Aaron's WAW Story

[firedog31d6]

Hello family,

I have been browsing the BB's for almost a month now and I feel bad that I haven't posted my own story yet, but I just kept getting fascinated with everyone else's sitch's and never had time to do this until now.

My story,

Most of our problems were rooted in finances. I was a tight-wad, she was a free-spirit who liked to spend. Enough said there. I always had dreams of giving my family a nice, comfortable lifestyle and felt that I had let them down by choosing a low-paying career, so I went back to school and did some foolish things to try and become wealthy so my family could have a better life than I was giving them. I wound up spending so much effort and time chasing the Benjamin's that I didn't notice my wife's love tank was totally empty. She never told me, or perhaps she did, but I was to stupid to stop and address it. I just thought "one day, she'll see how much I love her because of all the sacrifices I am making for my family".

There is more to the story, but I'll skip to the meat and potatoes. In March of 07' after a rough year together financialy, she finally gave me the ILYBINILWY news which totally blew me away. It brought me down hard and fast. She asked me if I would move in with my mother for a while so she could "cool down" and figure things out for herself. Of course, I panicked!

It only lasted 2 weeks, but what happened to end it, was I called her up and made her a promise... and somehow it worked. I told her that I was a fool for not loving her over the years and giving her the affection she needed. I basically took responsibility for every problem we ever had and promised her that if she gave me one more chance that I would prove to her that I could become the man she married 10 years prior. She reluctantly accepted and let me come home. For the most part, I made good on my promise! I was determined to make it work. First thing I did was become more physically attractive.. I lost a bunch of weight (70 lbs to be exact), got a tan and have never looked back. I am now setting a goal to make next years firefighter calendar, so I feel that I have no issues with that anymore. Next thing I did was try to loosen up financially and show her that I was not going to worry so much about money. We went out more, bought more things, went shopping and so forth. Then I made it a point to change my behavior around her. You see, I used to have a pretty short fuse and would get angry with her and raise my voice too much around her. I stopped this and did many other 180's not even knowing then about DB principles. I just knew that I had to identify what didn't work before and do the opposite.

Anyway, it worked...within a couple of weeks, we were newly weds all over again and it was the happiest time of my life. I mean the sparks began to fly all over again.. we were even having phone sex one night right after getting back together which we had never done over 10 years. I was at work that night, she was at home. Our sex-starved marriage was re-kindled seemingly overnight and things were back on track. We both seemed to want nothing else but one another again! She smiled at me everyday and I smiled back. I told her everyday how much she meant to me and did everything I could think of to fill her tank.

Then about 7 months later, something happened. I don't know exactly, what the culprit was, but I do know that her behavior started to change pretty quickly. I remember we had an argument on super bowl Sunday back in Feb and she broke my heart when she told me that she hadn't noticed any real "effort" by me to change. Talk about taking the wind right out of your sails! I began to cry right in front of her and she immediately came and hugged me and appologized for saying that. Anyway, that seemed to mark the beginning of a rapid downward spiral that brought us to our current sitch.

Because of her behavior changes, I began to become suspicious of a possible OM in her life. She started becoming increasingly wrapped up in her job... going in early and working overtime...she began to withdraw physically from me.. started falling asleep on the couch...all this while seemingly making extra effort to keep her appearance flawless. She came home from work one day wearing a very high-cut pair of shorts and I noticed that she had been tanning. I confronted her about this and asked her why she was going to such lengths to look attractive while withdrawing from me. We hadn't had sex in a few weeks and here she was looking sexy.... obviously not to impress me right? She made light of my suspicions and told me to stop smothering her. This made it worse.. I couldn't let it go.. I started checking up on her and doing just what she told me not to do. I smothered her because I was certain that something... someone was pulling my wife away from me and by God.... I had to stop it!! I had worked to hard to get here and wasn't going to re-live the worst moment in my life all over again. Well, nevertheless... it happened. After smothering her to no-end.. she finally told me that she wanted to spend some time apart back in May.

She vehimently denies any PA with any OM's and gets somewhat deffensive when I have asked her. I moved in with my Aunt 2 1/2 months ago and the roller coaster began. I did just about everything wrong you could imagine. I would first call her up and try to beg and plead for forgiveness, asking her to go to MC... promising her I would change... do whatever she wanted... wrote her a blank check and said "tell me what you want and I'll do it" etc... Then when she rejected that, I got angry and would accuse her of cheating. Then I would go over to the house while she was at work and dig around in her closet trying to find some smoking gun that would confirm my suspicions once and for all. I found out that she had purchased another cell phone in addition to the one she had on my plan. She knew that I was looking at the old phone bills to see who she was calling and apparently wanted this new phone to keep me in the dark. I later found out that she was having the new phone bill mailed to her office. I confronted her about this and she says that she just wanted to have her own phone to use text messaging because our plan didn't include unlimited TM'S.

Anyway, I don't know if she's seeing someone or not, but I know that I wanted her back. Even though I feel that I have made extrordinary changes to be a great husband again, I still feel like a failure now because of her rejecting me again. I somehow feel that my changes may have come too little-too late or something... Cont'd

[firedog31d6]

Anyway, I moved back home against her wishes 2 weeks ago because I got tired of living in my cousins bedroom. I felt that I was a grown man, who worked 2 jobs to provide a home for my family, and I have been forced to live in someone else's house for 2 months all because my estranged wife is either having a MLC, or has OM... neither of which were acceptable for me to become homeless over. When I moved back, I expected to see her move out immediately. When she didn't, I asked her what her plans were. She told me that she still had absolutely no feelings for me anymore and that she was just trying to "figure out how I'm going to do everything on my own". I then said "so then you've made up your mind, and this is what you want" meaning the big "D". She nodded "yes" and I told her "I disagree that divorce is going to make you happy, I feel that we can fix whatever has gone wrong, but I can't control you anymore and if this is what you want, then I can't do much about that". We began to talk about living arrangements and child support. She said that she would start looking for an appartment and that I would put our house on the market to sell. In the meantime, she said "we'll just have to co-exist here the best we can". I broke down and cried and asked her if I couldn't be her husband right now, if we could work on becoming friends and she said "I'll work on that".

It has been a week and a half since then and we have managed to do fine. She doesn't say much to me, and since I have started reading the BB'S I have decided to stop pursuing her and kind of "went dark" on her. It seems to be working. Unless she is doing things at her office, she doesn't seem to be in a big hurry to leave "so it seems". She is very secretive and very good at hiding things from me so she could very well be doing everything from work.

Anyway, I have decided to start some more 180's. I have stopped emailing her. I have done my best to act "as if" and "get a life". Whenever I am around her, I do my best act up-beat instead of depressed to show her that I am taking back control of my own life and will make it with or without her. It seems to be working, allthough very subtlely. The only pos. I have seen is that the other day, she made a small joke about my black eye that I got during grappling class. She came downstairs and I was eating breakfast and she said "that shinner is starting to show a little". I smerked and replied "yeah, everyone says it makes me look younger... I may just decide to keep wearing it".. She said "if you want, I can give you another one over the other eye". I chuckled and said "yeah, I tell people that you gave me this one and they all believe me".

I came home 2 nights ago from class, and sat down across the living room from her and my daughter and we watched the Packer's game. We both used to watch football together all the time. I started to coment a bit about Brett Favre and she seemed to be open for discussion about that. I made it short and then went up stairs to my office for the remainder of the evening. I have not said a word about our R since I moved back in and she mentioned she wanted a D. The other day, I left her a very quick note that said "BTW awesome job on the inside of the house. I can tell you must have spent a lot of time on it when you could have just relaxed and enjoyed your day off and I greatly appreciate that." I drew a smiley face with a "black eye" on it and a big LOL next to it. She had apparently spent her entire Sunday cleaning while I was on shift at the fire station. When I came home the next morning, the house was cleaner than I had ever seen it before.

I got nervous about the note because so far through our separation, she looks at every gesture as nothing more than a weak attempt to pursue her... she told me that all the things I have said to get her back were said with an ulterior-motive and that I just wanted to tell her what she wanted to hear. So I have been very hesitant to do much at all because I don't want her to think that I'm pursuing her anymore. On the other hand, I feel that if I go totally dark, I may be sending a message to her that I am finished with her and she'll reciprocate...

I have ordered both books of Michelle's and have scheduled my first coaching session for tomorrow. I am open to any help/advice from you vet's out there who know what I'm going through. Thanks for your input.

Aaron

[ms ladybug]

Welcome to the group! You'll find a lot of helpful advice and hugs around here.
I think the note was cute, and not at all "persuing". I don't think she'll see it as persuing either.
I'm glad you ordered the books. I think Divorce Remedy is going to help you a lot. I didn't read the other one.
Along with that, have you read the 5 Love Languages? It sounds like it when you refered to her "love tank". Anyways, that's a must read. You have to find what her love language is and speak it.

You're very new at this, so for now, just be calm, be up-beat, and give her space.
I think you made a wise-choice to move back home.

[firedog31d6]

Thanks ladybug

Yes I have read the 5 love languages by Gary Chapman, as well as "hope for the separated" and "love must be tough" by James Dobson. So I'm familiar with their insights when it comes to some things. Allthough the beginning of this separation was terrible, and I did and said all the wrong things at the wrong time, I sincerely hope that it's not too late to let the "right" things work their magic. My wife has been so cold to me over the last few months that I don't even recognize her anymore.

[goldeylox]

Hey firedog, Can you get your hands on a copy of CoDependent No More? I'm reading it now and it's quite helpful. Peace.

[firedog31d6]

Thanks,

I'll check into that when I'm done with DR books. I am a speed reader, so it should be a few days. Can I get it at B&N?

[Nugget]

Thanks,

I'll check into that when I'm done with DR books. I am a speed reader, so it should be a few days. Can I get it at B&N?

You should be able to. That is where I got my copy. Very helpful book.

[ms ladybug]

What I'd give to be a speed reader! My parents used to let me read books at night until I fell asleep and I think my brain worked some sort of read=sleep pattern into it. Now, reading makes me fall asleep. At any given time I have 4-5 books on my nightstand all only partly read. I get through them, just VERY SLOWLY.

Hope your day is going good. Don't worry about all the wrong things you said and did in the beginning. We've all done those things. Love Must be Tough was one that helped me see that.

And you won't recongnize your wife. She is an alien. She'll say and do things that you won't believe. She needs to in order to justify the things she's doing. She's going to be frustrated with you. Because you are OK, happy, GAL, and she's not. She thinks being without you will make her happy, but it won't.

It's a long road. Don't look for changes overnight. Baby steps.

[HopefultotheEnd]

Good advice ladybug. Sometimes the extent of the alien infestation is amazing.

[ms ladybug]

I know. I have these circles on my lawn of dead grass. My neighbor said it's some sort of lawn disease, but I call them my crop-circles. I told my mom that now I have evidence of the alien abduction!