Quick business trip today and tonight. Feels good to get away. Using this break as a new beginning with GAL activities.
Heavy heart WRT my W. All our friends are telling me to go for the D and put this all behind me. W is very focussed on the D, but I am amazed she has not looked beyond the D, not even a tiny bit. It is as if the D is her primary focus, all that matters.
When will she ever look down the road? The future is not clear, but it is certainly not very bright......
H 51, W 46 no kids T 22 years M 17 years ILBNILWY 2/10 1st D talk 6/10 partial recovery W files D 5/11 long distance separation 8/11 moving forward on D 10/11 legal separation complete 1/2012
No, she will likely not look. The WAS focus is on their short-term gratification. After D life falls into the category of "I'll figure that out when I get there, but it has to be better than this."
My W keeps saying "I know it will be hard" and "I'll probably fall behind a few bills here and there". Ummm... single mom, three kids, one income, and little child support (Wisconsin law doesn't provide much since her income and mine are similar and a 50/50 placement entitles her to as little as $150/mo). Yes... tough is an understatement... but she's confident that will work out. She hasn't run numbers, hasn't looked at finances, has no savings for this. But it'll work out.
Ok... good luck with that.
Married 6 together 8 Me:38 W:31 second marriage for both SS12, SD10, S6 Bomb: 9/8/11 (day before our 5 yr ann) W moved out: 2/18/12 D final: 11/12/12 Share S 50/50. Spend as much time as I can with SS & SD
I'm not unique then! WAS gets £700 a month and even by my pessimistic reckoning, she needs £1258 before throwing money about on her extravagances. Then Christmas is coming. Not sure what is going on, she has been in the house for a month now, of a six month minimum agreement. Having broadband installed next week too!
Like you, I don't believe that there has been any thought to what the costs actually are and I don't believe anyone else has offered any help with that. So what is going on in their heads, I do not know. This is someone who struggled to pay me £300 a month toward household costs of £2200 a month, so I am baffled.
Spent last evening with an old female friend, who has been divorced for 4 months (her choice) and is now in love with a new guy. Good for her.
Went through our whole sitch with my friend once again. Story just gets sadder it seems. Friend is convinced, as everyone else is, that W is never coming back. That W won't realize she made a mistake for a very long time, and by then it will be too late. She tells me I cannot keep hanging on to the thread, and that I am clearly still in love with my W. Yep, guilty as charged.
Isn't is bizarre that while I am going through with the D, hoping to have asset separation in a couple of weeks, with D final on 1 January for tax purposes, that I want to send W messages and an occasional goodwill package? How pathetic is that?
H 51, W 46 no kids T 22 years M 17 years ILBNILWY 2/10 1st D talk 6/10 partial recovery W files D 5/11 long distance separation 8/11 moving forward on D 10/11 legal separation complete 1/2012
Not pathetic... it's human. Your grieving the loss and want to try and recapture it. There's nothing wrong with it.
You're in control now though. You can decide when to drop the rope and when you're done.
I do believe that without kids forcing a connection/bond/communication this is much, much harder. But you'll have to make that call.
Married 6 together 8 Me:38 W:31 second marriage for both SS12, SD10, S6 Bomb: 9/8/11 (day before our 5 yr ann) W moved out: 2/18/12 D final: 11/12/12 Share S 50/50. Spend as much time as I can with SS & SD
Good morning AC, I dont think there is anything wrong with you wanting to do these things. As workinghard said, it is human. Even after you get the divorce, you will have a relationship, it sounds like it will always be friendly. All looks pretty dark now, but it eventually has to get better. You must now go on and live your life, as you were meant to do. You will still have contact with her, you never know what is going to happen. Again, as i have said before, how you end things in this phase will be remembered by the WAS in future days. Just my 2 cents, continue to lean forward!!
m 54 XW 48 m 12 t 14 bomb 6-11 s 10-11 wife moved to other state 10-21-11 d 9-12
O GOD THY SEA IS SO GREAT AND MY BOAT IS SO SMALL!
Trying to get my act together. Kind of went into a tailspin after W left from her week-long visit last week. Need to focus on myself and GAL as much as possible. I have been neglecting that.
Moving forward with the D. That is also playing with my mind. This is what she needs, so this is what she gets. Maybe then she can take off her blinders and look around.
H 51, W 46 no kids T 22 years M 17 years ILBNILWY 2/10 1st D talk 6/10 partial recovery W files D 5/11 long distance separation 8/11 moving forward on D 10/11 legal separation complete 1/2012
Just when you think you are doing well you get a visit and it pulls you back into despair. How I can relate......sigh
I laugh when people say it is just a piece of paper (the divorce) I suppose it is, but then again, a Death Certificate is also just a piece of paper isn't it?
As you may or may not remember my wife also left and moved 1500 miles away. I related to your sitch because it carried a lot of similarities to mine. There was no venom, no attacks just a lot of kind words and in my case mixed signals.
I think holding on to hope causes long term damage and it prolongs the inevitable end.
The sooner you accept the situation for what it is the sooner you can begin your rd to recovery. A rd that I admit is long and painful and while the pot holes become less frequent and painful they are still there.
Know this
You will not die from this, although at times you’re going to wish you had.
There is light at the end of the tunnel.
Keep your head up my friend......this too shall pass.
Thanks 2step: I cannot yet tell if my W wants to stay in contact with me or not. I just know that she is hyper focused on the D, and needs to do it and put it behind her before she can even contemplate what is in front of her. The D is simply a box that needs to be checked.
How has your contact with your W evolved through time? I want to think that taking the high road and offering lots of support for my W during her ongoing depression and fog was a good, compassionate thing to do. Others tell me I have been an enabler. I don't know what to think, I just know that it is what it is.
H 51, W 46 no kids T 22 years M 17 years ILBNILWY 2/10 1st D talk 6/10 partial recovery W files D 5/11 long distance separation 8/11 moving forward on D 10/11 legal separation complete 1/2012
The contact with my wife? Well I will tell you that from the people in the boards when I was still very active I had A LOT of contact, on several occasions we would speak for well over 3-4 hours at a time. Every interaction, every convo I recorded on the boards for myself and for others to learn what to say and what not to say. I can tell you she was very candid with me on some things, at least on her feelings, and others I found out about the hard way.
She went as far as doing several DB sessions with my coach and I was very hopeful. There were a lot of signs that things would turn for me at some point. However the distance was hard to overcome and I believe it became too big of an obstacle to overcome. Still we spoke weekly at least 2-3 times and sometimes more. Those were dark days for me and I remember the pain vividly. So much pain and despair my chest hurt constantly, I felt out of breathe, fear, anxiety, pain, desperation where the order of the day.
April 1st she called to tell me the judge signed the papers. After the D we still spoke often and she did another DB session. The contact began to die off little by little and in July it picked up again. She began to say she missed me then the anger came back. She was struggling and admitted that she was scared and stubborn and did not know how to fix it.
In Sept the contact began to die down and I have not spoken to her in about a month. One thing I think about is how available I was to her. Whenever she needed me I was there. Whenever she wanted to talk and vent I was there to listen. My availability helped her heal in the meantime I suffered with hope and a belief that she would turn.
I too looked at the D as something she had to do to prove that she could. The D did not heal anything and the devastation it caused is still felt today.
Regarding the high road…….I can tell you this. There are few things that offer me peace of mind these days but one of those things was the ability to maintain cordial and pleasant with her throughout the process. Of course my goal and desire was to save the M and even after it was clear that was not going to happen at that point I had worked too hard to revert back to being a jerk. You will never regret being kind; you will never regret showing love when all you get is mud in return. I will however caution you against being a doormat and laying down while the train runs over you. I did set some boundaries but only the ones I knew I could live with and enforce. One of the most dangerous and damaging things you can do is set a boundary you are willing to cross. Mine were simple.
No OM. Anything is salvageable as long as that line was not crossed. Once I felt it had been I was done seeking R. You have to set the boundary you can live with. One thing I said since day one ‘I will do whatever it takes to save our marriage but I will NOT lose my self-respect or my dignity in order to do it, because the morning after I have to like what I see in the mirror’. I held by that. I loved my wife, still do but I love myself more, still do.
As far as being an enabler…well to the outside world I suppose a lot of the things you do will appear that way but you have to do what you can live with and what feels right. In August of this year, 5 months after the divorce and after she had moved in with OM she called asking for money to go see her grandfather who was dying. I gave it to her. I assume a lot of people would look at that as enabling, but I will tell you it was the best $600 bucks I have ever spent. It was a loan and I did it with zero expectations of getting her back. I did it because I would have done it for a friend in need and the money was worth less to me than the message I sent. Shortly after that the contact became very minimal and so here we are. Will I hear from her again? Probably at some point, she still has to pay me back and I am sure she will.
Oh by the way she only lived with OM for about 2 months and now she is back home with her mother or at least last I heard.
What is the point of this long winded post? If you skim through my thread you can’t help but walk away thinking I would have saved it. A lot of things pointed in that direction. A lot of hope and a lot of dreaming; hope can be found anywhere if you are desperate enough to want it. When the vets come in and say it is all about you, listen, because at the end of the day it really is.
I have been on the boards for a little while now and have seen literally hundreds of posters, I have yet to see one make it. That is not to say DB does not work, at the end of the day I met some great people and the support I received saved my life but if you pin your hopes on words of others you will walk away broken hearted and empty handed. Take your time to morn and hurt.
You cannot chose when you hurt or how much you hurt, you cannot eliminate the despair you feel or the loneliness that sets it but you can chose to get up each day put your shoes on and walk out the door. As time passes it will become easier for you to face the days ahead.
I am not sure where you are but I headed into this in October right before the holidays and the winter. It was a long cold winter but I survived and you will also.
