My last thread has been locked even though it wasn't very long and I still don't know how to link to and old thread unfortunately.
Here's the latest. And this actually made me laugh. STBX and I have been friends with another couple for about 14 years. Today, one of them told me that STBX actually asked them to go away with her and OM when they went away in March. They politely declined. Our friends have not chosen sides, but is STBX really so delusional that she thought they would go on vacation with the man that took 8 years to destroy our family??? These are the friends named in our wills to look after our children if we died. WOW!
I made it through day 3 of being dark, or really more like LRT at this point. A year and a half after she walked out our door, STBX is now openly involved with her Boss and last time we spoke, ended our conversation with "I'm done, I'm done". So, really, what else can I do now, except completely drop the rope, go dark and live my life. If I could have ever done this successfully earlier, I may not be where I am now, but I no longer beat myself up over anything. I tried harder than any other man would. And of course, I may not be here..may. Sometimes one person simply can't save a family or a marriage.
I don't know how to do that, but asked the moderator to do so. My sitch is one of the longest ever on here and one hell of a story. I believe I have locked up 2 threads just since returning here in August of 2009. I would like to read those threads to confirm where I made mistakes. It would be an awesome lesson for all. Since August 09, we co-habitated while STBX waited to move out, separated, dated, went on vacations with kids and just the two of us (twice), felt to me like it was all getting better, gone down hill, and most recently STBX has begun an open relationship with her boss, who has been trying to win the "woman he is in love with" for 8-9 years.
It's been a long, tumultuous rollercoaster ride.
And that's just been since I came back. Apparently my original threads from 2005 are gone forever. Yes, 6 years of fighting for my family.
I read through all of your posts and it's very clear how you have grown over the past year. You've gone from clingy, pursuing and inconsistent actions to a stronger, detached person with a life.
It is important to detach, GAL, stop pursuing and all of those things you have been doing. They're important especially at the beginning for three big reasons, (1) your own sanity (2) your SO's sanity and (3) so you can start consistently showing your SO a person they can miss. However remember that they are techniques to DB'ing and not always the final answer in your sitch.
The most important technique of DB'ing is DO WHAT WORKS.
And if you read over your entire sitch, your wife gave you a million clues as to exactly what works and what doesn't work. The ultimate end goal of DB'ing is to get back together and it seems like you're more on the track of going apart. That's fine, it's a good emotional place to be, but I don't think you're helping the M. Maybe that is where you want to be right now.
I would suggest you get a piece of paper and make two columns: negative reaction & positive reaction. Go back through your threads (look at your posts only to make it faster) and identify all the parts where you took an action and your wife responded to it. Negative reactions would be where she got angry, detached from you, moved forward on the separation, stopped talking to you and said things to your D to indicate she was upset. Positive reactions would be where she talked about being together, missing you, initiated contact, came over to visit and things like that.
I was able to keep a running count of these in my head as I went along and it was CLEAR AS DAY as to what was working for you and what wasn't. I'm going to let you go through the exercise before I tell you what I saw.
Now that the OM is in the picture, I'm not sure what to tell you. I don't think it's too late but I think it's going to be harder to repair than it would have been, for sure... it always is. OM's aren't so great though - especially when they are your boss!! - so hang in there. She'll figure that out soon enough.
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I've been thinking about all of us being here again and the reality is that DB'ing is a way to stop the D and make some changes but we aren't trying to fundamentally address the underlying problems in our R's. That's something we all need to work on after the DB procedures WITH our spouses. Sure we address some of the issues but I think DB is the first step and counselling is the next. I know after my efforts I was simply just TOO exhausted to continue talking about R's and problems and all that stuff ... Ceberon was too... so we just didn't go back to counselling. Things were good for a while but when they started to go bad, we just repeated old patterns instead of getting help! (Or ignoring that help.) So I don't think we're bad people to be back here again. DB'ing works. I think it's what we did afterwards that brings us back here.
Thanks for linking my old threads (well...old for this time around). You would think after literally hundreds of posts and 6 years here (off and on) I would know every thing about the place.
