I have spent a lot of time reading other's posts on this board over the weekend. It has been inspirational. I just started reading frank_D's story and it has given me a great deal of encouragement. I find it amazing how similar all of the given situations are. Mine not much different: I suffered from depression, and drank a lot. I didn't drink all the time, but when I did, it was always too much. I'm still trying to get all the DBing lingo down, so please excuse me if I don't get the acronyms correct.
I went to a party at the neighbor's last night. They are people that my XW used to hang out with when we were still married. Now , XW never talks to them. In fact, she is extremely mean to friend's wife. I can't tell you how much pain I'm in right now, but the whole time last night, I thought about how much pain my XW must be in. She basically doesn't have any friends anymore. I know a lot of them have tried to convince her to work out our marriage. She doesn't want to hear it. We live in a small town. She started seeing OM. She has been extremely secretive about this - not even saying much to her family. I saw him putting a new front door on the house (which she got in settlement) last weekend and mentioned this to a few friends. We live in a small town, so the cat is basically out of the bag. Even though we are divorced, I felt really hurt and angry. From what I have been able to put together, their relationship has been going on for at least 5 months.
I find it amazing (especially after reading other posts) that our WAWs are able to find people like this. My XW has dated (before our marriage), but only been involved in a few serious relationships. This one seems to have come out of nowhere. Similar situation to others, though, that he lives about about 1.5 hours away, so I would consider this a long distance relationship. We share custody of our daughters: D11, D9 and D5. I'm assuming that she talks to him or sees him whenever I have our girls. He seems to fill every void that I couldn't. My wife has gotten into running over the last year. I believe she met him through the local running group or, who knows, actively sought him out. She must feel somewhat guilty about this relationship, because it would always get back to me about her telling people that we were divorced, when we weren't. Our divorce wasn't final until August, 24th. I'm sure OM is probably a nice guy. After reading frank_D's post about the emotional predator, he would seem to fit this description perfectly. The reason I say this is that the door that he put in our house was something my XW and I always talked about. We could never agree on a style. The one he put in was exactly what my wife always wanted. One more reason for me to feel really miserable.
Like I said, reading these posts this weekend has been really helpful. Without trying to be too analytical, I find it amazing how predictable human behavior really is - the inputs will give the same outputs most of the time. I've been controlling and still trying to interfere with XW's life. I'm sure that this has only strengthened her resolve and pushed her further into relationship with OM. She also seems to exhibit all the signs of MLC. I never thought about this until reading posts on this site. Her brother mentioned to me that she likes to wear clothes that a 20-year-old would wear. She's 41. Said the same thing about her behavior.
Another thing I noticed is that everyone going through these WAW issues wants to know what they're thinking and how long it will take to reconcile? I realize now, more than ever, that it mostly matters what is in my mind and what I'm doing and thinking. I have to concentrate on myself, being a dad, keeping busy and letting go. Hardest thing has been letting go of the anger and hard feelings - especially for XW and OM, also her parents, who I've never gotten along with. They've been steadfast supporters of her through this entire ordeal. They don't, however, seem to be supportive of her new relationship.
So, for now, looks like I'm "going dark". Since letting XW know how hurt I was after finding out about new relationship with OM, there has been no contact - not even by email. This marks a new low in our interactions since the bomb was dropped. Makes raising children very difficult. As others have said, I love her unconditionally - no matter what happens. I'm keeping busy, getting back to the gym on a regular basis, which really helps with the sleeplessness. Seems the best thing to do is wait for her to contact me and keep things very light - something, which I'm not very good at.
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Me: 42 XW: 41 Three Daughters: D11, D9, D5 Separated: End of July, '06 Dropped Bomb: Nov 21st, '06 Divorced: Aug 24th, '07 Started honestly DBing: Today (10/7/07)
