WIfe Has left

[ammojmc]

I am not sure if this is the right place. My wife of 16 years has left me and our 2 children to return home to her parents I am in the Airforce and she has been with me throught my career until now. She says that she has been unhappy for about seven years and now she was just done. It has only been 2 day since she flew home to her parents from Turkey where I am currently stationed. There is a whole lot more to the story but I don't want to make this too long being my first time ever on any type of forum/message board.

[ammojmc]

Okay Now that I have read some of the other post I see that mine was short. Basically it all started around Thanksgiving My W had told me that she was not in love with me and she was going home. Of course not knowing that anything was wrong I did everything that I wasn't suspose to do. Telling her that I love her aal the time and that I would change is she was unhappy and so forth. The Only answer that I had recieved from her was she did not want that and that she was going to leave and that I would just have to deal with it. She had told me that she had always felt like she was put second in the house and that if she stayed, she would feel like there was no good for her here. Now that she is gone I know that I just have to give it time but it hurts so bad.
I will post more when I am home and not at work.

[cat03]

She left the children with you? is she coming back to deal with the kids at some point, have you suggested counceling?
Just validate her for now and tell her you understand she needs time, that you will give her space.

[Where is Hope?]

I am so sorry to hear your wife has left! I am also curious to know if she took the kids?

Do you spend a lot of time at work? Did she have trouble making friends in Turkey?

[ammojmc]

She left me with the children because she wants to get her own life started with out me and then the kids come to her. We have normal conversations about them Like how to deal with them and stuff like that but when it comes to talking about us she is very with drawn. She has told me that she wants the kids to be able to have the choice but be cause she was going back to her parents and they are struggling financialy and her brother lives close to them with a history of drug use so I didn't want the 15 year boy around that. We both thought it would be best for them to stay with me. I also found out that my son's grade have slipped temendously and at point I just feel at wits end.

[Where is Hope?]

Bless your kids' hearts! Are they used to living in another country? They need to be your main priority now, although that is very hard to do! My 17 yo is with me and sometimes it's all I can do to keep him from knowing how torn up I am! But, it's his senior year and I want it to be the BEST for him, so I suck it up around him for the most part.

For now, I wouldn't discuss anything about your marriage with her. Let her absorb her decision for a few days and see what she comes back to you with. Otherwise, she might feel you are smothering her.

[ammojmc]

Well one of the reasons that we decided to come to Turkey is because she had mild trouble making friends while we were in South Carolina. I would always want to go out and she would stay at home. I now realize that she never wanted to go out...because it is super hard work to maintain the house manage the bills and the kids. I was there but I was in the back ground. She had made some friends on the internet from Iraq and had been talking to them for about three years. She had mentioned once before that she was thinking about leaving but it was mentioned and never brought up again. So I decide that when she mentioned it that I need to do some changing and I started to get more involved in her interest like her going school and polotics, world events and the such. She grew and interest in the middle east during the three years of talking with her friends online. So I had offered to move the family there so she could meet them. She did meet one of them the one that she talked to the most and he spent three weeks here, and then smuggled himself to sweden to apply as a refugee. This was around Thanksgiving time frame about a week after he had left here is when she told me that she didn't love me anymore and she was going to go home wether I had helped her or not. She left on the 19th of FEB, so for the next two months I did everything that alot of web sites and books said that I shouldn't have like trying to convience her to stay and Telling her that I love her and such.She told me that she loved this guy, that she didn't feel stressed when she was around him and that she wanted to be where ever he was. I was working during his visit and she would visit himm during the day and pick the kids up from school and then go back to visit him until I was off work then I would join them, that went on for about 3 weeks. I want to believe that nothing physical happened between them and she said that it didn't, but I am unsure. I have started counseling myself and the children see a counselor at school. I have been validating her she told me last night she is applying for work today. I told her that she would do great and left it at that. I just hope that she sees that this is super destructive to the kids because she has not been with out them for more than a week in 16 years of marriage. I know that there has to be huge changes on my part and hers as well, but oit seems like the kids are getting the brunt of this.

[ammojmc]

Yeah it has been hard because the kids have called her over the last couple of days begging her to come back and she keeps telling them she can't. She insisted that I send her home a way that would make it nearly impossible for her to come back before I leave in 6 months. They are used to the whole military thing we have lived in Germany for three years so they seem okay with the whole overseas thing.

[ammojmc]

Sorry for alot of the run on I will try and clean it up a bit on future posts.

[ammojmc]

She has basically set it up where we have a 6 month separation. I have talked with her before she left about getting together when I get back to discuss where we are at but she told me she didn't want to go through all this again. So I'm not sure if that is even going to happen. I am going to give her all the time she needs.