She started exercising after a sort of New Years resolution in '07. She had never done it before and really started enjoying it. As she lost weight, she did buy new clothes but they were the same type of clothes that she had before. No major changes in hair, nails, makeup, etc... She has always kept these things up to high standards. Her new job came about the middle of last year. It was a promotion internally within her company. If there is someone at work, I have no idea who it would be. Up until she left there were no "fishy" events that would raise my suspicions. Romance was still there (actually the Tuesday before the bomb), we were still going out and kissing each other goodbye in the morning. We slept close and snuggled like always even the week between the bomb and her moving. Actually since she has left, she has only been out to dinner with her girlfriends a few times. She mostly stays home and watches movies when not working. Her girlfriend told me that she stayed in bed most of the weekend last weekend and didn't leave the apartment much at all. She is trying to get back into working out, but is having a difficult time. She has had to go on blood pressure medicine because it is going all over the map. Maybe a depression?
One thing that she told me the other night that further makes me feel that she isn't having a PA is that she has gotten off of her birth control since our separation. She has always been very paranoid about being on bc and making sure not to mess anything up. She said that she chose to get off of it to see how her hormones react and didn't think she would need it for a while any how (we were joking around when she said that). She did change to this new birth control last year and I have wondered if hormones were affecting this. I am torn because I don't want thoughts like that to be an easy out for my interpretation of her unhappiness in recent years.
Even her closest girlfriends and mother were blown away by her decision to separate. She had never indicated to them that she was unhappy in marriage in any way. Many of them feel betrayed because she didn't turn to them with what was going on inside of her. Her mother is calling me for updates, because my W just keeps saying that she is confused and doesn't know what she wants. That is the same thing that I keep hearing as well. They have always been very close to one another.
One major event that happened in our lives was that her father got ill and passed away ~'06 timeframe. The tough part about this is that when he got sick here in the states, he had to go to Saudi Arabia to be treated (her mother is American, her father is Saudi) due to insurance requirements. Since she was married to myself (an American) there wasn't an easy way to get her back in the country. In Saudi they considered her to be a Saudi woman. To make a long story short, my W never had any closure with her father's death. I would try to talk with her about it and she would get angry and defensive. It became a topic that was taboo for her and she bottled up these feelings.
As far as me doing things for her that I didn't want to do, I just looked at that as part of the give and take of marriage. I thought it would be best for me to keep negativity to myself and go with the flow. Don't get me wrong, there were times that I didn't agree with something and we would have disagreements, but I always liked to pick which battles to fight. The smaller ones didn't seem worth it to me.
I did feel better the other morning after telling her that it was unacceptable for her to call me up and start bashing me when she knew I was with a friend. It made me feel like I was setting a boundary, although she flipped it around and tried saying that I started it. I didn't argue with her, I just told her that there is a time and place for those discussions and that was neither the time nor the place. It was a scary thing to do, because I felt like I was pushing her away. On the other hand, I felt that it had to happen.
M 30 WAW 29 T 15 M 5 ILYBNILWY 3/8/09 Separated 3/14/09
