END OF MY ROPE

[RedHeadWife]

I may have already said all that I'm about to say, but I actually went back and re-read a letter my H had written to me once again telling me it was over and why. Now that I'm viewing it in a different light (we are ok now), I see that a lot of what had happened were HIS issues and the A's and the fact that he really DID NOT communicate enough w/ me on how he was feeling/what he was thinking all along.

We got pregnant 2 wks after we got married. Thus began our married life together. He began feeling neglected immediately after our 1st was born, but always felt like he didn't want to express any of these feelings to me thinking I would feel badly and he just tried to make things easier for me.

Therefore, I never knew what he was feeling and couldn't do anything about it. Therefore, he ended up having an A on his first deployment when our first boy was not even 2 yrs old.

This seemed to continue throughout our M -- he felt rejected sexually, rejected emotionally, etc. and thought if he just tried to make things better for me, all would be well. Well, I didn't know what he was doing by "trying to make things better for me" and I didn't know how he was truly feeing. He just acted like everything was ok.

Now, had he actually sat me down & talked to me about everything, would I have responded appropriately all those years ago? I don't know the answer to that. As the years went by, I did end up responding angrily or defensively when he did try to talk to me about certain things so I don't know how I would have reacted all those years ago.

However, when he dropped the D bomb and I realized how serious things were and realized that Divorce was in his vocabulary and a very real possiibilty, I didn't just do 180's, I did a complete 360.

In other threads, I have posted how very fulfilled and happy I am now that I have an adult R back w/ my H. All these years, I have been trying to be the "mom" I thought I should be and had foregone the adult R w/ my H for numerous reasons. I didn't realize what I was missing and now that we are back (kind of) to where we need to be, my life is fulfilled in more ways than I imagined and all the stress, etc. that I had actually been kind of "taking out on" H, isn't as bad as I thought it all was. Maybe I feel more supported now that I'm supporting back or something. Before, I didn't realize that support & help was what he was trying to give me and I wasn't accepting.

I even took over all of the housework that I had been allowing to go to the wayside as well and he had ended up taking over and feeling resentful toward me about. Even all of this is not as "hard" as I thought it was. I do have the time to get everything done. I quit going to bed immediately after the boys went to bed and got things done and spent time w/ H just one on one and I found that this was very fulfilling as well.

All I'm trying to say I guess is that when we wives, moms, etc. are in this mode of feeling overwhelmed w/ everything -- work, children, household, etc. and have kind of lost who we even are because we don't even know anymore, we have blinders on to what is important. We end up feeing resentful toward our H and take our stresses out on them instead of putting in the effort to actually have an R w/ our H and finding that that is what we need to feel fulfilled and help us get through the daily grind.

I have said before that I don't know what, if anything, can be done besides the "last resort" of the D bomb to get your W to wake up and realize all of this. Sitting down and being very sincere about how serious these problems are could work. I don't feel my H ever truly did that. By the time he started talking like D was an option, he had already made up his mind that there was nothing we could do to "work" on our M. So it took the D bomb to get my a$$ in gear and work on my M and myself to get my M back and I'm so very glad it happened and we are where we are now.

I'm not trying to take over your thread w/ my sitch, but w/ you and Fiji, I see a lot of similarities -- I don't think we realize (and I don't think my H even still realizes) how common these problems are that we are having or have had.

I hope these insights can help a little bit.