being able to find work in the industry. In May 2012, I was again off work and it was during that time that I found her sex-texting some guy she had met online. When I confronted her about it, she wouldn't look me in the eye and was so embarrassed. I would have never expected it from her. Her father had an affair and left them when she was in high school. It had had such a profound effect on their family, I guess I thought she would never even try to get close to anything like that. We reconciled, but it damaged my trust a lot more than I thought. I was suddenly underfoot more and every time she would pick up her phone, I was questioning who she was talking to. She just seemed different. Rather than dealing with the kids, she would just tune them out by putting her headphones on and blasting her music. Her taste in music had really changed in the time that we were apart, going from The Beatles, Disney, and a little pop here and there to all pop and a lot of the very sexual kind. Suddenly, being a stay at home mom no longer appealed to her. She spent a lot of time looking at herself in the mirror and commenting on how good she looked. It was starting to seem like we were headed for a MLC before the age of 30.

In July 2012, we visited my sister and her husband. I was still not in the best of shape, though I had started working out with my wife and had changed my eating habits. My BiL is a fairly attractive guy and has lots of time to hit the gym. During Christmas of 2011, I felt myself getting a little jealous of the attention she was paying to him, which I know a lot of stemmed from my own insecurities. Those flames were only fanned when I found out that they had suddenly started texting each other a lot afterward. So, in a stupid moment of jealously, I asked her, while we were visiting, if she was attracted to him. This resulted in a huge fight, but we were fortunate to have my sister and BiL there to help smooth things out. When we got home, we decided together that we were going to try to get our relationship back on track. And, we did. We started working out again, spending the weekends together, doing better about going on dates, joking together, and things in the bedroom improved drastically. But, she still wasn't totally happy and wanted to do something with her life.

I suggested that she try putting her talents to use and she started a trade school for baking. Looking back, I think this was a big mistake. Not because I don't support her in getting an education, but because of the school we chose. I wish that we had tried to get her into USC or UCLA because I think the caliber of students there and her class schedule would have been better. The only time available for her to go to school was from 6pm - 10pm, Mon - Fri. We lived 30 - 45 min away depending on traffic. As you can imagine, this killed any time that we had to spend together. By the time she got home, she was ready to go to bed. Everything started to suffer because of it. After moving to LA, she had had a hard time making friends and suddenly, she was surrounded by people 10 years younger than her who were living very different lives than she was. Little by little, she started coming home later because she wanted to hang out with the people at school. Then came the random thoughts of wanting to go to the club and that she wanted to try drinking (neither of us had up to that point of our lives for religious reasons).

This is already long enough so I'll try to shorten things up. She had a falling out with one of my sisters, whom she had confided a lot of her feelings over that year in. In January of this year, I made the mistake of saying something to a lady she was friends with at church about a guy I thought was getting too close to her. They had started Facebook messaging and having read some of them, my insecurities felt they were to flirtatious. When confronted, she said that she was just trying to be a fun person, but when I asked if she would be ok with his W reading them, she quickly amended that she should be more careful what she said. I said too much in my quest for knowledge about this guy and the "friend" told my W what I had said and twisted my words, saying that I had accused her of having an affair with him. I later found out that this woman was having trouble in her own home and just wanted to bring my W along for the ride. This happened while my MiL was visiting us for a couple months. My W stopped talking to me except for things relating to the kids and other general housekeeping things. I initially had no idea why, I just got the "You know what you've been doing," when I asked why. In that time, she had started drinking and going to the club one night a week with a friend from school, not coming home until 3, maybe 4 in the morning.

After her mom left, we finally sat down and talked about what needed to be done to fix things. We had about a month by ourselves and things seemed to be ok at best. There was no intimacy whatsoever. Then one day, her email was open on my computer and an email was open where she was talking about a guy in her class, saying she wanted to go out with him and that she wanted him to kiss her. We again talked about this and her excuse was that it was the influence of the friend she was hanging out with. We went out on a few dates and then she had a high school friend come out and stay with us for a month. That would prove to be a disaster.

I really do like her friend. She is a nice person, but has had a difficult life and up to that point, my W had been the stable one. During this month, they partied a lot. They would go out and drink so much that they would just sleep in the car and come home the next morning. When my W wasn't with her friend, she would stay out late with her friends from school, sometimes not coming home until after midnight. Where as we were starting to communicate during the month between her mom's visit and her friend's visit, now it was back to the business only texts.

The night her friend left, my W sat down with me and told me that she no longer loved me and that our marriage was over. She didn't want to get a divorce, but she would be moving out to the spare bedroom until we had to move from the place we were renting, at which point she would get her own place closer to her school, while the kids and I would get our own place. Her reasons for it seemed petty and shallow. I wasn't active enough, she couldn't forgive me for not moving the family out sooner, etc. I know that I am not a perfect person, but there was nothing that we couldn't work together on. In light of everything going on with her, it just seemed that she wanted to be able to go out and pretend she was 21, single, with no kids.

Over the next couple of months, I watched this person that I had been married to for 10 years just fall apart. She started staying out later, coming home drunk, etc. There were nights she would come home at 4 am, knowing she had to be up at 6 to get ready for her job that started at 7. Meanwhile, our poor children were asking where mommy was and why she didn't want to do anything with them. Apparently, a hug goodbye before going to school was her idea of being a good mother.

She moved out in July and I have been struggling ever since. I bought The Divorce Remedy and seemed to take comfort reading it. But, not much of what I have tried has seemed to work. I started sending her nightly pictures of the kids saying good night to her and that has gone a long way to softening her heart where they are concerned, but I still feel like public enemy number one, though I don't feel I have earned that title.

There is more, but as this is already way to long, I'll end here.

Welcome to the board.

Get out and GAL.

DETACH.

Believe none of what she says and half of what she does.
Have NO EXPECTATIONS.
Take care of yourself, breathe, eat, sleep, exercise.

You are on moderation right now on the forum.
SO post in small frequent posts until you get off of it.

Your W is giving you a GIFT.
THE GIFT OF TIME.

USE it wisely.

Knowledge is Power - Francis Bacon

Well topgun, your sitch isn't substantially different than many others on here. If you read DR then you probably know what works and doesn't work, but in a nutshell do not beg/ plead/ negotiate/ go for sex/ try to fix things/ push for marriage counseling/ etc. Read Sandi2's 37 Rules and live those tips!

As for what does work- own your problems and do 180's on those things. Give your W time and space to sort through her own issues. She does seem to have at least a touch of MLC with all the partying and such, but then again it may just be coming from her new sense of "freedom". Many WAS's will engage in behavior like this but then drop it after several months to a year and revert back to more familar behavior. It's part of their journey in finding out who they are and why they are unhappy.

Speaking of that journey, they must make it themselves. There's nothing you can do to help them or speed them along. Just make yourself into the spouse only a fool would leave and have a lot of patience with your W while she goes through her journey.

Good luck!

That was a well-written description of what's happened to you in your marriage. You said there was more, let's have it!

Reading through this, you moved away to further your career, you drifted apart due to the distance, and your W got lonely and pursued on affair.

Many of her complaints and criticisms seem to be reflected affair guilt, so I wouldn't be too hard on yourself. A marriage consists of two people, not just one, so she could have forced the move sooner if it was that important to her. She's not a victim here.

At this point, it looks like she is going through some kind of Amish Rumspringa, or "I got married too young and never got to sow my wild oats" type phase. From what I've read, when you get married before 25, and worse yet if you haven't had many long term relationships before getting married, it's not that unusual to run into this type of pre-midlife crisis, something sometimes referred to as "the seven year itch".

So aside from reading this background you've provided, how can the folks in this community help you?

Acc

Thanks for the comments, everyone. In the months that have followed since she moved out, I've done my best to live my life for me and my children. I've tried my best to not initiate contact with her unless it is necessary and I've not initiated conversations about our relationship. More and more, she has been texting me that she misses the kids. What I want to say is that she knows what the solution to that is, but I am cordial and simply say that I can understand. This year has provided me with opportunities to connect with my children and I've felt my love for them grow in ways I didn't know possible.

So, the more of it is that after our children got back from spending time with her family over the summer, she started having them stay at her place. After the first weekend, my son told me that there was a guy there with his 1 year old that stayed the night. He slept in a separate area of the apartment. When I questioned W about it, she said he was a friend from school that they borrowed a game system from. Of course, this is sending all sorts of red flags. Asked my son if there was anything that happened that made him feel uncomfortable. He said no, but that he didn't like the guy. She's known this guy since May and to me, it didn't seem appropriate for him to be there, let alone spending the night when our children were there. Let her know that I wasn't happy about it and her response was to get angry and tell me that they were nothing more than friends.

After confronting her a 2nd time about her friend being there, with another angry response telling me that we had already discussed this and that he was just a friend, I decided to just drop it. I wasn't happy with it, but I didn't want it to keep being a source of contention. In trying to better myself, that was something the old me would do and I'm trying to be a better version of me. Then, the complaints started coming from my children that they didn't like this guy and that they were uncomfortable with him there. Things finally came to a head a couple of weeks ago when both children told me that they didn't want to spend the night at her place on the weekend because this guy was there.

She and I eventually talked that night on the phone and I was calm, but firm about the situation. I told her that if she wanted the children to stay at her place, then she knew what needed to be done. She tried to accuse me of bringing children into our problems, which I had inadvertently done in the past, but was not doing so in this situation. I told her that I felt that as parents, it was our responsibility to provide an environment in which our children felt comfortable and that that was not happening at her place. I said that I felt there was no reason for this guy to be at her place when we now had the game and system for the game they were playing. I said I knew she would be mad at me for this, but that I didn't care as I was only trying to do what I felt was best for our children. Her break for her class was ending and she had to go. Children did not spend the night that night, but she asked me to bring them early the next morning, stating she was still mad.

That Sunday when I met her to pick up the kids (I have not been invited to her apartment to this day), she talked to me about what happened that Friday. She came in swinging, but I calmly deflected by not allowing myself to react to her anger. She finally admitted to me that the reason this guy was always there was because he was her roommate. She works 1 part time job and doesn't have money for her bills. Despite trying to find a female roommate, she was unsuccessful. This guy is getting a divorce and was in need of a place to stay as well, so they became roommates. I don't want to be naive, but I also feel that I have to take her at her word. I asked her if they were dating and she looked me in the eye and said they were roommates, nothing more.

She started to cry and said that this is not where she thought she would be and not what she wanted. To me, it seemed that she was starting to realize that the grass was not as green as she initially thought. I told her that this is not what I wanted for our family either. Neither of us are doing well financially because of her choice (I didn't say this to her) and while we haven't told the kids much, it is having an effect on them to not have mommy home. Told her that I wanted to say something to her, but didn't want her to respond, only to listen. Said that I was trying to be more bold about what I wanted in life and that I missed her. We were best friends before we moved to California and now we barely even talk and that it just really sucked. Said that I know she has other people that she would rather hang out with right now, but that I missed being able to do things with her and being able to talk and laugh. She opened up a little about what she has been going through, again fighting back tears.