Trying to move on

[ClingingToHope]

if you haven't fully done the D, there's hope, isn't there? You need to GAL in the meantime, but don't give up.

Thanks, but I have given up hope. The D will go through. W is bound and determined.

I have not given up hope that down the line, after the D and the house issues are cleared up, that W will realize that I wasn't the reason for her unhappiness.

She's in a continual search for that magic thing that will make her happy. And from 1996 until the end of 2006, we were able to find those things. We bought a house then a better one, we had a kid, then another one, she got promoted, I got promoted, she got promoted, the money was getting better and better.

Then at the end of 2006 a lot just crashed. She got passed over for a promotion by someone younger she hated. I got demoted at work in 2004 and become "super dad," which in a round-about way worked against me because she felt like she didn't measure up. The ADHD issues cropped up and every day was a crisis at school. She stopped taking hormone pills because they made her hungry but still she started to gain weight.

I can go on and on. I didn't turn to anyone, tried to figure things out on my own, and we weren't talking. And now there's no hope that the fog will lift until she actually sees the grass on the other side.

As for D7. We've been going to counseling for her since 2006 and when she loses it, the big blowup, we have to hold her arms and legs and even head a bit because she likes to bite.

Luckily that has happened a lot less because she's getting older and we've figured out the triggers. The big thing we did wrong in the old days was when she did lose it, W especially, would punish her to try to get her to stop. That's called feeding the emotional fire.

By the time it was all over, she was grounded for a month, she'd lost all her toys, every trip we were ever going to take in the future was cancelled.

Then W would go back on all of it anyway -- and then blame me for not being tough enough on her.