Your story is, with a few variations in detail here and there, my story, almost exactly. I have a pretty good idea just how upside down your world is right now.
First off, the hateful, hurting, vicious things she says - I can only tell you that they are not true and that deep down inside she doesn't really believe them. She is doing her best to push you away as strongly as possible so that you will not impede her in any way.
Your marital history has likely been rewritten and resembles nothing you can remember, or any friend or family member can recall as well. This too is a part of her pushing you away, AND a part of her mental justification for choosing to do what she's doing.
You are not nuts. You didn't likely miss much of anything that you should have noticed. You're likely not a god awful father and husband.
I'm not big on lables, but it cannot be doubted that your wife is in some sort of life crisis. She has been building these feelings inside, probably for quite some time. Slowly over the months and even years, she has taken her dissatisfaction with herself, and focused it instead on her life with you and your children.
Once your marriage became the target, she needed only to build a case, so to speak, that would justify her uprooting a life of several decades and splitting a once happy family. That's when the rewrite began in her mind, and that's when she began focusing on every negative aspect of you.
After justification, she likely began planning her escape. The lawyer friend may or may not have been a romantic interest. To my knowledge, my ex-wife did not actually involve herself with another man until after she left our home, but only she really knows.
My ex ended a 21+ year marriage and willingly granted me full custody of our 14 year old son (our 18 year old had just moved out that summer - possibly a precipitating factor), promising to stay close geographically until he graduated. That lasted about 4 months, when she moved 500 miles away to begin a life with an old crush from when she was 16 years old. I spent my son's high school years with him in our home, him seeing his mother once or twice a year.
The best thing you can do for yourself - and I know that this will be INCREDIBLY hard this early in your crisis - is to divorce yourself from her actions and let her go do what she feels she needs to do.
There is nothing you can do that would stop her or make her change her mind anyway.
Place your focus on you and your children. Start making adjustments in how you live your life. Start planning for a future that does not have her in it. Protect yourself legally in every way imaginable - these folks often will do incredible damage to finances and reputations.
I'm terribly sorry you're going through this. And I don't mean to sound as if there is no hope. But if she does return, it is likely to be well down the road. There is a lot of life you'll have to live between now and then.
Don't allow you or your children to live it miserably.
Blessings,
Bill
"Don't tell me the sky is the limit when there are footprints on the moon."
