WAW and 4 kids

[tryingtilDorR]

Mental Exhaustion - I am feeling it. My whole body is tired.

I am feeling more frustrated and angry these past few days and you can see it in my posts above I think. I have been thinking a lot about how I have been living with someone who doesn't want to be with me anymore and has been telling me this for a year now. She wants out so much that she has moved to another bedroom. We have had sex once in the past year and she shudders when I try to touch her (I stopped doing that many many months ago). She had/has a R with an OM that she had admitted at one time that she had 'feelings' for and also realized that she needed to 'find somebody' to be happy with before she is too old, because she couldn't be happy with me.

The only thing keeping her around is the kids, her guilt over ending her M and breaking up the family, and our comfortable life. This is not news, but now looking back at how long she has been in this state it is sobering on a new level. IT's been a year and that should be telling me something (I have always thought, give it another month or two and it will change, blah blah blah).

We have 4 kids which is why we endure, and I was blindsided after being with this woman for over 25 years and looking at the situation as optimistically as possible (I couldn't envision us not being together), but now the reality is really settling in.

She isn't "waking up". For the first time I almost feel like if she left (and paid for it herself) it would almost be a relief. Maybe I am kidding myself, but maybe not.

The thing I look forward to now are no longer my unrealistic dreams of a happy M with my W down the road. It seems so far-fetched now since my 'conditions' around R can't ever be met - I can't ever see her wanting to do these things: NO contact with OM, NO inappropriate friendships with other men, total transparency about phone and who she spends tiem with and where.

Instead I look forward to days where the day-to-day strain of this M/R is lifted due to the W's removal from my life or at least from my emotions. I may be fooling myself since S/D will bring new anguish and complications most likely. However, seeing the W every day in our home and dealing with her is becoming stressful in a new way for me. I think this is due to new feelings of anger over the situation, which seems to have replaced hope/sorrow/determination.

If I cut down on negative self-talk and mind-reading it helps to keep my sanity, but the strain and cold reality of it all is wearing on me now and I feel it.

With the holidays coming up, and birthdays and an anniversary just behind me it adds even more to the pile I think, but I know it is also hard for her. She wants out and would be gone if she could afford it I think. She is browsing for more work online and also looking at rentals.

At least she is taking responsbility for her action to leave and realizing she needs to work more, etc. (I think anyway - I could get served with papers stating otherwise any day since she did visit a L about 2 weeks back).