I am just trying to figure out if my wife is a WAW.
We've been married for 11 years last december. I went to India to see my parents as my dad had a heart surgery. 5 Days into the vacation, my wife tells me she had filed for divorce.
One of our close friends talked to her. Apparently she had been planning on leaving about 3 months ago. I must have been really dumb because i did not see it coming.
Yup i was in a lot of stress from 2008 after our DD was born. Thats because of strains between my wife and my family. I guess all i wanted was lil harmony there and somehow was unable to deal with this discord. My wife is lot more emotionally stronger than i am. She actually left to her mom's home for 6 months in 2009. Then she came back and i started making extra effort to be cheerful and happy. Frankly i did not succeed fully. I wanted her help on this. But she felt like i was becoming her patient and i believe ultimately led her to leave...
Oddly though i was the earner and she was stay at home. I had a good job that i made sure was safe and never in jeopardy.I helped a lot around the house and took care of our DD during the evenings after i came home from work. i did this to compensate for my "lack of being there emotionally". I also started seeing a C in 2010 to figure out how to make myself happy. Unfortunately for me i was a single child and came from a family where my parents fought a lot. So i was not equipped with skills to resolve conflicts and my C told me that it would take a looong time for me to become okay. I let my know about all this thinking that if she knows the truth, she would understand me better...seems like that was a bad bad idea.
Yes i did not take time to hang around with friends or try some activity to keep my mind fresh. I am an introvert. So i just tried to keep to myself which i am sure made my stress higher.
Now that my wife has left and took all her stuff from our home, i guess the reality of divorce is hitting me hard. Combined with my already existing weakness to handle a stressful situation, this has made it worse. I am just trying to figure out if my wife left just because i was emotionally down. If my wife is a WAW.
Thanks!
BITS M 38 W 36 D 7 Married 15 yrs W left for 6 months in 2009 W Filed for D 01/03/11 piecing now...
Well . . . she left and filed for divorce, right? That makes her a WAW by definition. But the term you use is less important than what you do next.
You've done some smart things, especially seeing a counselor. It's too bad it didn't work out. You might want to try someone else, or you might want to give your counselor another shot.
Have you read Michelle Weiner-Davis' books on the subject? Such as Divorcebusting?
I would also recommend No More Mr. Nice Guy by Robert Glover. Some of the things you describe--being surprised that a woman would leave a man who made sure his job was secure and was never any trouble to her, for instance, or trying to fix everything by making an effort to be cheerful and happy all the time, are things Glover might help you with. He describes men who put all their emphasis on pleasing others, especially women, by putting their own needs last and "never being any trouble" as "Nice Guys." He's not talking about not being nice, just seeing that your own needs are important and dealing with other people honestly. It made a big difference for me.
The other reading I'd recommend is Schnarch's Passionate Marriage. But I'd read the other two first.
Your first step is to decide what you want to do about your marriage. Do you want to save it? If so, what are you willing to do about it? The first thing is to think hard about how you treat your wife now and why it doesn't work.
The fact that you're trying to do something about this, rather than just deciding that your wife went crazy for no reason and there's nothing you could have done, puts you ahead of the curve already. That seems to be what most people do.
