I just moved over from separated and look forward to emulating the successes here in piecing and benefiting from the rich advice out here. Here is a link to my sitch:
In a nutshell, we have been drifting apart over pretty much 5 years. I was the one to blame initially with an intense focus on career and was just not there for my W emotionally. Well, in Nov last year, she declared that enough was enough (this was the 3rd or 4th time) we seriously talked divorce. I tried the same old pleading, but she would not give, and I finally landed in DB land. Anyway, I've been working hard on being there for her, but constantly test my boundaries. We are separated physically by about 700 miles during the week and I used to come home over the weekend regularly. Come November, I was asked to stop that - we have eventually agreed (last night) that we will concentrate on being friends (she admits seeing progress, but is still concerned that it is not the right progress) and she is going to help me with her LL and guide the friendship. This is the first time in the last 6 months that she has said this, and I am very thankful (although, it did take the LRT to help). I will be back visiting my family every weekend, and hopefully, I will get it right this time in satisfying her emotional needs. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated..
Get real good with the LL. She seems to be willing to work with you, do your part too. Hopefully you will be able to find a better balance between work and family/R. Don't let this chance slip away.
Thanks Phoenix. We had a good weekend for the most part. D6's birthday is coming up so lots of shopping for the entire family - W even had me pick out clothes for her and modeled a few of them for me to help her decide. She then insisted that we buy clothes for me and helped me pick them out. Also ended up buying a piano that we were planning to buy as a Christmas gift before the bomb dropped. All this was the good stuff.
The realtor (a close friend of hers) came by in the afternoon and we went and looked at houses. I tried to ignore the repeated reference to "my" house - (we are buying it together), but it was hard. Also, the realtor was joking and playing with W a fair amount (my daughters have told me that he is mommy's new boyfriend) and my W gave him a big hug at the end of the tour. That was really hard to stomach (I don't think she has had any PAs) given that she has said that we need to work on being friends before much physical contact - I initiate the occasional hug which has never been returned. We had agreed to talk more about being friends, but I see us getting back into this running around doing this and that when we are together at the end of which she is too tired to do anything but collapse into bed. She has steadfastly refused to go to counseling - the one we tried some 4 years ago was a disaster. I am just afraid, that after having come this long, we are going to go down the same path, and my resentment is going to cause me to go back in my shell - any advice from people that been there, done that?
If you want your M to work out, you are going to have to constantly remind yourself that you CAN'T "go down the same path" again. You are going to have to get rid of your resentment at some point, so are you going to do it w/ her or w/o her? My sitch is a lot of the same resentment/anger/growing apart over a good deal of years. It's going to take a lot to overcome that. I keep thinking "It took quite awhile for H to get where he's at now (or when he dropped the D bomb), so it's going to take him awhile to get back where he needs to be too." By that, I mean patience, love, kindness, etc. is your best medicine. You cannot rush things. Been there, done that, and it don't work!!
Me: 38 H: 35 S4, S5, S10 Bomb 01/07 Wanted D - nothing would change his mind Numerous A's prior to D bomb; EA prior/during D bomb Piecing 04/07 Deployed for a year 05/07 Still Piecing 2010 M 11 yrs 05/10
what's up with the weekends only sitch? I've been in a long distance M for 21 months now, although the end is in sight this summer, after d18 graduates. No way could I last much longer. Why are you living so far away, and when will it end? Wouldn't things (like DBing) be a lot easier if you were with each other? My main LL is time together, which I am obviously not getting enough of, and hence, being here. But what's your wife's LL? Regardless of whether it's gifts, physical touch, etc. it would likely mandate more proximity. So, do you have a plan for that? It'd also be a lot fairer to your W if you were around more for child raising. IMHO, my H has placed his career over time with us, for a long time. We are in "piecing" b/c he is saying the right things and I am believing he has changed. But forgiving is hard when I think of the hundreds of nights my bed was empty and I was on "parent duty" 24/7 for so long. How does your W feel about all that? Also, I doubt your w has PA with the realtor as well. Why would she let the kids know? I think it's joking, but insensitive. You have to project trust in her, at least in front of the kids, for now. I don't know enough of your sitch to comment further. Good luck, j-
M: 57 H: 60 M: 35 yrs S30,D28,D19 H off to Alaska 2006 Recon 7/07- 8/08 *2016* X = "ALASKA 2.0" GROUND HOG DAY I File D 10/16 OW DIV 2/26/2018 X marries OW 5/2016
Cadesmom, Thanks, when you feel the pain of the moment, the path forward is not so clear as when other DB'ers reiterate the message. Thank you and I'll try to let go of my resentment building up - this BB seems to be a great place for that :-)
J-, Good to hear from you again, and I am glad you are headed to Alaska. Please remember that in my case, our first move was because of W's job. We then made a joint decision for me to relocate with the rest of the family following some time later. Well, 8 months became 12 and now about 21 (same as you). Now, we have an issue with my job going really well, a startup that is very profitable and I have a good stake in it - to walk away after leading the company through a troubled 1st year when I first started would be hard, and actually W acknowledges that it would be bad to leave now (she would probably get upset by it - she is counting on the success to help with a planned retirement for her in the next few months). I plan on working from home 1 out every 4 weeks, and we have hired a lot of help with the upkeep of the house and the kids' care.
She wants her space from me, and will engage with me as a spouse only after she feels that I can be her friend - the positive I am taking away is that she is willing at this point to talk to me about how I can be a better friend, instead of being abstract about it. I think she had a whole confluence of things happen all at once in Nov. last year - her health crisis, loss of an aunt, her mom's health crisis, her career slipping and her perception of an untrustworthy husband. As much as I would like to go back to having a normal married relationship again, that might be too much - what do you think? I am very interested in your perspective. We are getting her moved to a different house, so we all get a new start, and I am trying to be more attentive to her needs. I would love for both of us to go to counseling, but the last time I brought it up, when she was hell bent on getting a divorce, she was very upset by it. I still think she needs to let go of the past (I've had to do that myself, and DB counseling helped me tremendously) - how long should I wait for the new sitch to settle down before trying to steer it in the right direction. It still feels like we are staying married for stability, and nothing else.. Thoughts?
Keep Db'ing from this point on. My H told me he "didn't love me in that way anymore" numerous times along with all sorts of other nasty things, but I just kept loving him. I also learned that patience is the key. Hard, but worth it. I think a big part of H's staying is due to our boys (3 under the age of 7), however, he's still here and I'm just still loving him and showing him a woman he wouldn't want to leave. Show her a man she wouldn't want to lose nor leave!! Be supportive, loving, compassionate, loving and just show her that you're there no matter what, just no pressure on her!!
Me: 38 H: 35 S4, S5, S10 Bomb 01/07 Wanted D - nothing would change his mind Numerous A's prior to D bomb; EA prior/during D bomb Piecing 04/07 Deployed for a year 05/07 Still Piecing 2010 M 11 yrs 05/10
If there is still OM sort of in the picture that can muddy things up a bit and add confusion to your wife's perception. The best way to make the picture clearer for her is for you to become the more attractive choise. Make sure you're working out at the gym a lot, losing weight or gaining muscle, dressing and looking hunky, becoming attractive inside as well as outside, feeling great about yourself and at the same time practicing listening and empathy skills with your wife and other female family members. From what I've observed with other woman (and what I personally feel) is a guy who can make a woman feel special is quite irrisistible. So work on becoming the kind of guy ANY woman would be thrilled to be with.
There is no arriving, ever. It is all a continual becoming.
Did you use to have a different display name? Your sitch sounds totally familiar but the display name doesn't. Then again, sometimes we put our real names at the bottom and God knows what on the top....anyhow, let me know. I will ponder your questions to give a smartypants answer tomorrow. BTW, I have at least 5 "episodes" lasting up to 10 minutes, every day, where I start asking myself wth I am doing moving up there...lots of fears, etc. But the limbo had to end and frankly, I feel embarrassed to divorce b/c of a JOB. No job is worth losing your family. I recall Jackie Kennedy being asked about how her children. The reporter complimented her on how close Caroline and John Jr. were. She said, "thanks, I felt that if I couldn't be a good mother, nothing else I do in life would really matter..." Amen. Think about it.
There are emotions involved ("duh!!) but here is a good "hypothetical" exercise for you. If you can remove the hurt and all emotion for five minutes and look truly objectively, you can assess which opportunity is best for whom. (you can do this alone without W even knowing.) Make that decision, in a vacuum, even though you know no life choices are made that way. Okay, so now you have Job factor weighing in favor of "K". Objectively look at the kids and their welfare. Moving is gross and stressful. But maybe where they live now, the schools are not as good as the next location's, AND if they have never moved, it could do them well to see another area and meet new people once in their life. Adaptability is underrated in my book. Except when it comes to divorce. ((We all bend over backwards to get the kids into the "right" schools, hanging with the "right" kind of kids, but then we suck at being a happy married couple.)) Which choice is best for them? ( Again, make the choice in a vacuum for the sake of the exercise. Otherwise NO choices will be clear) SO, the kids welfare is, say, a factor in favor of "Y". Then Look at the finances, which are not completely about the job. One job could be boring, but gets you closer to your "wife's" goal of an early retirement. Is this also your goal? Factor it in. Rationally deciding is NOT possible under the circumstances, I know. But cognitive awareness is important so you know why things happen the way they do. When things get too one sided, it's possible the "beneficiary" of that imbalance will see it, when they see it on paper.
But if you choose to insert the emotions into them, make sure they are the healthy kind. Like, both of you wanting the M to work, and being humble enough to work on your own issues, is an emotional part, but it's healthy. Being angry or punitive (and boy is that tempting at times) are not healthy. Sometimes it is hard to tell which is which. We can rationalize almost as well as the MLC/WAS...."teaching them a lesson" --bad. "making up for the pain I've caused"--good. Remember to Keep the Road Home Paved and Smooth. My DB coach told me that one, and I said it to myself daily.
I think it was F. Scott Fitzgerald who said that "Every man should be able to make an ass of himself once in his life." SInce I am such a radical feminist, I submit that the comment applies equally to women. Have a good day, j-
M: 57 H: 60 M: 35 yrs S30,D28,D19 H off to Alaska 2006 Recon 7/07- 8/08 *2016* X = "ALASKA 2.0" GROUND HOG DAY I File D 10/16 OW DIV 2/26/2018 X marries OW 5/2016
Dear J- I have had the same display name - funny you talk about similar sitches, if you don't go into details, any other sitch on these BBs sounds like one's own!!. You make a good point about emotions. I actually did go ahead and talk to my W (she was pushing real estate and stock investments saying that we were in crisis mode because she needed to move before the start of the next school year) about counseling. I said, our R is in a bigger crisis, and while I agree we need to work on finances (with her sickness, money and retirement have become the key concern for her), don't you think we should work on the R instead of putting issues on the backburner? Surprisingly, she agreed right away - I guess you never know until you ask. So, I am in the process of trying to sign up with the right counselor. Any advice out there - I used the DB coaches about 6 times by myself. I have been looking at them again, a guy called Mort Fertel (again, telephone counseling) and want to compare them with counseling face-face. Does anyone out there have recommendations? I believe counseling is going to be very critical for us - my W needs to let go of the past before we can move forward, and I want to make sure that I do the right things to help her with that.
While I am not keen on commuting for another 18 months, I know a number of people that do, and have healthy marriages. And if this helps with early retirement for my W, I think that is best overall for the whole family..
