My mom came into town last week to help me get the house back in order since my wife moved out. We cleaned the house thoroughly and repainted the living room. My wife has always been interested in house design so she painted the walls. I have the paint for the other rooms, but for some reason it was really hard covering up the living room walls. So, I'm not too sure if I am ready to cover the other walls.
I had the chance to read a nice chunk of the DR book. I learned a lot. I have some new goals that I am working on. I read the chapter about depression and it made a lot of what is going on make sense. At one point in my life I was clinically depressed. I remember just wanting someone to listen and hold on to. I'm ashamed that I missed the warning signs, but I believe my wife has been depressed for some time now. Instead of recognizing the symptoms (being down, loss of libido, driving around a lot, isolating, massive amounts of sleep, hunger loss, etc) I instead thought she just didn't care. I tried working with her a lot and even made some excuses for her behavior.
To preface the next story a bit...Around 2004 I became very ill. I had to take a lot of time off from work in order to heal. After healing, I worked at a company for almost two years and then became ill again. I had to take around six months off. After which, I started touring in 2008. In 2010 I lost my job and it's been difficult getting back on track. I'm self-employed and work in the music touring industry. The job I lost consisted of touring quite a bit. The artist decided to record a new album and no longer needed the touring crew. Our contracts were terminated. Things were slow for awhile until the Nashville flood happened. My business started picking up at that point because I was being hired to clean and repair broken audio gear. After this was done I continued working with one of my clients going back on the road. It looked very promising and there were quite a few tours scheduled. Then, it seemed that everything started falling through the cracks and shows, festivals and tours were being cancelled. Eventually, my work dwindled down to nothing.
At this point my wife said that I needed to pick between her or my career. My income was either feast or famine. I was receiving financial help from my mother (quite possibly the most humbling, depressing thing I've ever done). My daughter was getting to the point where she would freak out before I went out of town. I knew my wife was right. I wish she would have approached me different rather than giving me an ultimatum. She was right though...I accomplished all my goals and was desperately wanting to spend more time with my family. So, I began switching careers...which turned out to be more difficult than I hoped.
Fast forward two months later and here we are. As you can see, it's been rough on us the last two years or so. Throw in the fact that I was preparing to start college in the fall and whole slew of other things and you have a nice recipe for stress. Around this time my wife started "running". She would drive around town all the time, her smoking became worse and she was spending a ton of money that we didn't have. Then she dropped the bomb.
Reading DR I saw that depression can actually trigger a MLC. Here is where the OW comes into play. Well, at least this is my opinion. My wife started hanging out with her a lot. She looks up to her and would talk about how she would listen and make her feel better. She talked about how this woman was the least judgmental person she knew. If you look at my past posts then you will see that this OW is married, but I (and everyone else) thinks she is gay. She won't admit to it as she is very religious. All of my wife's friends (including me) warned her that this woman was starting to develop a crush on her. It bothered my wife a bit, but then she came to the point where it didn't bother her. She told me that for one the OW would never come out and number two my wife said she wasn't gay. I can understand that. If a man had a crush on me it wouldn't really effect me...I like women. I would be clear with him about that, but it wouldn't effect my friendship. I'll let you read my other posts to get the details. I'll admit that I was insecure during my illness and would tell her that she would eventually leave me or have an affair. I'm confident now, but when she was gone all the time and the whole OW thing, I questioned her. I think any person in my position would.
So, when I was dealing with the same thing my wife is dealing with now, I just wanted to someone to do with me what the OW is doing to my wife. However, I do believe that this OW is "being supportive" and encouraging my wife with hugs etc. I do believe she is taking advantage of my wife's mental state to get her jollies off. I know this sounds kind of weird, but it makes sense.
I just feel bad that I didn't notice what was wrong. I love that woman and always did my best. It's tearing me up, but she is making her own decision here.
