I stumbled into this website and I've been lurking here for a couple of weeks, and have really only two words, "holy crap!". My sitch is a year old now, and I can only wish I'd been here sooner because this place is a godsend. Here's my story.
Last Christmas Eve, as W and I were wrapping presents and preparing the tree for the kids, W put away a bottle of white wine, pretended to not be plastered, then drank two more shots of vodka. After spending some time in the bathroom, I carried her to bed at 11pm and then stayed up til 2:30 finishing the tree. 2 weeks later, in the same conversation, I discover that she's been diagnosed for clinical depression and alcoholism, and that she's been having a full blown EA/PA for the previous 13 months with a doctor at the hospital where she is an RN. OM is married, with 2 grown kids, and his first texted words to her after she told him I knew were "I'm not leaving my wife".
So, in early 2009 I made most of the classic DB mistakes, offering forgiveness, making decisions based on fear and emotions, not taking care of myself, and certainly not detaching. W entered rehab in Mar, and tomorrow is her 11th month of sobriety. I also failed to properly set a boundary about contact with OM, as W continued to work in close proximity, and because I was afraid of Mrs. H91's reaction, I chose not to expose the affair. There was most likely continued EA, but not PA, and there were several deceits exposed (secret email accounts, or email at work). OM had several other concurrent affairs, according to my W. In Aug, W retired from the service and the military hospital where she works, (I am military, as is the OM), and 2 months later she was hired back as a govt civilian in a totally different capacity, but in the same building. This did not happen without my input, and although I was uncomfortable with the situation, there were several reasons that I accepted it.
W's general philosophy has been "I'm working on myself, and I can only handle maintaining my sobriety right now. When I feel like I can handle the emotions of working on our marriage without picking up a drink, then we can work on our relationship". Both she and I have been in IC since Feb 09, and in addition to her rehab and AA program (which is pretty strong), I've been involved in Al-Anon, also since Feb. This has given me huge support, and opened me up to the concepts of detaching with love, and on how to learn to love myself more.
I have been only partially successful at truly giving her space to work things out, mostly (I think), because I didn't realize I needed to set a boundary (for me, regardless of her reaction) and therefore I never felt confident that I could let her go. Currently, we are still living together (and sleeping in the same bed, although there has been no physical intimacy or even much touching for 2 years or so). We have improved our communication and parenting skills, and her sobriety has made a huge difference, in that she is much more emotionally (and physically) available to the children at night, instead of pounding 2 big glasses of wine before dinner, getting a pleasant buzz on that allowed her to numb the pain and then passing out as the children are in the bathtub getting ready for bed.
She has said several times that she's waiting for the physical feelings to come back, but she has no desire to touch or be touched by me. Our sex life has never been optimal (mostly my issue, not so much the mechanics, but more I'd say that I lacked confidence in the bedroom, and found it safer to withdraw than to risk being rejected or feel inadequate as a lover, which ironically, is exactly what ended up happening)
So, here's our latest. When she first returned to the hospital in late Nov, at the end of the first week, OM mistakenly emailed her home (transparent to me) account with the one liner "good morning beautiful angel". According to her, this was the first communication they'd had since she left the hospital on 1 August (which I know was false, due to some computer intel), but even so, it struck me that this was not a greeting from someone you'd not talked to in nearly 4 months. Since she knew I'd see the email, she preemptively sent one to OM stating in no uncertain terms that it was over, and that although her presence in the hospital may seem like an invitation, she was doing her best to work things out at home if she could. He replied to the home account again with some rather lame "me too, I was just saying hello" sort of email, and I took it mostly at face value, knowing that I had no way to monitor her work emails. In mid December on a Mon morning, I was in her office at Hosp for coffee before going to work, and asked her if there were emails from OM on her computer. She got offended (unsurprisingly, i guess) and asked me if I wished to look, grandly gesturing to the keyboard. I said that in fact, yes, I did wish to look, and within 30 seconds found 25+ email exchanges in the deleted items folder dated the prior thurs and fri. The email exchanges appeared to be initiated by W, and frankly, they were brief, and mundane, and had the smell of her chasing him and him placating her in order to not cause a ruckus, but I only briefly glanced through them, and my emotions were running fairly hot. It was only after this last deceit that I fairly clearly ( I think) laid the boundary down about contact with OM being unacceptable, and if it continued, then I could no longer be in the relationship(and actually meant it, finally).
That evening, we spent some time talking about R, or more accurately, talking about ourselves. W (who has a history of childhood physical abuse, not sexual) is very closed, has no self esteem, and invests her self worth in how others see her, and she was very open about several issues in the R. She admitted that she would go for "as long as she could stand it" then reach out to OM to ensure she wasn't the only one feeling the pain of the loss of their relationship.
So, shortly after that, I discovered this site, and have managed to find solace and some structure in how to detach from the outcome of this situation, and how to truly focus on myself, and most importantly, I think I realized how I had lost my self respect, and that of my wife. Several threads, and many posts by Puppy, Sandi, Robx and others were exactly what I needed. I am a senior officer in the military, have over 2500 hours flying Navy aircraft on and off of aircraft carriers, and have always been an influential, confident, decisive and successful leader, but somehow I had lost myself in my R, and failed to be those things in my W's eyes, and worse, became the clingy, needy, wimpy victimized H.
Now I find myself in sort of a no mans land of DB'ing. We had been seeing MC up through May, but MC said IC was more critical, and MC'ing was counter productive until W was able to work through issues of depression, alcholism, etc. Now, after latest crisis, she's agreed to return to MC. I believe she's open to reconciliation. She's openly stated that OM is not the answer (rehab and IC have been helpful here), but that she's not sure she wants to remain in M, either. I feel like I'm not in the full DB'ing mode of going dark, and fully detaching, but on the other hand, I don't know if we're ready for the kind of work DR allows you to do assuming both parties are committed to M. So, I feel like I'm working to GAL, and to be the man and father that any woman would be crazy to leave. It feels good, mostly, but its tough work for sure.
There are probably more holes in that post than in a 10 pound brick of swiss cheese, and I'll be happy to fill them in as they're exposed. Some other things...
1. It's generally accepted in AA that no major life changes should be made in the first year of sobriety. An alcoholics emotional growth ceases when they begin drinking, so i'm essentially married to a 22 year old. February marks 12 months, so we've agreed to maintain the status quo until then.
2. She is a fantastic mother, and is not in any way shape or form abandoning the children for the OM, nor do we seem to have (at the moment anyhow) any issues with trying to use the children to influence the R.
3. This is my 2nd M (no kids in first one, lasted 6 years), her first. I strongly identify with Chap one in DR (and DB, i think) about D not being the answer its cracked up to be. I initiated my first D, and though it was probably the right move, it was the hardest thing i've ever done. I'm the product of D (when I was 5, sister was 2) and although my folks did OK and were amicable, I NEVER wanted to put my kids through that. This contributes, perhaps, to my desire to remain in M despite my W's belief that I should have given up and walked out long ago, because she's done too much damage.
Finally, my latest questions are:
1. Although I essentially set a boundary, I DID not use the classic wording found throughout these posts, and I wonder if I need to clarify that and restate it. It feels like it might be overkill, but on the other hand, I want to be clear, and if its right for me to clarify, then I don't want to not do it because of worrying about what Ms H91 will say or feel or how she will react.
2. Exposure. It's been a year. I wonder if I should inform OMW. Not to inflict pain on him or revenge, but because if it was me, and she'd known, I'd have wanted to know sooner. Again, I have a hard time separating my feelings on what's right as opposed to my feelings on how W might react and how that would make me feel.
3. What do I want to get out of MC? I think SBT is brilliant, and that's probably the answer to my question, in order to address the problems in our R before the A, and develop goals to solve those, but it bears thinking about.
All right, that's surely enough. In advance, I'd like to thank the veterans who will surely swing through (Puppy, Sandi, Robx, Cutter, etc) and now that i've "broken the ice" with this first post, I think I'll show up in a few other threads that I've been following with interest recently (GW,Tridoc, GIMA, futureunknown, to name a few), hang in there, fellas.
