Thanks, Lost, I'll give it a read. I really appreciate your post, and it touched me on a very hectic morning.
Puppy
After Awhile
In the youth of your days, together you’re one Bold and excited, it all seems fun In the morning of our years, you move together Happy and in love, there’s nothin’ you can’t weather In those heady early days, it call came so damned easy.
But
After awhile The heart grows colder After awhile You feel so much older And after awhile Your hope just fades away
After all Your dreams start dyin’ After more Of your nights spent cryin’ After all the time just slips away.
But you can’t go back, you can’t reconsider You can’t change the words that made us both so bitter You won’t take it back, even if you could and You won’t forgive, the sins and if you would I Might still feel that it’s just too damned late
Cuz
After awhile The heart grows colder After awhile You realize you’re older After awhile Your hope just fades away
After all Your dreams start dyin’ And after all this time I don’t even try cryin’ After all the time just slipped away. It all just faded away …
Puppy - I was sorry to read your news. You may find this time round that detaching is a little easier, in that you have all the neccessary tools within you.
You understand and believe you are worthy of more.
I feel for Mrs puppy as well as your children, as there are no winners.
Just a quick note regarding personal challenges both mentally and physically. Once we are adults, we are all capable of seeking the help we need. You cannot allow them to use that as an excuse. Show pity and you enable the behaviour to continue and that is not fair to them.
Puppy, I can't offer anything other than my thoughts and prayers for you and your family at this difficult time.
I know I wouldn't have made it through this far without you. And I'm sure many others feel the same way as evidenced by the number of posts already.
You are such a caring, giving person. The woman who finds you will be very lucky indeed.
Thanks, Pearl. Your newfound strength has helped ME, too, as it gives me hope and courage. Hell, I even cracked open a bottle of AMERICAN (Washington State) shiraz last nite, just cuz you told me to try it!!!
I fully expect that there is an OM2 somewhere in the picture. Women, especially, almost never try to end a marriage unless they have "a soft place to fall," and my wife has shown a particular pattern of not wanting to ever be alone and without the validation she craves. I couldn't guess the timeline of it, nor do I care to, because it really doesn't matter anymore. The fact is that I have well over 20 years of affair-free, she's-free-to-receive-my-love-anytime years under my belt with her, and it still didn't work. So yes, the ending of the marriage is mutual at this point. I could have (should have?) filed years ago, based on lack of affection, and I did (should have let it go thru?) file two years ago based on adultery.
But at this point, it's really not even important anymore which came first, the chicken or the egg. I will continue to call "bullshit" when I need to with her, as I always have, as it's good for my own self-esteem and it will also help her (hopefully) face her own issues and demons. If she says "there is no one else," I will say "I wish I could believe that, but I don't trust you," or "I'm not stupid." If she says she did the best she could then I'll simply say it wasn't enough for ME, anyway, and that only she can answer in her own heart whether or not she gave her best effort.
The bottom line is, this is a woman with an unhealthy need to receive something I'm not prepared to give, and I'm a man with a healthy need to receive much, MUCH more than she's shown a historical ABILITY to give.
Now I'm starting to see why we're so alike, Puppy.
My wife has been diagnosed with NPD. And guess what? Even though she knows she's a narcissist, it hasn't changed her behavior one bit. If anything, she's gotten worse since her therapist diagnosed her. She even quit IC soon after. Because if there's one thing a narcissist can't stand, it's the suggestion that he or she isn't perfect. Or that they're not entitled to feel the way they do and act the way they act.
My W is the same way when it comes to sex. She wanted to feel sexy, to look sexy, to have me and other men falling all over her. But she rarely wanted to have sex. It was all about her building up her fragile self-esteem by feeling wanted. The fact that she had a man who loved her and would stand by her, no matter what happened, wasn't good enough.
Over time, I realize that she made me feel bad about myself because it always felt like I wasn't living up to her expectations. I wasn't being the knight in shining armor she felt like she deserved. But anytime I called her on something like the lack of sex, or tried to talk about MY needs, she got super defensive and always ended up crying. So eventually I got worn down and stopped talking about my needs and walked around on egg shells around her. I slowly became Mr. Nice Guy, and I didn't realize it had happened until it was too late.
I've realized that someone with NPD rarely changes. It's something so ingrained in a person, that even IC rarely helps. Mainly because a narcissist will reject most of what an IC says. They feel like life is a movie and they're the main character. Everyone else is just an extra, there to make them feel good about themselves.
Which is why I'm on the verge of filing for a D. Do I really want to live my life with a woman who lacks empathy and is so self-absorbed that she can't see that my needs are as valid as hers?
Me: 33 WAW/MLC: 33 M: 4+, T: 10+ Separated: Nov 08 A#1: Oct 08 - Jan 09 (exposed and ended) A#2: Feb 09 - ? 1: http://tinyurl.com/mrmistakes 2: http://tinyurl.com/ckch9t 3: http://tinyurl.com/stillwaters3
God, can I relate. I feel like you just described my last 20 years.
I do feel like I might have been able to hold out hope, IF I saw in her some genuine introspection, ICing, book-reading, SOMETHING. But the simple truth is that this woman (or any NPD??) has NO interest in facing her own [censored].
NONE of us want to; but emotionally healthy people realize that they HAVE to at some point, especially when jarred by the potential loss of something dear to them like their marriage. My wife never did make that adjustment. You know, one of the collateral pieces of the intel that I gathered from the keylogger on the home computer (up until I bought her her own laptop three months ago) was that it was like a glimpse into my wife's soul. I could see what she Googled, and what web sites she went on, and therefore what was important to her.
Botox. Micro-derm abrasion. Tummy tucks. Plastic surgery of all kinds. Every wrinkle-removing and -smoothing lotion and cream known to man. And eventually, when she began her affair, it was "older women younger men" and some other things I won't even repeat here.
What WASN'T there? How to improve your marriage. How to reach out to your spouse. ANYTHING about better understanding HERSELF or any of her issues. NOTHING.
And interestingly, what of the things she used to cry to me about having a keylogger on the computer (agreed to as part of her transparency plan after her affair) was that she "couldn't go on message boards and support groups, the way you do, so that I can talk to people and get help."
OK, sounds healthy enough.
Except that now that she has her own laptop, even though I don't have a keylogger on it (a vow I made her that I have kept, despite her recent wayward behavior), I HAVE peeked at her web browser history.
Botox. Micro-derm abrasion. Tum -- oh, you get the idea.
It is sad. Deep down, people with NPD are depressed, lonely people. Because over time, people who are in constant contact with an NPD will start to feel bad about themselves. So they alienate the people around them. Which is why you'll see people with NPD lose friends over time. Either that, or they surround themselves with other NPD's.
I talked to my IC about NPD, and here's the list of common NPD traits he gave me:
amoral/conscienceless authoritarian care only about appearances contemptuous critical of others cruel disappointing gift-givers don't recognize own feelings envious and competitive feel entitled flirtatious or seductive grandiose hard to have a good time with hate to live alone hyper-sensitive to criticism impulsive naive passive pessimistic secretive self-contradictory unusual eating habits weird sense of time
Sounds great, right? Which makes me wonder why the heck I was so attracted to my W. The thing is, people NPD tend to be very successful in their careers and they're also very charming. They know how to get what they want. It's just that when they get it, they realize that they're still miserable. So they look for something else to fill the void, never stopping to say "Gee, maybe the problem lies inside me?"
Me: 33 WAW/MLC: 33 M: 4+, T: 10+ Separated: Nov 08 A#1: Oct 08 - Jan 09 (exposed and ended) A#2: Feb 09 - ? 1: http://tinyurl.com/mrmistakes 2: http://tinyurl.com/ckch9t 3: http://tinyurl.com/stillwaters3
"how is it bad for me and my kids for them to keep as much of their current routine as possible? (like me coming to their house to make them dinner a few nights a week)."
All I can tell you is: (1) Such a plan would keep your lives entangled in unhealthy ways. (2) The fantasy that such a scenario would work is as frequent (and as frequently false) among people embarking on the D road as the fantasy that one's WAS would-never-have/could-never-hide an A among newbies. Both are fantasies about how we would like the world to work that are seldom true.
Imagine that right after the D, XW has OM move in. But, she still wants you to come over and cook for the kids. Would this be OK? If not, then it shows that your comfort level hinges on what she does in her personal life. It shows that your life would still be about her, about her A, about her dating. Not good for anyone. Her personal life should have no bearing on you or your parenting. If you try to parent in her space, then you pollute your parenting with unneeded entanglement with her personal life.
As for her dating, I'm glad that you seem to be loosening your grip on the significance of that. Your life for a long time now has been all about her R's with OM. Time to make her R's with OM irrelevant to your life. The only rational thing to do at this point is to assume that she is dating and will date and base your choices on that assumption. For, your best evidence points to the truth of that assumption.
Thanks, OT -- that all makes sense, and gives me much to consider. We did agree to no OW/OM around our kids for a period of time (6 months to a year -- yet to be ironed out), so I don't think that will be an issue.
btw, I wrote this to my wife this morning:
Continuing to take S12 to school in the morning would be good -- for both him and me. It's part of his routine, and it will give us more time to spend together. I have no problem making them dinner on the nights you have to work, but once I have my own place I'll most likely just pick them up and take them there and then either bring them back to you or you can pick them up on your way home from work. From what I've started to read and learn about families going thru divorce (and I'm looking forward to learning more from those books), everyone says that it's best -- and least confusing for the kids -- to have some sort of clear separation of residences, and, really -- lives.
It will also be important (and healthy) for you and I, individually, to continue the process of emotionally detaching from each other so that, for instance, it's not painful when the other begins to date.
(Wife), I'm sorry if I come across as "cold" sometimes in this, but what you're hearing in my voice (or reading in my words) is just this "detachment" that we each must go thru. I'm certainly not trying to be a dikk or anything, but the reality is that there's going to be legal, financial and logistical details to be worked thru -- a LOT of them (and some of them will continue for years) -- and, like a surgeon that can't get too emotionally wrapped up in a patient in order to be effective -- speaking only for myself I do find the need to pull away emotionally in order to protect my heart. I hope that makes sense.
I don't know all the financial details yet -- we need to work those out. I know I want to be fair, and WILL be fair. Child support is a given (it's just a formula anyway), so that's not an issue. It will come down to spousal support, and what I am able and willing to give you, and for how long. Unfortunately, until we can sell our house, most if not all of that support will have to come in the form of continuing to pay for the mortgage, utilities, and joint debts and expenses, which all add up to far more than any fair alimony amount. We'll have to separate what is child support (again -- a given), what are your individual expenses to be your responsibility, which are my individual expenses to be MY responsibility, and then what is a fair split of JOINT debts and expenses -- obviously, in fair proportion to our income-earning ability.
To be blunt, I don't think either one of us has even BEGUN to fathom what a change in our lifestyle this will entail, even WITHOUT thousands of dollars in legal fees. It's not just paying a second RENT -- it's all of the expenses that go with that -- utilities, some furniture, etc. And then there are the physical burdens of additional work for each of us, maintaining our place of residence and caring for the boys when they are with us. The simple truth is, that a man and a woman, living together and sharing their income, talents, abilities and efforts, IS the most efficient way to run a life and to provide for children, and without each other as a "helpmate" it will be much, much harder.
The boys will have to step up -- and GROW up -- substantially. We've sheltered them from the amount of work that a 16 year old and a 12 year old ought to be doing, and that's our fault, and we'll need to help them adjust to their new realities. The girls (esp. D20) are going to have to make some financial adjustments, too.
I'm not saying all of this to scare you or be overly dramatic, but I do want to call a spade a spade and be realistic about what lies ahead for both of us. The "clean" way of doing these things, financially, is to either sell the primary residence, liquidating its equity among the two divorcing parties, or else one of us buying the other out and deciding to remain in the home. And then you come up with the child support formula, and figure out a fair amount and period of time for spousal support (alimony), which the primary earner would pay in the form of a monthly check to the one who primarily stayed home. We're obviously not in that situation, and as it stands right now I don't even know how I can afford a second residence and still continue to pay a proportional amount of our joint debts and expenses. Maybe the mediator can give us some ideas here, since he's been thru this hundreds of times with people.
This will not be easy -- on ANY of us -- but I'm confident and hopeful we can get thru it with as much kindness, civility and grace as we can, for the good of the family.
Puppy
I'm almost certain you'll say that that was "too nice," but I really am trying to keep it that way IF I can. If her actions then show that I CAN'T, then I will adjust accordingly, as my first obligation is to my kids and then to myself in this.
