My story: My wife a and I have been married for 11 years and together for 13. We have 2 children. The boy is 4 and the girl is 2. I thought that our marriage was strong because we have gone through a lot and survived with no counseling or extended family support. The memories of how this started are blury but basically this spring we had lots of arguments, did not spend time together because I was taking a class, and did not plan any vacations. Sometime at the end of July we had a big argument. According to W (my memory is sketchy and very different) she was so afraid of me after that, that she packed the van with the kids the next day and left for her parents. She spent a little over a week there. When she returned she would not let me kiss her or touch her and was colder towards me than ever before. After a couple of days of this I finally confronted her about it and she told me that I should consider us separated. She was already sleeping on the sofa bed we have in the living room. Her story may be different now, but at the time she originally said she was sleeping there because the air bed was good for her back. We have the computer in the living room as well. So now she was spending a lot of time on facebook and away "running errands". She joined a running group at the Y earlier in the year and they became part of her "support" group. She also started drinking again, buying new clothes and texting her friends on the phone. She avoided me like the plague and would not explain to me what she meant by "separated". We had no phisical contact and she was using the kids bathroom now. I proposed going to counseling and she said she was not interested in marriage counseling but that she was going to counseling for herself and that I should do the same. Then she said she needed to go away for a weekend to take a break from the kids. She went away for 3 days on Labor day weekend and I stayed at home with the kids. She texted me a couple of times to ask me about the kids and to tell me that she was walking or going to bed etc. When she came back, she was certainly refreshed and we had a conversation that night. She then said that she wanted a divorce eventually after she got back on her feet(ie find a job, get her credentials to teach) but in the mean time she wants to enjoy life, be happy, be free, go out with her friends and date other men. I listened to it all, cried all night. Went to work the next morning and spent the whole day writing her an email about how I could not tolerate her dating other men and living under the same roof. I told her that I was changing the person that I was so that I could be more emphatetic and caring. She answered by asking me why I had spent a whole day writing that email to her and that I was risking losing my job and putting our family at risk. She asked me not to do that again. After that we had some conversations where I practiced listening to her and trying to understand why she was doing what she was doing. She would not be explicit in anything other than I had a serious problem and I needed to deal with it or I would lose the love of my children like I had lost hers. So I scheduled a visit for Oct 6. The weekend before my appointment I again stayed home with the kids and she went to a fund raiser at a friends house and stayed there overnight. That saturday night I was so upset and hurt that I did something I had told myself that would never do, I hacked into her e-mail account. That is when I found out that she had at least an EA with an old friend from High School that was well on his way into his own divorce. She had deleted all these emails but I found them anyway. So she comes back and I don't know how to confront her. After a couple of days I get tired of all the lies I keep hearing from her and I tell her that I know what is going on. She tells me that she is in love and that it just happened and that her intentions were never to hurt me. Then I find out that she spent labor day weekend with the OM and that she actually invited him to fly here to meet her. We live in California and he lives in Missouri. I did not follow through with my threat to leave because she said she needed help with the kids. I said I would ask my counselor before I made a decision. After I came back we had an argument about why she had done that and she tells me that I broke my vows first and that I left the marriage a long time ago and that she had warned me that she was going to do something like this. Last Sunday, she left for Idaho with the kids to go see her family there. She has been there ever since and she has been sending text and calling at least once a day each. She is coming back on Nov 3, but this is not a change of plans and she is not clear about what kind of relationship she is keeping with OM. She just told me before she left that she was planning on keeping him as part of her support group. My therapist thinks that she has ACOA syndrome and her therapist thinks I have some "personality" disorder that she won't disclose. My guess is "narcissistic" because I know how she describes me now to other people. Anyway, enough rambling. I know that I have left out important details but I guess I can fill in questions. I am calling a coach tomorrow and I need to come up with goals. Right now I am quite numb because I am taking Zoloft for "severe" depression.
Me 39 W 37 S 5 D 2.75 Married 12 years Together 14 years Bomb Dropped 08/16/10