I suppose it doesn't matter which my H is, I will deal with it the same. I was maybe hoping for ideas on handling our recent contacts.
I have been over on the Infidelity thread, but had stopped posting on my own thread because I believed my privacy had been compromised by H in our home network. I took what steps I could with the router and bought a new computer. Still feel paranoid that H is reading but now think WTH! All I have to lose is my mystery!
I think it would be helpful to me to revisit our M in a timeline to help me clarify what has happened. Sorry this may be long! Hindsight is 20/20 right?!?!
1985 meet at work. (me 25, h34) 1989 marry 1990 buy "temporary" home. keep looking for the "one" 1991 DD born 1992 I become SAHM 1993 DD born 1996 purchase land for dream home. 1996 DS born 2000 Begin working with builder on Dream House. H begins complaining about $ and saving for house. 5-5-05 move in! home is better than dreamed! 7-05 H stays home from family beach vacation
9-05 to 9/06 Begins going to happy hour after work with co-workers I don't know. H getting irritable. Loudly complaining about kids behavior. I remember spending a lot of time trying to get thru to him that siblings argue, bicker, and irritate each other. Didn't he fight with his brother? I sure did! It didn't make them rotten kids. H is distancing from them, not going to events, seeing only at dinner. Says maybe he is too old for kids. Started this very gradually. Over the next couple of years, he became a major tyrant. I would occasionally try to talk to him about the damage he was doing to his R with the kids. He wouldn't talk about it. It was all them. Dinner became his platform to bitch at everyone. I was often relieved he was not there, and was not going on vacations w/us. I kept on with my busy life, and kept our social life going. I was not interested in S very often...hostility/ignoring not an aphrodisiac. I tried understanding h, assuming he was under a lot of pressure to make $ to finish things on house, and his mother was getting nuttier. By 2006, we had stopped inviting her over b/c she was so hostile and mean to the kids. It was also during this time we set up a trust and wills and reconfigured life insurances. Tried to help his parents with this as well, but his mom accused him of trying to get his hands on her $, wishing she never had him and his Bro, and other evil, irrational stuff. Met happy hour friends. 1 woman checks me out constantly but doesn't talk to me. How do I explain my intuition? She was interested in my H. I knew. I was not threatened. She was Ugly. Nothing about her was his type. Totally unkept. He was usually attracted to blonde/well dressed/boobs. She was none of these things...I think she showered! (His celebrity pass was Faith Hill.) She also ignored her H the whole time.
At some point in Mid-2007, I told him I was uncomfortable with the happy hours since I was excluded. He had plenty of time to himself. Too much. 3 nights a week at the club was plenty, plus weekends shopping for our business, had been the norm forever.
By Aug 07, I was suspicious. We went as a family to a convention in L.A. We were to spend the last day at Universal Studios, but H changed his mind and came home instead. I went ahead and took the kids. But, instead of checking into a hotel, I drove the 6 hours home. H was mad and kept calling, encouraging me to stop and check in somewhere. Told him I would. I fully expected to find her at my home when I pulled into the garage. Not.
Dec 07 He insists I plan a holiday party for his happy hour co-workers. I do. One single woman my age, one married w/ her H and kid, and OW and her H. A lot of work for such a small group, but I wanted to cheer him up. Our Parties usually involve 30-60 people. We already had 2 others planned but he didn't want to include these folks in those. Weird I thought but whatever. Well, OW shows up hours late, after dinner, without her H and with her own poolstick. Her and my H play pool and get wildly drunk until 2am. My teenagers and I sit and watch. The kids are asking me WTH? while she crawls all over him. OOOps! She is too drunk to drive the 30 min home so she sleeps in the theatre and is gone by 6am. I am pissed and tell H I want him to end his association with that group and her. He says he supposed to supervise her for her state license (PSych board). Too bad. He says not to worry, she is married and only 34. Too bad.
Throughout the spring of 08, he became even more hostile and his drinking increased dramatically. From a beer or 2, to bringing home large bottles of whiskey or vodka. All this time complaining about his hard work, how he hates it, how it is the same old crap all the time, how our kids are jerks. In March, he traveled out of town for a week to give a museum talk. I was disappointed he didn't take me...he had all kinds of excuses not to. I was glad he was going. He had been under increasing pressure from his parents. His mom was getting more violent, even suspecting she was abusing his dad. His dad was beginning dementia and didn't always recognize the kids. He and his brother had to dismantle his business and his office of 50 years, taking away his car keys and all that had kept dad going. Heartbreaking for H. Add to that, resistance from crazy mother was uber stress for him. Then dad was diagnosed w/ cancer. The summer was spent finding nursing homes for him. He kept getting kicked out b/c of crazy mothers behavior. H is now openly hostile all the time. In June of 08 I found a lump. Kept it from H and went thru the ultrasounds and biopsies alone. H was too stressed and too hostile to help me. I kept the house going. The kids going. Planned a camping trip thru Utah and Wyoming which H cancelled out on the day before leaving in June. I took Kids anyway. In July, he cancelled out of beach trip at last minute. Too much work?? (He is on a school year calendar)
Aug 08 My birthday. We went out for dinner with another couple we have known our whole M. H barely recognized I was there. Hostility oozing out of him on the way there. His son(30) called every 15 min or so, looking for D17. He wanted her or us to babysit. He had asked the day before, But I explained it waws my birthday and we had plans. D17 also told him she had plans and it was too late to change them (tickets had been purchased). So, by the time we get in t he car, he is seething. He yells for the 30 min drive home about how awful we all are. Really shredded D17. I kept trying to explain that she had told SS30 no! I felt he should have been mad at SS30 for pestering us and ruining our dinner! I ended up calling him an as&&&&e.
2 days later he came home from work at 8:30pm.(no dinner, it was 2 hours ago) He ripped me a new one. I was a terrible wife, an awful housekeeper, a horrible mother, and my kids were rotten, so he was leaving. He put some clothes in his car and left.
The next day, I met with him to show him my mammo xrays ,telling him what was going on with my health, the biopsy the next week. If the news was bad, the kids would need him. If so, I said I would move out, live in my car, whatever. He said,"You won't have to live in your car". Weird response, I thought, of all the horrible possibilities, he wanted to reassure me about that!?!?
He came home that night, and I spent the next few weeks jumping thru hoops to prove him wrong about me. The health scare turned out to be just that...a scare.
After Labor Day, we were hosting a pre-convention open house at our home for a few days before everyone went to the convention. It was fun. I was really busy keeping up with the food, drink and mess, as well as the kids. H was hardly here!
While at the convention, he got a call from the nursing home that dad wasn't doing well, so he headed home while insisting we stay and enjoy. Dad died a few hours after he got there and came back the next day. Another week of family dinners with the out of town relatives and the funeral. Crazy MIL threw herself across the casket wailing. ugh H didn't even acknowledge me and the kids and kept walking away from the group to take calls. Weird? Business while at his dad's funeral?? Then he leaves the after dinner early to go to Karate, a new sport he began in June. Left me to entertain his family.
It was during this time, I saw a hickey on his neck. Yes a hickey on a 57 yo man. H said it was a bruise from karate, and since there was a bunch of people around, I filed it. One morning, I noticed he had hundreds of red scratch marks on his back. He insisted there was nothing there! I made a mental note to check the cell phone bill which had stopped coming to the house in April.
After much sidestepping I got the password to the account online and there she was! H averaged 600 minutes a month since Feb on her #. Here's where I made a BIG MISTAKE. I confronted him with what I thought was solid evidence. He said no, he was supervising her. She was young (for him) and married. I came back with Weekends? summer? While on trips? He did not respond which I now know means disregarded. He must have thought I bought it! The next month is gone from my memory. I remember a lot of hostility on both of our parts. I did put family locator on his phone and found he started stopping into a no tell motel for a few hours before & after work. When I saw the pay as you go flyer sticking out of his pocket in early Nov, I knew He had no intention of stopping. Me or her. He left.
Apparently, when OW found out I knew about the cell calls, she rented the motel room telling him her H was awful and she was leaving him soon. She left him the day after I threw H out.
I exposed to everyone I could think of. I educated myself on affairs. He took my copy of Not Just Friends with him, so I got another. I stayed in contact with him, meeting for coffee, lunches, kids activities, Thanksgiving. The hostility was gone. He said he didn't think I cared about him anymore. He didn't mean to fall in love with her. He said the friendship was most important to him and he didn't want to lose that. It would help our marriage. She should move in w/us, cuz she liked to cook and clean and would be a good influence on the kids!
I tried educating him about affairs...waste of time. He would pick and choose and twist bits of info to suit him. The whole time professing love for me, and confusion for himself. I was in shock, floundering, devastated, all the usual LBS stuff. I was kind, compassionate, with only occasional blasts and truth darts. He kept in contact regularly and end of Jan I invited to a spa weekend. He said he wanted to maintain some integrity and couldn't. I AM YOUR WIFE!!! What integrity??? I really lost it in that convo. He came home a week later. He cried for days. Went on the spa weekend. We got along well. Neither of us ready for R talk yet. S was fun as it always had been.
We went to the MC he had found and had seen a few times. She was awful! She didn't introduce herself so I did. Then she called me by the wrong name. She stuck us in a small room to watch a 40 min video on opening up to your partner and sent us home. Terrible experience for us both. Neither of us went back.
I found us a LMFT. He refused to talk about the affair. He said it wasn't our problem. He wanted to talk about the kids, and my terrible parenting, but it became evident I was single parenting for years. He wanted to talk about how I don't trust him. He disappeared one Sat and when I confronted him, He said "see! You don't trust me! OW is out of town! You failed the test!" All he had to do was ask me if I trusted him! FT suggested we see her separately. He goes to her partner and I see her now.
By April, i realized the A was ongoing, all the same affair lies and behaviors. He said he was addicted and couldn't stay away from her or her from him. D 17 was in Senior year of HS with all the luncheons, Proms, and other festivities so I wanted him around for that. By the middle of may, I couldn't take the lies anymore and threw him out again. Right back to her sleazy motel room, with all the drunks and hookers in the parking lot. Poor them.
I had minimal contact this time. Only about kids and D17's graduation stuff. End of June, a friend called to say they had been seen in Palm Springs. I flipped out. That was our place to get away! How dare he! Told me we couldn't afford to go the beach that summer, but he could do that! I called and left him a message that i was done with this nonsense and would see a lawyer on July 1 if he hadn't left her and come home. I suggested he come home and give us 6 months to see if we were repairable. If they were meant to be, 6 months wouldn't be a problem for them to be apart. He came home on the night of the 30th with only half his stuff.
By August, It was obvious they were in contact. I didn't know what to do. DS12 was having trouble at school. He had been diagnosed with anxiety and Depression and we were fine-tuning his meds. School was totally uncooperative, suspending him every time he opened his mouth. My focus was on him. Home was ok. H was there every night for dinner. We were entertaining again, and life was just rolling along. We went on a family vaca to the yearly convention, in Oct break. On our way to TX, D16 found H's phone and later told me OW had called 4 times already that morning- missed calls (His "Ho Phone she calls it since it is a pay as you go) Well, I thought he is figuring out how to let her go. He keeps saying he loves me very much and can't see a future without me. He wants to grow old with me. Yada Yada Yada.
The Day after Christmas, I walked into his office, and wow! it was all cleaned up. I asked if he was packing/leaving and he said no, just cleaning up. He was gone the next morning. He loves me very much.
I went dark at this point. emailed him that contact was just too painful. I guess he thought that meant the kids too. 2 weeks later, about the time I was picking myself up, he starts sending "I miss you" emails. I ignored them. "My feelings for you haven't changed" WTH!? "I am very attached to you". "I miss you guys". "I never imagined being away from my family".
One day DS(now)13 tells me his foot doesn't work. Sure nuf, it is paralyzed. Started the rounds of Drs. Had to tell H. He is concerned but not enough to go to Neuro appts or MRIs. He asked for his baseball schedule saying he wants to go to a lot of his games this season. Missed opening day, seeing DS gimp around the bases. Has been to 2 games out of 11. Has seen kids probably 4 times in 16 weeks, with a couple of calls thrown in. I called Good Friday cuz DD18 had car trouble. No answer and didn't call back. Ok...I thought he'd be available in a crisis but now I know otherwise. DD 16 says It's ok Mom, He never calls me back either. He is paying the bills without question or complaint. He did show me how confused he still is. he asked about dropping him off of health ins. He is the policy holder. Duh. He knows he can't do that. He said he could pick up cobre. He knows (knew) thats way expensive and not worth saving a couple of hundred $. He has lost at least 50 IQ points! The businesses have gone bust. 25 years of building! Yes, Part of it is the economy, but not totally.
Ok, so, today H is still living in the OW's motel room. Not in much contact with friends or family. He doesn't seem too happy and still sees IC once a week.
I am doing my best to hold our heads above water. DS13 is in a new school and seems to be coping ok. Girls are quietly falling apart but hanging in there. Everyone sees ICs.
I have been organizing, hanging pics, finishing projects from moving in, and overall settling in. i even got the drill out last week to trim the courtyard door and put handles and a lock on it. I replaced the broken doorbell! I changed a few light switches to dimmers. My list is 2 pages long. It is hard to GAL since i already had a pretty full one. I am maintaining that and reconnecting with friends that I have withdrawn from in the last year.
If you have read this far! thank you! Please share your opinions. MLC or love addiction? Should I go back to completely dark? I seem to be able to handle my emotions better these days. Am I handling my contact with H ok? He says I bite everytime he reaches out. I stay calm and neutral, but was irritated he was hurting the kids with neglect. I have given up there too. The 2 games he went to, other folks were around so I was just myself, wonderful!
"If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!" 1st thread
Your h sounds like he's had a lot on his plate and the only way to cope is to run and find something to alleviate his pain and distraction. Unfortuantely, he's not turning to you or the children. I'm sorry for what he's done and continues to do.
Yes, I guess he does miss you and the family. You all were his whipping girls/boys for such a long time. He took out his frustrations about life and what he was doing w/his life on all of you and that's not the way to cope w/such things. He has no one right now to vent to. The ow isn't going to listen to his garbage and take it the way that you did.
If would continue to be very dim w/him. You do not need to be available all of the time to him. If you feel that you are doing better w/o contact, by all means continue it. I would suggest that they only time you initiate contact would be about your children and financials. He's got to grow up and the only way to do that is to let him do it on his own.
Again, I've very sorry you are here.
Sit quietly, the answers will reveal themselves when you least expect them to. The past is gone, the present is a gift and you need to focus on today, allow the future to reveal itself when it is ready.
Welcome to this board. Sorry you have to be here but this is a wonderful resource and you will "meet" great people here who understand your sich and want to give you support.
Now you have all the tools to read. Let us know how your doing and if you have any questions.
I suggest that you read the entire thread in the resources. You can also pick out some people and read their whole story.
Remember that in the stages of MLC it does NOT go 1,2,3,4,5,6 but can get all mixed up and repeat itself and have more than one stage at once. Depression is the key to the whole thing and it is always present!
It felt good to write all that out. Cathartic. Now it is part of my past.
I forgot this part! In the summer of 08, H was complaining about a lump on his chest and was worried he had cancer. I finally said, Let me feel. Nope! No CA! It was breast tissue developing. I made the Dr appt, and he was placed on T therapy. He had a zero T level. He is still on HRT but I don't think the GP has his levels balanced.
Thanks for the links. I have already been reading and have a lot more to do.
Today, I will light a fire under DS and pull weeds. I have 5 acres of them! Ugly grasses that dry and are a fire hazard in the summer.
The hardest part of all this is watching H hurt our kids.
"If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!" 1st thread
I was trying NOT to laugh when I read that. There was no right answer, and of COURSE you didn't trust him, there was NO reason to.
Any answer you provided would have been wrong or he would have kept digging until it was wrong.
As for OUR opinions about MLC...I am leery of labeling anyone I only know from reading text as anything. Except for this guy named Boat...he is a bonehead. : )
That is as far as I am concerned up to you. Pilot has given you some great resouces to check out to help you.
Basically for me, MLC = confusion, they want, they don't they come they go. For me that was the biggest sign in my wife. However, not all MLCers are the same, and sometimes they show no sogns of confusion until later.
Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn. - C.S. Lewis
Life is usually all about how you handle Plan B. - Jack3Beans
Listen without defending; Speak without offending - FaithinAK
I think if you believe in MLC, then you could say he is in one. But MLC is many things. It is severe depression that is being denied. It is self destructive self medication with affairs, alcohol, or drugs. Notice any new clothes, hair care, or other forms of instant gratification? It is an overwhelming addiction to the release of endorphines produced in the body just like the response to addictive drugs. He isn't lying about being addicted, just too stupid to understand the drug of choice or the damage he won't be able to repair in the end.
These things may not be what you hoped to read here, but this thing is ugly and you've lived with it long enough to know a lot already. No use in sugar coating.
I don't know if you consider it good news or not, but many men return to our planet after two to four years out in space with the MLC alien. Women, not so much. When women think they are done, well ... they often are. Men seem wired to eventually apologize and try to put it all in the past as a mistake. More common when they saw it happen at home while growing up. They begin to wake up most often once they are dumped by the younger OW. He isn't getting younger and the excitement of the fantasy world eventually fades to tough realities. Right now they are both addicted to the same drug, someone new, in world of secrecy and drama.
You know what else is dramatic? Divorce
But before you go there, you really need to read all the resources provided on this forum and as many books on the subject as your delicate stomach can handle. These things are easier to digest when you have as little contact as possible with the alien world. Most of the triggers for male MLC are the things you mentioned, loss of loved one, age, kids are growing and don't need him. He wakes up asking age old questions "what about me - when is it my turn"
This fire can get fueled by the reality or perception that they have peaked in their career. The OW is almost always someone in the workplace they speak with about their concerns, unhappiness, and fears. The OW "understands them" and they find they are meant for each other. This is the EA or Emotional Affair preceeding the deed and the PA. Now things are in full blown MLC land. The drugs kick in and the addiction takes hold. Like drugs, cold turkey must eventually be part of the validated and verified cure or you are all spinning your wheels on an ice rink.
The kids don't need to be told how evil dad is, just how sick he is. This is not the person he used to be. He stumbled through Alice's Looking Glass and became the Mad Hatter. They can't expect much out of him unless they enjoy hurtful disappointment. Like you, they need to begin to understand boundaries. You also need to take very good care of yourself, and they should do the same. Living around his needs is like trying to live around a zombie or alien. It could be funny to watch if it didn't do so much permanent damage and hurt everyone so much. It is good that a lot of IC has begun.
The most often cited root of female MLC later in life is repeatedly traced back to daddy issues of abandonment during developmental years. Yeah, he's doing a lot more damage than he will probably be around to witness later. So who wants to double size that order and get some fries on the side?
Do your reading homework, admit that your M might not have always been perfect and you now have some time to work on some things, but don't accept a bunch of alien spew about this being all your fault. Determine safe boundaries and defend them around yourself and the kids. Know that blood is thick and his relatives need to be left out of this, as they will often buy his cr@p and hang you out to dry. Limit what you tell your family as they can make it hard for the Husband version 2.0a to return later. Talk to IC. Talk to friends you can trust. Vent here. And above all else, good luck on this very rough journey.
Yes, it is hard to not laugh at much of what H comes up with! It is very much like having another teenager around. Their logic is similar.
The depression does not seem as evident to me anymore, but then I do not have much contact. The confusion was bewildering to me. He had suggested several times "combining". Moving her in, maintaining a friendship that would only entail a little hand-holding and kissing, joining in family events, all coming from an intelligent, wise, honest, successful man. He thinks OW is his savior from this, when, in fact, I am.
I do not see how he can resolve all of his issues, while imagining OW is his issue. I am sure she is Plan Aing him to the Max!
Oh Well. I will focus on being a safe place, calm, strong, and loving for all 4 of my teenagers!
Being firm AND loving is a big thing I need to work on. This issue has presented itself in every one of my family relationships. My Mom and sibs are users... use me (or anyone) to take care of them and their problems til there was nothing left. Distancing myself from my mom has been very difficult. I have been working out the boundaries there for at least 10 years. She involves others, which makes it difficult. First it was my aging grandparents, then aging Grand Aunts, Then loser brother and his children.
I know I can no longer give her advice, because she uses the result against me. I cannot help her at all without having to accept total responsibility for whatever the problem is at the moment. This realization took me 10 years! I know it was hard for H to watch. His advice was to cut her out totally. She was a kind and loving Nana, Holidays were fun! Anyway, H's advice was best for me, I just wasn't there yet. I have learned how to listen, and not get emotionally involved or zoom into a reaction. I have learned how to set a boundary and stick to it...but they tend to be all or nothing boundary lines- I need a BIG white line there. I would like it to narrow a bit.
I did have a convo this morning with H re: DS13 MRI. No cause for the paralysis showed up. I filled him in on the rest of the Dr's call, and he went on to fill me in on the rest of his family's goings on, the legal issues we are having with the business, blah, him, blah blah. I was quiet, pleasant, and got off when he took a breath.
Boundaries?
My IC hasn't been of much use. Not bad but... I know more about affairs and, now, MLC. She listens and validates me but my friends are better at that. No help when it comes to ideas to try out or how to respond to H, kids, mom, etc.
Boundaries?
"If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!" 1st thread
You sound like you wouldn't be pinched hard for the cost of a coaching session with a DB coach. I'm not one, should have used one, and have no association with them. The one thing I have seen here from those that had a couple phone sessions, expecially with Chuck, is that they wish they did it sooner and more often.
What is Bomb Drop? Would that have been when he told me I was awful? Or when he first told me he was unhappy? Or when I found out about the A? Or one of the times he left? ???
He has never said ILYBNILWY. He has always maintained that his feelings for me haven't changed, actually have grown as we go thru this.
???
"If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!" 1st thread
