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.
