need help with communication/DB strategy

[rr22]

I don't know if your H has a fantasy OW in mind or wants the single life. I do think he is being very disrespectful and controlling by trying to break up with his wife long-distance and trying to CONTROL whether or not she is allowed into their apartment in "his" town. What? Seems like he thought he could divorce by text. He is either depressed or extremely disrespectful. You deserve better. I also find it ridiculous that he's rewriting history by acting like he's suffered so financially when you're the one who got depleted by the arrangement you both agreed to.

Hope you find some patience to deal with what will surely be a load of b.s. Keep listening. At least you will know what his current take on it is.

[rr22]

by the way, my H has been "wondering" if he has depression since last summer. he's no better and still seeking care from different ICs. ICs have done nothing for him and he has done almost nothing for himself. he's now the same or worse except he picked up more bad habits.

i'm only telling you this to possibly save you some time. if your H is depressed and needs meds and won't do that or even do exercise or meditation like they recommend and is drinking or smoking or whatever, you have a long haul ahead of you. it will not necessarily "lift" on its own even if he hopes it will or hopes divorcing you and dating will make it lift. or with just counseling (venting) necessarily. he will just be divorced, dating, and depressed saying "why did divorce not cure my depression?"

how long are you willing to deal with that for a guy who may not want children if you do?

once again, i'm sorry to be blunt. i'm just trying to spare you some of what i've experienced this year. i know our sitches aren't the same. but a psychologist told me many months ago that depression can last YEARS untreated or not treated correctly. how many months and years do you wish to be blamed for someone's mood?

offer to fix that which is real and that which you did contribute to. apologize for it. be pleasant and don't add fuel to the fire. but there seems to be no quick recipe to cure depression or a blamefest.

[rr22]

4lc:
he whole discussion also led to him telling me the very "flattering" detail that "he is attracted by other women but not by me."



Hatefulness masquerading as honesty. Don't take it personally. He isn't attracted by you because he "hates" you now. Your decisions, not his, made his life misery, created his mood, made him make all the decisions he made, etc etc etc.

No one is attracted to the target of their blame. He is demonizing you. I'm sure you are very attractive.

[Fourleafclover]

Once again, rr22, your suggestions make lot of sense. And thanks for cheering me up with the attractiveness comment! Yep, I am or at least I am seriously working on it ! Part of the GAL program I have been losing weight (one thing that I neglected during our marriage and regret it so much; H never said anything until in December in MC when he said that "he is concerned for my health." Oh my, isn't my H the model of confrontation avoidance (until he exploded with all the accumulated stuff...)

I wanted to post on some of my GAL activities, so that it doesn't seem like I am crying from sunrise till sunset.
--I've joined a hiking club on meetup (I recommend meetup to people who go through our situation; there are a variety of groups out there and oftentimes it costs very little to participate in activities. There must be a couple of creeps on each of these groups, but with the usual caution, they can be avoided)
--I started running (ok, it's more like slow jogging, but when I started in January I could barely run for 3 mins without collapsing with breathlessness). I followed the "run for 2 mins, walk for 5 mins" program, gradually increasing the running time, until I got to run for 30 mins)
--I am now taking a Pilates class

180s that I've done or have been trying to work on
--I've started going to bed at more reasonable hours (between 11:30 and 12:30). This has been a serious issue with my H, as he told me that I did not care about his need to go to bed early and that on weekend evenings he had to "wage little wars" to get us to go to bed. Translation=he had to tell me earnestly "I really have to go to bed."
--I work on my appearance and my diet
--I try (and have managed recently) to avoid crying when I speak to H. He used to hate it as he felt guilty for hurting me. It is also the reason why he imagined that certain things should not be shared with his wife...Oh dear...I can certainly take the truth; it's what's hidden and left to the imagination that floors me.
--I am trying to better manage my time. Trying is the key word here, unfortunately, as I have been so thrown off by everything that has happened and the whole emotional roller coaster. This has been another big issue with us, as I sometimes work into the wee hours when I feel pressed by a deadline; or just pressed for time. But this is a change that I definitely need to make for myself (not for H)!

[Fourleafclover]

Seems like he thought he could divorce by text. He is either depressed or extremely disrespectful.

Yep! I think this is his fantasy. if I could just disappear somehow....I don't think he even realizes how disrespectful it is. Trying to set some boundaries has worked (at least short term). At least now his emails now start with "Hi W," and oftentimes (but not always) have a sign off line. Argh!

Hope you find some patience to deal with what will surely be a load of b.s. Keep listening. At least you will know what his current take on it is.

I guess that's the only thing I can find out at this point. We are preparing the famous meeting "on neutral territory" (which turns out to be more expensive than I wanted). But at least he has volunteered to take 2 days off from work (from a crazy stash of vacation days that he has been accumulating; he barely took any time off last year). Actually this gets me to think that he might have some real hoarding tendencies.

We have exchanged some pleasant emails with reciprocal thanks for flexibility. In the last one I suggested that we could wait until the beginning of July when I return from Europe. His response: that's rather late...I need to think about it.

So suspense

[Number 8]

4lc said:
And last year was a very tough one for me at work. I had to work a lot even when I was with him. he was very supportive but it seems that all that summer full of work took its toll. Now I have achieved a milestone at work, and I have failed at my marriage. It's devastating!


I know what this feels like. Doesn't feel good.

You two are not alone. This is a factor in my situation, too. It's not fair that they support your work but then use the time it took you to achieve whatever it was against you.

[Number 8]

The discussion was really painful. For the first time I could hear the anger in H's voice (he is a really nice and considerate guy, and I think a lot of the damage in the past was done with the best intentions: I think he though he would hurt me by telling me what his needs were). Now he laid all the blame on me: in our marriage everything happened the way I wanted it; he never got what he wanted (a simple life, the ability to come home in the evening happy to see his wife); he knows I had no intention to hurt him but the result was very painful for him. He told me that there's no hope for us together and no possibility of happiness in our marriage.

Oh. My. Gosh. I feel like you've been eavesdropping at my house, only you were here in January and February. That conversation was devastating. I felt like I would die, especially when he told me that he didn't think he could ever be happy with me, things would never change, and he wasn't ever coming back.

This was incredibly painful to listen to (but I did listen, and made myself not reply). It was doubly painful to hear the hurt he is going through and to which I have unwittingly contributed and also to see how he's been rewriting our history. It is a seriously revisionist history . . . And if he feels that everything happened the way I wanted it, it's because he did not say he disliked the way things were arranged.

I did that, too. Sat there and listened to it all. I let him vent and rant and rave. I didn't contradict him, defend myself, or make excuses. Some of the stuff he said to me was outrageous, but I didn't point out the rewrites. I hated those moments.

[I felt as if he was trying to blackmail me emotionally, as he was saying that "he needs all this hurt to end" with our divorce. I stood my ground and told him that I cannot agree to a divorce now, both psychologically (I am not there emotionally, I have not made sense of what has happened) and morally (I believe spouses should not run away at the first obstacle they encounter).

Yes, yes, yes. Heard my own version of this, too. My H said that he "needed to protect himself," "just wanted to be happy," and "deserved to be happy because he is a good person." I don't disagree with him, per se, but am I not a good person, too? Whose "happiness" trumps the other's?

It makes me so sad to think what an image of our marriage and myself he is painting to these people.

I've wondered several times what H has put out there for others. There's no telling what he's told others, especially based on the alternate reality I've received from him.

He insisted that we cannot possibly stay under the same roof...How painful!

Yes! It kills! Mine told me that it made his stomach hurt to think about coming back to our home. That didn't help the way I felt about any chances for reconciliation.

Now I am trying to get my thoughts and feelings together in preparation for such a meeting (I am so afraid that I might crumble and start crying...). And do I tell him that he misinterprets our past (by pointing out what I have done for our marriage)?

If you tell him that he misinterprets your past, he may do what my H has done--NOT BELIEVE IT. My H got defensive and became even more determined to prove to me how bad it all was, how hard he tried, and how I stomped his dreams of happiness and laughed as he watched me do it. Delusion, maybe, but it's their delusion. You have to let them have it for a while.

Check out meetup.com and see if there's a laughter yoga club in your city. It will make you feel ridiculous, but in a good way. After all, you've read MY experiences there . . .

[Fourleafclover]

You two are not alone. This is a factor in my situation, too. It's not fair that they support your work but then use the time it took you to achieve whatever it was against you.

The twisted thing is that last year, when I was working a lot, I had a tremendous amount of energy, because achieving my goal at work would also clear one more obstacle on the path to our getting together (by making me more eligible for other jobs, etc). Now, that I have a bit more time, I have no real desire to plow on. Don't get me wrong, I love what I do (I teach--yeah, Number 8, even that we have in common), and I know the passion will come back, but right now I feel no pull towards my work...Sigh...

[Number 8]

You two are not alone. This is a factor in my situation, too. It's not fair that they support your work but then use the time it took you to achieve whatever it was against you.

The twisted thing is that last year, when I was working a lot, I had a tremendous amount of energy, because achieving my goal at work would also clear one more obstacle on the path to our getting together (by making me more eligible for other jobs, etc). Now, that I have a bit more time, I have no real desire to plow on. Don't get me wrong, I love what I do (I teach--yeah, Number 8, even that we have in common), and I know the passion will come back, but right now I feel no pull towards my work...Sigh...

I've gone through a lull with mine at times since we separated, too, but I also love being at work because I barely have time to think about H. H has job-hopped so much that he doesn't understand someone really enjoying what they do, spending time thinking about it and planning, evaluating assessments and data, or telling all the crazy things that happened during the day (and there are plenty of those to tell).

The good news is that you have an education and a career, and it's a good career. If you have to do this on your own, then you CAN. I hope you (and I) don't have to, but we CAN.

[Piano]

FLC, good to see you're getting some help and some support here. Thanks for your kind comments. I am none of the things you say - just love my H, think he's currently behaving like a drongo and well, a bit of a loser really, and have been desperately sad about losing him and my life that went with it. And I'm peeved about raising a child alone. Sheez! Anyways, I think I am reaching 'letting go' stage, but every time I get there I seem to backpeddle and mess up!! Oh well, gotta hang in there :-)

I can understand how pained you would be by your H's reaction to your miscarriage, and I hope he wasn't mean or spiteful when he shared his 'relief' about it with you... I am hoping he was just being 'honest'.

Asking about the existence of OW rarely yields the truth. People in affairs LIE. That's why a lot of the advice around here is to do some independent snooping in order to find out if there is an OW or not. When in doubt, the advice then goes better to assumer that there could be an affair taking place, but NO MORE talking about it with him! You are shooting blanks if you have no proof.

Having an 'international' (so therefore long distance sometimes) relationship myself, I know what distance can do to two people, and too much at the wrong time is a relationship killer. No matter how good your marriage is. If you both put work ahead of each other, then that could be the problem. In fact, I think that is most likely the problem here....

To catch up with recent posts by the vets, log in and look under their names in the Search function.

I'll try to post some advice which I archived on my computre for easy reference. I hope they help give you some ways to approach your situation...