Well I do have my pride Jeff - sheesh!! And, I need to get to REALLY know him - lol
Heywyre
M - 57 H - 65 1st A-bomb - Nov 27/02 2nd A-bomb - Dec 13/06 together 21 years *************************** Insanity is doing something over and over and expecting different results (Albert Einstein)
I've been resisting offering you any kind of advice on how to save your marriage, because, it didn't look to me like there was enough left to save. And it's not like I know how to save marriages anyway.
Now that you have filed, I wonder if you have thought about what kind of divorce you wanted to work towards. OK, here comes the book recommendation: "The Good Divorce" by Constance Ahrons. Here is a review quote:
Quote:
Nothing is likely to make divorce pleasant or easy, but Ahrons' landmark longitudinal study of randomly selected postdivorce families offers hope that splitting spouses may be able to handle their breakup in a way that will permit both "adults and children [to] emerge at least as emotionally well as they were before the divorce." Ahrons blends insights from her own research and a cross-national European study as well as 25 years as a therapist to dispel myths, establish useful typologies, articulate the challenges divorcing spouses face, and suggest steps to make a "good divorce" more likely. Central to Ahrons' analysis is the recognition that what she calls "binuclear families" are now more common in the United States (and some other industrialized nations) than the traditional two-adults-with-children model. In either of these structures, "the psychological health of the children depends hugely on the way the spouses--or exspouses [sic]--get along." Though "family values" fundamentalists will object to the idea that "binuclear families" can ever be normal and healthy, The Good Divorce offers advice and explanations to troubled couples for whom "staying together for the sake of the children" is not a healthy or viable option.
The point that the author makes is that children come out of divorce in good emotional shape (or at least no worse than they went in) when the exspouses are not at war with each other. If they can manage their conflicts without a lot of angry outbursts, without putting the kids in a tug of war, without prolonged legal battles, the divorced family has the best chance of moving past the event without excessive emotional scars.
So you should ask yourself: are you in the beginning stages of setting up a new and healthy family structure that gives you, your kids, and even your STBX the best chance of future happiness? Or are you firing the opening salvos of a bloody protracted war? You mention that you are filing for custody of the boys. How hard will your wife fight you on this? Do you have a realistic chance of succeeding on this point? Can you see your way to compromising on issues with her in order prevent war?
The title of your thread "I Won't Walk Out the Loser" is ominous to me. This is not a game, this is not war. This is you and your wife having to build separate homes for your two kids. You could win the game of tug-of-war, but your kids are the rope. I'm sure you don't want to rip them apart or drag them through the mud.
I sympathize with you tremendously. Your wife cut your heart out with a rusty chainsaw then spat on it on the ground. But she is still the mother of your children and she always will be. Life after marriage might be good to you. It might just depend on the tone you set in your divorce.
SM
"If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment." Henry David Thoreau
Good to hear some rational common sense on this thread for once. Choc’s title bothered me too. All the posts on this thread after Choc announced that he had filed bother me. In fact, I am pretty well disgusted with everyone rallying around Choc to congratulate him on ending his marriage. WTF!? Is this what this board has become? If everyone is so keen to end their pain, then stand up and file yourself. Stop living vicariously, cheering Choc on to do the tough things you all don’t have the guts to do!
Is filing for divorce something to be congratulated on? Is it such a hard thing to do? No, it is not hard. What seems hard is overcoming your own personal fears, abandoning your hopes, and jumping into the unknown. But is the jump really that unknown? People divorce all the time. There is little uncertainty as to the outcome.
No, divorce is not hard. It can be messy, if you want it to be, as Solid Mechanic mentions. What is really hard is to NOT throw around that new sense of power, the power that Choc has come into. What is hard is to control yourself the pent up anger and frustration built up over years of being neglected, the building sense of revenge for all the perceived injustice you feel you have had to endure over the years, to not get swept into the mindset that your spouse deserves everything you can muster to throw his/her way. What is hard is to stuff all those emotions and summon up the ability to FORGIVE your spouse and work long and hard at forging a recovery. THAT is hard. THAT takes guts. Filing for divorce is the easy part.
Relationship recovery plays out in predictable stages. I went through the anger that Choc has felt. I learned to stop walking on eggshells and empower myself. I learned that I had power and could use it, and if I did my wife would have to take notice. It felt good. My world opened up. I could see a new future, one without her and all the crap I had to put up with. I could envision finding a new partner, one who would love me and make me feel alive again. Following the dream was too tempting. It would have been too easy.
Not going there was hard. Knowing that I had years of work in front of me with no guarantee that anything would get better seemed like an idiotic alternative. But the reality of filing for divorce and the impact on myself and my kids is a hard pill to swallow. Sure kids can get through divorce just fine. We all know many people who are in just that position. But staying together and saving the marriage is even better, but much, much harder.
There are people on this board who have divorced or separated, then come back together. That had to have been some of the hardest times of their lives. Maybe they can tell us if they think it was worth it. I think the hardest part has to be finding a way to forgive and let go of the anger and resentment. That is the hardest part and I don’t think Choc has even come close to approaching that stage yet, let alone his wife.
Now, just to be sure everyone doesn’t jump all over me, I do believe that in some case divorce is the only option. Mojo is a good example. The action of her ex-H after the divorce pretty well confirms, at least in my mind, that he may never be able to get past his buried anger and grow into a healthy person. So even though I think they could have tried a few other options, the outcome may have been the same. So I now think she is better off having divorced.
The same could be true of Choc, but I really don’t see the same sense of anger and resentment in Choc’s wife that I saw in Mojo’s H. Choc’s wife is in serious denial, IMO. She needs some serious, professional help. I think she is looking for exactly the same thing Choc is looking for. I couldn’t say the same for Mojo’s sitch.
So if everyone wants to just get happy again, take the easy path and just file for divorce. Your troubles will be over and you can go find a new lover. The kids will get through it ok and you will be able to build a new household. Just muster up the guts and do it. But on this board I say we should not loose sight of our purpose which is to grow past our personal issue, bring back the intimacy that has been lost and save marriages.
Choc's been here long time and tried his best. People are not celebrating his need to divorce, but the personal strength that he has discovered over time. He is, with the full background of his sitch known, making a highly rational choice. His spouse has been given the extra mile, the extra incentive. He's gone above and beyond.
Yes, it's tragic that his relationship is failing. No, it's not wrong for him to take a personal stand. Fact is, most of us lowly mortals would have bowed out with just the sheer length of the sexless marriage he's put up with. Couple that with an affair and that's pretty much a given. Point is, he's tried even after the affair to do the best by his relationship but his spouse POINT BLANK REFUSES to do, well, anything.
We celebrate his personal growth, we cry as the loss of another marriage but we know that he's doing the best he can.
This board isn't really about saving marriages so much as about personal growth. Sometimes, with personal growth, new insights are learned which can then benefit a failing relationship. Sometimes that growth, as I think I see in Choc's case, points out fatal flaws in relationship dynamics.
I wish the best for Choc, support him in whatever decision he makes and pray to the god's advidly that the women he's been married to this point has a brutal awakening and self-realisation. It won't be pretty when she really digs deep and realises how she mistreated the gift of her marriage. Not pretty at all.
I completely disagree with you regarding Choc. I know he has been on the boards a very long time, but it has only been very recently that he has stepped up to make a change in his marriage. This has all occurred within only a few months. All the time he spent before mopping and whining about his sex starved marriage did nothing to work through his problems. Once the wheels start turning to change the dynamics of any marriage, that is when the clock starts ticking on the year or two it takes to get progress. All the time spent before is irrelevant.
It still takes two. If she's not working on it and he's reached a personal boundry (giving something she withheld from him to a stranger and lying about it) then the decision is all his.
No one celebrates that he's reached the end of the rope. I would like to see his wife's response to being given a new chance but I think he's done that and she's not interested.
Choc, Have you done everything? Is she done? Has she had a sudden change of heart? Is she willing to do absolutely whatever it takes to rebuild (counseling, etc.)? I think I know what the answers are, but perhaps Cobra needs to hear the current state.
Thanks for your support. I've pretty much given up trying to convince Cobra of anything, because he seems as stubbornly set in his position as he accuses me of being in mine, and I really have no energy nor desire to enter into a protracted debate about something that I've prayed so hard about and have such a peace about.
So I will say this once, as succinctly as I can.
Cobra, I don't know how long you've been on this board, or at what stage you started following my sitch. My last three years of "don'tgiveachitness" is NOT the whole story. For 15+ years, my marriage has been a series of "The Talk"s with my wife, and while I may not have always handled her rejection with the perfect grace nor skill that the experts advise, it has led to nothing but a sexless, affectionless, "princess-first" marriage filled with her entitlement and my resentment. I've suggested -- even insisted -- counseling, and she has refused to go. With me, by herself FOR herself, or by herself for me.
For her to finally confront her own sexuality, but do it outside of the vows of her marriage, was only the second-to-last step in a long series of missteps in her marriage. The LAST step being her stubborn, entitled refusal to end the affair, despite everyone she loves the most in her life -- her parents, her husband, her adult daughters -- knowing about it and disapproving of it.
In spite of all of that, I STILL forgave her (once she expressed remorse and turned away from the behavior), and I STILL (all along for 70+ days) stood here ready to work on our marriage at any point she was willing to give up her boyfriend and come back to her marriage. I have shown a light, a path, back toward her family the entire time, treating her respectfully, lovingly, and being the best dad, the best Choc., and even the best husband I could be.
At the end of the day, you cannot force someone to do what they refuse to do. My sister likes to say that "God will break you before God will fix you." Well, that's only true if you ALLOW yourself to be broken. My wife is as stubbornly entrenched in her self-destructive behavior this past week as she was 70 days ago, and she has refused more than a half a dozen entreatments to come back to me and our intact family.
No, I do not want a "war," but legal matters are adversarial -- that's just reality. It's why they put that little "v" in the middle of them. I will continue to treat their mother lovingly and with respect and civility, but I have no intention of allowing my boys to live in a Godless home surrounded by indiscretions and poor decisions, and to be taught character at this CRITICAL time in their adolescent lives by someone who is exhibiting none herself.
You do not know what I have done, what I have tried, and what I have prayed about, nor what I have been led to do. I suggest you offer your questionable advice to someone who is genuinely asking for it, because offering it here is counterproductive.
What is really hard is to NOT throw around that new sense of power, the power that Choc has come into. What is hard is to control yourself the pent up anger and frustration built up over years of being neglected, the building sense of revenge for all the perceived injustice you feel you have had to endure over the years, to not get swept into the mindset that your spouse deserves everything you can muster to throw his/her way. What is hard is to stuff all those emotions and summon up the ability to FORGIVE your spouse and work long and hard at forging a recovery. THAT is hard. THAT takes guts. Filing for divorce is the easy part.
I think the important realization to come to is that any sense of "power" gained upon ending a relationship is really just "power" you needlessly gave up within the relationship so if you feel anger it really should be directed at yourself. I really don't feel much anger towards my 2bx at this juncture, what I feel towards him is more like what I feel when I click on "Not Interested" when a man with whom I know I am not compatible approaches me on Match. If I was interested in nihilistic exercises, I could let my 2bx move back in tomorrow and just continue on with my current level of functioning. I guarantee he would pop right out of the relationship again in short order. If everything that Choc is doing is just a reflection of what he feels is the right thing to do to function well as a person or according to his personal set of values then he's doing the right thing. If Mrs.Choc can figure out how to raise her own functioning in a manner that would allow her to integrate herself back into a relationship with Choc at his current level of functioning then I'm sure things would go well for them in the future and Choc would be able to be forgiving. I do not agree with the premise that you have previously stated that it's a good idea to increase fusion in order to lend functioning to a partner in an attempt to forestall the end of a relationship. I don't think it will work.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
Choc, Have you done everything? Is she done? Has she had a sudden change of heart? Is she willing to do absolutely whatever it takes to rebuild (counseling, etc.)? I think I know what the answers are, but perhaps Cobra needs to hear the current state.
NH,
Her "sudden change of heart" occurred this weekend, after she was served with the divorce papers on Friday. On Saturday she supposedly pulled back again from the sexual/romantic part of her affair relationship (she has done this twice before, only to head straight back into a full-blown PA), and on Sunday she began acting nice to me and begging me not to go for custody of the boys.
I really don't care to go into a whole bunch of details here to justify my decisions, but let's just say that I'm a big fan of the old Ronald Reagan quote, "trust -- but verify." Upon verification, neither of my wife's two weekend "epiphanies" would seem to be sincere. And even if they were, there does come a point at which a decision becomes "too little, too late." If the only thing I can do to get my wayward wife to end a sexual affair with another man, and to stop being bitchy and stubbornly entitled toward me, is spend $2,500 on legal fees and serve her with divorce, well, then I really don't have much of a marriage worth saving, now do I?
Just keep in mind that real change can occur. Who knows? Live your life, love your kids and keep your mind open. If she ever shows a true effort, gets perhaps some professional help and really wants to work on things you might find down the road a new and improved mother for your children. If it turns into a new relationship for you as well, there's not telling. As I said, "Who knows?" The old marriage and relationship is dead. If a new one springs up then so much the better but whatever happens you've grown.
Now, get out there and just be for awhile. There's a storm coming. Enjoy the relative peace for awhile.
