Hi all, first off a great thank you to this forum, I've been lurking here for a while and all I've read made me feel so less alone and has helped me a great deal.
Long story short my wife and I have been married for 23 years, together for 24, and had two kids (now 14 and 19). We've never had a fight, I've always done more than 50% of the household chores because I have a home office and she works out of the house. We have had issues with the health and mental state of our daughter, which did cause quite bit of stress, but thank God through treatment and perseverance with her, our daughter is no longer the child captured by aliens.
My wife dropped the bomb early in July after I confronted her with the need to talk after her trying to fluff off her increasingly distant treatment of myself and the children and her time playing WOW ( World of Warcraft). I'm pretty sure she was having an EA with someone online, but she'd made a pretty good effort of eliminating any trace of it.
My gut told me something was wrong and I had been reading this forum for a couple of weeks before the "The Talk", so I'd been pretty far rehearsed into what I was going to say and how I was going to handle myself. I very calmly said I sensed something was wrong and I that I had been asking for a couple of months what was wrong, but had been told it was just "Hormones", "I'm tired", but that "We were okay" and since I had arranged for the kids to be out of the house now was the time to really talk.
She basically gave the speech " I've not been happy for quite a while" and "it's just a lot of little things that have piled up over the years", but would not elaborate. She refused to even consider marriage counseling of any kind and simply said she "Wanted Out".
I went through what I thought my faults were in the relationship and what I was planning to do about regardless of whether she stayed or not, then simply said "all I ever wanted was for you to be happy, and if don't tell me what you want or what the problems are you are going to have to find out what makes you happy, if you need anything let me know". She left three days later.
She avoided telling anyone what had happened for over a month except for one girlfriend she had known since high school, I was the one who had to tell her parents. I still had her co-workers calling at home looking for her to update her work schedule if there were cancellations a month and a half after she'd left.
I immediately went whole hog on limited contact (can't go total NC because of the kids), and Gal/db. I cycle 10 miles a day, hit the gym almost everyday, and go to every social event I can find on our local calendar ( Art gallery receptions, theater, wine tasting/food events and even auditioned for a part with our local theater productions) I also make sure any publicity/photo's of these events with yours truly participating is duly included in Facebook ;~) So far I'm down 20lbs and am the same weight I was when I graduated from High school, I've never been in better shape in my life. I had to buy myself an entirely new wardrobe as nothing I had fit anymore. The funny thing is my wife's girlfriend, the one that backed her move to leave me has twice now commented on my "new me" profile images on facebook, eg " WOW, you are looking really good!!!!!" The strangeness never ends.
For the first couple of months W had avoided all contact with me except to email me about the kids, would not come in the house when she picked up the kids if she knew I was there. If she did run into me she would avoid looking at me, wore sunglasses and spoke as little as possible. I've always tried to be upbeat when I see her, as gut twisting as it was early on I made it look like I was always going somewhere, or my day had so much good stuff to do I didn't know where to start. The last two times she's been over to pick up our son I've noticed she appears to be kind of "checking me out" and is willing to trade more than five sentences, I even got her to laugh the other day. I'm not going to try to read anything into this, but it felt good to see her smile instead of scowl. I don't know how this is going to go, but I'm giving it my best shot. If all the work I've been doing on me doesn't pull her back, then some other woman in about a year is in for one hell of a man....
