Recap: H 62 W 58 3 S, 2 DIL, 3 grandchildren, all babies Bomb: Feb, 2005 H filed in April, 2005 H moved out in May, 2005 Target Divorce date: May, 2006
Somethings are the same on this board, same wonderful and caring advice. And somethings are different, new names, with slightly new twists on the same old situations. Oh what a sad collection of sagas that unfold here. And to think that it is all so unessary if only MCLers would recognize their depression and get help instead of undoing their lives.
I am just about ready to move to Surviving but for what its worth I thought I would sign off.
H and I will be divorced sometime in May. We are having a "Collobrative Divorce" which means meetings with him and the attnys and me. I cried at every meeting until March when I finally got a grip on myself and the reality of it all. H was just very business-like through all those meetings.
Since March however, H seems to be more withdrawn and depressed. He just appears more needy to me but also still very self-centered.
I am getting an offer on our home tomorrow and hope to close in early May. H, who has done very little since moving out last May, has offered to come and help with clearing out stuff. However, I can not bear to have him around. It would be to stressful for me. I feel that beneath his polite, controlled demeanor lurks an angry man who would lash out and blame me. I know I would get lured into verbally defending myself instead of deflecting his remarks which is the DBing technique that helps by not adding fuel to the fire.
H's OW seems to be out of the picture; as others told me months ago, she was just a means for him to act on his feelings and leave. Our Ss never found out about the OW, thankgoodness.
H is still a narcissist; although now it more sharing of his nagging, though minor, health issues. I never talk about health and I don't want to hear an unsolicited report about his ailments. I feel that the underlying cause of much of his petty ailments is due to the termoil and guilt he has caused in his life.
H's earning power has diminished. My attny thinks he is just a man in a tailspin at the end of his career. For a while I thought he might be up to something financially but now I agree with the attny. I would have been much better off to become divorced in August. My settlement would have been larger.
I never really had feelings of rage against H although I had tremendous sadness for his undoing of our family. I have this vision that H has taken a shotgun and fired it on all of us and we are all filled with holes... S's, DIL's and extended family. But I don't have the rage. Strange, isn't it. I am looking forward to relief from the vague obligation that I feel that I should have been able to make this "all better". That is a really silly notion, but it is the way I feel.
After the D I want to go very dark. I feel that will help me to repair myself. I have gotten through this without and ADs. I am grateful for my three close friends. I wore out their ears!!!
H has been calling me with questions about the house sale, etc. He called me three times today. He apparently wants some limited connection. Yet he wants the D asap. H called to ask about Easter (like he thought I would invite him to dinner? ) I think he does not have an invitation to go anywhere and it has just dawned on him that this is the way our divorce will be and that the Ss do not have the same feelings of connection wtih him that they used to have.
I never was a cruel person. It seems cold and cruel to be remote and withdraw from him. However, just because H appears to have moved from replay to depression, does not mean that any of my actions or caring can make his sickness better. ( I do not know if I'm being caring out of habit or out of love.) He has lots of issues to confront. He has not even expressed his anger yet. There is a lot ahead of us, if indeed, H is going to come out of this. And I do not think I will be able to be there if or when there is an end to this MLC. I have changed so much already and he seems stuck.
This is uncharted territory.
Forced New Life (I should have selected that name to use here )
NLF
You must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind. ---Leonardo da Vinci
Thanks for the recap. It really has been a long time since you have had a thread of your own. I had no idea you were so close to divorce. How sad and what unnecessary pain your husband has inflicted on your family.
I sincerely hope your sons and their families are doing well even though I know they have been affected by your husbands actions as my family has. Even the little grandchildren feel the loss and tension from what's going on.
You have a very good attitude and I'm sure your faith is helping that. It's difficult to see one's spouse rip himself apart from the family and then expect to come sidling back in as he chooses after a forced divorce and home sale.
Are you at the point where you are looking for a new place to live yet or is it too soon for that? I hope you find something with a garden.
I know what you mean about uncharted territory - this is so far from what we thought we would be doing with our lives at this point in time. I hope that your job keeps you busy and that you are enjoying it.
One thing you CAN probably look forward to is the horrid experience of allowing strangers to look through your house. I always felt such an invasion of privacy when there were showings. I have an idea you're feeling much like me at the moment. I feel like I'm being torn apart. My heart will always be with this home..but the other part of me must move on and make another place a 'new' home. I hear that it takes quite an adjustment time for this to happen, so I'm at least prepared for the depression that will hit after the closing.
Where I'm moving to..I'll still have to pass this house on my way to work or the business side of town, but strangely enough I'm not dreading that. I guess H has been out of the house enough years, and out of the family we once had, that to me, it will be okay to have to continually pass the place. I'm not holding on anymore to the 'should have beens'. What has happened , has happened..and I still contend there is a reason for everything.
It will be interesting to see how the new owner changes things once he moves in. I wish him luck with everything. It's been a good old house all these years. Built back when wood was wood, and nails were nails (actually some of the nails I've found, look more like horseshoe nails, or railroad tie ones. LOL
I hope you keep posting regularly, when you find the time. I know how time consuming selling the house, and then moving can be. Usually I only have time to read a few posts here a day.
Next week is when my pretrial conference is scheduled. Hopefully it won't be as horrid as I'm dreading. I'm afraid that husband and his lawyer will try to drag it out as long as possible..until I have no more money to fight for my own wellbeing. I really don't want to use the equity money to fight him in court. I'm still hoping that he'll have to pay part of my legal fees for this part of it..especially if he's dragging his feet. He really should have known that divorce in our case meant (means) maintenance..long term. But then I don't think he's had both feet in reality for some years now.
Please keep us updated...even if it's just because you need a shoulder, okay?
Women are angels. And when someone breaks our wings, we simply continue to fly...on a broomstick. We are flexible
I can not, for the life of me, figure out why a man of 62 feels the need to divorce ASAP. For what? Where's he going to go that's going to accept him more for who he is than his family did? (I have that same feeling about my H who is 53). This makes no sense to me at all. I used to hear about people in their 50's and 60's getting divorced and thot "how weird" and "what's up with that?" But there's a bunch of people here in that very sitch - and it's just plain insane!!!
God bless you NLF
I'm alive, I'm happy - why shouldn't I tell the world I've got my head screwed back on just fine. Life is good for the Brue!
About those feelings of "invasion of privacy" when there are showings in a home or an Open House... I used to come home and burn candles in every room just to try to clear out all those strangers who came through. That behavior did not last long, however. After about a week, I was ok with showings. What, on earth, did I think I was accomplishing with those candles?
On the topic of driving by the 'old homestead'. When we moved around in the past, I found that my life was so busy that my mind was occupied with current issues so those moments of reflection when driving by the old house weren't common at all. Even now, if I chose to drive by the home where I raised my boys (Janesville), I do not get sad.
So I hope that trend continues for me now when I move out. I feel that it will. My husband said once, when he was in MLC but I did not know it, that this was never a home. At the time, I was hurt by that remark. Now I feel that it is true. I was trying so hard, hoping and hanging on to something ( a marriage, a connection, caring about someone ) that was not there.
But I still love this house. It really has great potential. I think the new family will be very happy here. They seem nice and normal with no hidden agendas. And they are very nice to each other. God bless them, may they always stay that way.
NLF
You must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind. ---Leonardo da Vinci
Where's he going to go that's going to accept him more for who he is than his family did? What my H did was perceive that his "new friends", who were single and in their 30's, really cared about him because they included him in their poker group. (I'll bet they just tolerated him and viewed him as the old f*rt!) He was/is unable to analyze the reality of how other people treat him and he preceived friendship from these guys.) Whereas people who are in tune with what is going on around them, do interprete polite interest from an acquaintance vrs true caring from a friend.
Thanks for your insight.
NLF
You must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind. ---Leonardo da Vinci
your post really rang a bell in my head. What I found amazing is that h would take advice from a female friend about our marriage when she had never met me and only know h a few months!! I guess it was because she could validate how he was feeling and in fact she is in a marriage where she told me (we've spoken twice) h was a bestfriend only as she had lost any other feelings for him. Plus she has had an affair. Not the best person to be giving advice!
Quote: Forced New Life (I should have selected that name to use here )
Ain't it the truth. While I know intellectually that I was "forced" there for a reason, my heart and gut haven't quite caught up with that notion yet.
NLF, I am fairly new and haven't seen your posts before. If my H gets his way I'll be following you to Surviving well before I want to!
I wanted to ask if you'd be willing to share your thoughts and feelings, in hindsight, on choosing a collaborative divorce route, rather than digging in and contesting. I (and others who are posting now) will be having to make this choice, it seems, fairly soon.
You seem to have a wonderful attitude about moving. I wonder if that comes from having moved several times already? I used to hate it (my H pushed for career reasons). Now, I don't mind the thought of it so much.
Anyway, welcome back. Your attitude is comforting to me.