How do I act?

[rr22]

I'm not sure. It's an odd situation. Most people on here make a lot of mistakes at the beginning and it sometimes blows over. Maybe apologize after he meets with them. It may wind up being with a military counselor adn maybe it won't be as terrible as he is anticipating. He might just blast you and blame you now while he's worried about it. Not sure. Maybe someone else with a military background can chime in and help you here.?...

[flowmom]

Meg, it's true that most people react in the "wrong" way in the beginning. The realization is so shocking and most people click into a mode of desperation, without having the info to follow a plan. You just have to move forward from here and do what you can to take care of yourself, and avoid doing anything that makes the sitch work.

[Surviving03]

rr22, I think you may be right, I think it could blow over and maybe he wont be angry at me about it, I think he understand that this is just kind of how the military deals with things. I have been concerned that maybe there is a OW since he completely stopped contacting me, and I had emailed a lady that I know over where he is to ask her if she has heard anything about OW, but she has not responded to me (this was on facebook so I know she has been on there since I wrote her) so that made me nervous that she knew something she just didnt want to tell me. But I feel a little bit confident that maybe there is not OW since my husband felt very defensive that he hadnt "done anything wrong, this is just a personal issue between him and his wife" because he does know how the military treats situations of infidelity, and especially since he is in Iraq, you are absolutely not allowed to have sex while you are there, regardless of if you are single or not. So I thought, if he had been up to something he may not have been so quick to say "i havent done anything" he may have worried instead, oh crap, do they know??? But this could all be wishful thinking on my part. So far I dont have any reason to believe that there is someone else.

I almost cant believe that I havent wrote him in almost a week and that hasnt made him curious what im doing and tried to contact me.... and im trying to decide how i can "go dark" when he comes home. its very possible we will live in the same house, or he could also move out to the dormatory, or he could have me sent home to the states.

We had booked a cruise to celebrate him coming home from Iraq, and to celebrate our anniversary, and after he had said to me that IF his feelings change when he came home, he wouldnt fight it, I asked if he still wanted to take the cruise with me to get some time together, and he said No, he thinks it would be a bad idea. So, since I cannot get a refund, I was going to just hang on to the cruise and hope that he may change his mind when he got home (the cruise is 2 weeks after he comes back) or my other option is to change the name of the person and go with a friend, but the last day the travel agency gave me to have that option is only 1 day after my H gets home from Iraq. So I obviously wont know 1 day later if he might change his mind. So I think I am going to plan to go with a friend regardless, Im just nervous that might be the wrong choice, because either things improve with us, or things are sort of improving and then I up and leave for a week....or it could be me getting a life and doing my own thing not worried about what he wants or does. Any advise?

[Surviving03]

I finally figured out how to link my story in my signature! yay me! well anyways... my life has been taken over by these blogs, all I do is sit here and read everybody's stories for hours. I wish I could offer advise but I dont feel like im in the position to do so yet. I orderd both DR and DB, but since I live overseas I doubt they will get here before my husband comes home from Iraq (march 18). I am debating calling in for a phone session, I guess I am too cheap right now to put up the money for it. I am so nervous I am going to be without a job soon if my husband sends me back to the states.

For anyone reading my story, does it even make any sense?? Thats whats so hard for me, I cant wrap my head around any of it. I just feel so blind sided and I just cant quite put my finger on how this happened. I go back and re-read some old letters and emails my H sent me while he has been deployed, and I just cannot believe that a couple weeks of arguing led to THIS! and he had said to me that he feels that even tho we love eachother, he just feels like we both are not satisfied with how our marriage was going (NOT true!) I had said to him a couple times when we were fighting and he was driving me crazy that if he was going to act like this then i didnt want him to come home! I know that is a terrible thing to say to someone who is off in a war zone... but i was so annoyed... i obviously regret that now but he knows how much I love him and want to be with him. The things he has said to try to explain why he wants a divorce have just been all over the place.... first it was that we fight too much and he doesnt want to be in an unhappy marriage and realize it down the road and end up with a broken family, then he said he just feels like he wants to make his own decisions in life (i.e. getting out of the military or not, what to do after he gets out the military, go out with his friends) and not have to worry about who his decisions are affecting and he cant me happy until he is happy, and then I love you but I havent been in love with you for awhile, to I just feel in my heart that we arent the people who can make eachother happy, to we got married for the wrong reasons and just went thru the motions, to well IF my feelings change when i get home then i wont fight it but I cant promise they will change, to no more contact. But its so crazy because up until this point, we have been MADLY in love... we were still newly weds and we certainly acted like it.

One thing I havent mentioned so far is that when my husband first was telling me about the issues in our marriage he was having he told me that it kinda started after he had been talking to his daughters mother and they were kinda reminiscing on some old times and it happened to be in the midst of our fighting and it just got him remembering how easy breezy his relationship was with her and he didnt understand why we couldnt be like that. They supposedly never fought, just were friends and had fun all the time. They ended up growing apart because of his job in the military and she didnt want that life style, she is now happily married to another man. The difference between that relationship and ours is that we are MARRIED they never were, they were together in HIGH SCHOOL and shorty afterwards, there is an entirely different set of stressors in those two scenarios, of COURSE they didnt argue like we do!

I really believe that this only came about because he is in a stressful environment and had all the time in the world to think think and think and convinced himself that we are not happy. Which is why I am hopeful that when he comes home he may see things different, but he is so stubborn and because of all the bombarment he has been getting, I just dont know what he is gonna do. And the fact that he completely stopped talking to me... well I dont know what to think of that.

[Surviving03]

wow... hindsight is 20/20..... I was hanging out with married couple tonight and they argue ALL the time and they both seem so miserable and they both complain to their friends about the other one and how he/she does this all the time or he/she doesnt do this and it drives me crazy, etc.... and I was just listening and observing and thinking back to my own fights with my H, and how it probably looked from the outside looking in. When in argument, you dont see what YOU are doing wrong, only what the other person is doing. You dont see that what you are yelling about seems ridiculous to someone observing, and i sat there and analyzed how each person could be handling the situation better..... WHY COULDNT I SEE THIS BEFORE MY H DECIDED HE HAD ENOUGH?? Man! I am a very self-aware person, and I can admit my faults and I now know what they in fact were..... of course he wasnt happy with how things were, neither was I.... I just never got to the point where i was fed up enough that i wanted out. Unfortunately, he did. And im pretty certain that the begging and pleading and reasoning that I did do when my husband first told me, I didnt make it clear to him that i DO in fact understand what he was feeling and why he was feeling that way. NOW I KNOW! I am so tempted to write him an email explaining this revelation that I had... but Im sure thats not what im supposed to do.

I see now why 50% of M end in D... and why 50% of those never should have. When someone tells you "marriage is work" they mean, its not always going to be the rainbows and butterflys and "in love" euphoria that it seems at first... and once you get to your lowest point... the WORK begins... unfortunately, thats where it goes wrong for people. Either one or both people are not willing to do the work, or one or both people dont know how to do the work. They dont discover the tools necessary to make the marriage work.... well.... tools... here I am! Bring it on!! I KNOW what I need to do.... I need to learn to choose my battles, I need to learn how to convey to my spouse that I do trust him, I need to learn how to approach a topic without being overbearing and disrespectful of his feelings about the topic.... I need to allow him to be more of himself, make decisions for himself and not try to control everything. I need to remember that loving him means loving HIM and allowing him to be just that.......

Geez!!! If only I could get him to see.... I GET IT!

[Surviving03]

I am really fighting myself right now.... should i write him and let him know I havent been listening to what he was really feeling... I was only pleading for him to stay with ME, trying to show him that he really does love ME... I wasnt listening to HIM and HIS feelings... I get it now... i really really get it... he does deserve to be happy and he isnt, and I deserve to be happy and i wasnt... but man, do I see how things could have been waaaayyyyy different if I just had the tools and could really see where the problems were.... its a bad idea to write him isnt it?? I just feel like he has NO idea that I actually understand his feelings....

[Cautious]

Don't write anything. The bomb was only a month ago. Keep being dark. Let him contact you. You're getting there as far as getting it, but you're not all the way yet. You don't get that going dark means no contact. Let him worry about you. He EXPECTS you to call him, to beg him, to plead with him. Snap the safety net. He thinks he knows you so well. Time to change his mind.

How are you doing on GALing? When's the last time you let loose and had a REALLY good time?

[Surviving03]

thank you for writing me Cautious... I did not write him, I did type up a sort of letter/journal as if i was writing it to him to kinda get it out of my system of expressing it, but its just something I have saved to my computer.

I am not doing very well at GAL. I was doing some things here and there but I am in a tough position where I live. I live on a small military base in Turkey. I had a few really good friends but they moved shortly before this happened so what I have now is just some acquaintances. I did go out for a co-workers going-away party a few nights ago and had an OK time. If I was in the States near my family and friends this would be a ton easier.

I was thinking that maybe the cruise that im now taking with an acquaintance/friend instead of my H would be a good thing to get away and do my own thing... but this is after he comes home and a whole new set of challenges could arise.

Do you think its strange that two weeks have gone by and he has not contacted me at all??

[Surviving03]

Im trying to decide if I should be at the house or not when he gets back... I already decided that I wasnt going to meet him at the airport because since its off base in a foreign country, they have someone from base go and get him, I could ride along, but in an effort to avoid public rejection, I decided not to go and wait at the house. But now I wonder if I should not even be here when he gets here.... what does anyone think of that?? I mean I would come home later that night... but not for a few hours after he gets here...

[dburt]

If you know when he's coming home, do you think you could be out getting a bite to eat, is it scary for a woman alone to get off base in Turkey, or can you safely go out and have a nice dinner somewhere, or do some shopping? Anything, but I advise you not to be there when he gets there, let him call you and wonder why you are not there for him.

Burt