Thanks for updating your situation. I urge you to stand firm with the lawyers. Don't get involved in your W's drama. That's her problem; you can't change or fix her emotions. You have to protect yourself and your kids right now. Don't assume that your W will be kind, will see the light, etc. Look only at her actions, and those of course may change at a moment's notice. We can't predict the future, nor can we live in the past. Live that Buddhist idea of being fully present in the moment. That is all you or any of us have, so stand firm!
On the IL, it does look like they will stand by their daughter no matter what. That doesn't surprise me. I haven't had any contact with mine, and I have no kids, so I haven't been down this road. Still, I suspect that your W has "justified" her actions to them, made you look like a real jerk in their eyes, and so they, like most people, believe what they hear. In these situations, we feed our side of the story to our friends, the spouses feed their version to their family/friends. There is no objective reality in relationships, only your feelings and her feelings. Some people will agree with you, some with her. I agree with you! But, at the end of the day all that really matters is what you are feeling at any particular moment and what she feels. Trust your own feelings, and stay on the high road no matter how painful. I know that's easier said than done; I'm often tempted to get off that road myself, but I hang in there each day, one day at a time.
You are already a better man for having gone down this path. Stay on it. Continue to choose growth over pettiness, anger, and despair. You need to do so not for your wife, but for yourself, your kids, and for any future relationship you might have. I'm convinced that this process has us in a long training session for whatever comes our way in the future, be that reconciliation with our spouses (if that is still a possibility) or a new relationship. At times like this we choose the path of growth or wallow in despair. You and I have come a long way down the path of growth.
One final small thought. Yesterday W emailed to offer me the leftovers from a new recipe she tried. I had tried it earlier in the week and told her how much I liked it. She called me last night briefly to ask a small question, and she said she was "worried" about my eating. I told her I liked her new recipe, but after I hung up I was a bit angry over her comment that I had been dumb about a lot of things. I told her I agreed--I had been dumb about a lot of things in our marriage. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I got the feeling that she still hasn't moved off her paradigm, which she said in August, that the task was for me to figure out what was wrong with me and for her to figure out why she took it.
I feel that's still her paradigm, though I admit I'm leaping a bit given the lack of sustained communication. If it is her paradigm, we're a long way from any reconciliation. I will take responsibility for my failures. I also need to see changes from her if we are to have a new marriage. Yesterday my therapist suggested, as have a couple of others over the past few weeks, that I may be "ahead", for lack of a better term, in understanding how to create a better relationship. If true, and it may not be, it helps me have patience.
I actually told my therapist yesterday that I have come to feel that this time of trial has been one of the best things that has happened to me in my life. When the bomb dropped four months ago I never imagined I'd say that. Just goes to show how life takes us in some unexpectedly painful, but also wonderful, directions.
Make it a good day, and keep posting. These boards help me understand my wife, I think. More important, they help me grow as a person.
