This has been the absolutely worst week of my life. The love of my life has told me she no longer wants to be married to me. Today is Thursday and she dropped this bomb on Saturday night. Here is our story. I'll try not ramble, but it may still be a long post.
I'm 46, she's 42. We've been together for 24 years and married 17 of those. We have three beautiful children, 10, 7 & 5.
The ongoing issues between us for the majority of those years has been her lack of sex drive, my apparent lack of support for her ideas because of my desire to play devils advocate, dysfunctional arguing (yelling, never satisfying and going to bed angry), and finally her lack of trust that she could ever depend on me in any serious way.
The last couple of years I've been working, successfully I think, to reduce my passion when arguing and fully supporting her ideas without taking the wind from her sails. The point being that I think I know where I am in my life and where I want to go; improving myself, and trying to be the best husband and father I can possibly be.
I come from a large family with parents that stayed together. My wife not so lucky, with her mom taking her and her brother and sister away when she was only about 11 (the oldest).
After moving home about 9 years ago, leaving basically two normal jobs, we now have an extremely, extremely busy life. The kids of course plus; I have a 40+ hrs/week job as a general mgr, together we own a small farm, a complimentary business which she mostly runs, she has taken on even much more, working with the grade school, started a growers co-op, working on grants and studies. She has an engineering degree and has for several years now been quite disappointed that she's not in a "successful career" and would have trouble utilizing her degree given the time that has past. She is extremely smart, strong and independent. Her plate is very very full.
Interestingly enough, this last summer has been one of the best for us on record. She has been very happy, has a great body self image, and there has been a ton of affection between us barely seen since we were in college. It has been wonderful for me and I really felt her love - a look, a touch, a compliment and of course more sex.
Recently, the last couple of weeks she was not feeling well, sinus infection and coughing. Plus with some traveling and a hectic schedule we didn't have much meaningful conversation and little affection. Over the years, when we haven't been able to spend any quality time like this, I try to always tell her that I love her and not only in those words. Something I've also said has been I miss you. This wasn't only when actually gone but if there was some aspect of our relationship missing, including, but definitely not always, sex. It turns out this was an inflammatory phrase and I never knew it. It was the catalyst this time.
When I said it this time, she figured I meant sex. She's sick and I never would have meant that, it hurts me even to think she'd go there. But given the number of years it's been an issue for us I can understand why she did. However it must have been like a slap in the face given how great our summer has been. I can imagine she was thinking "it's never enough is it".
One more note before relating the big talk. There has been an old boyfriend of hers in the picture. I've always tried to be open to her having close friends regardless of gender. However with this guy, they dated in high school, she went out with him when we broke up for short time in college, and she has lengthy talks (1 hr+) almost daily and usually when one of is not at home. She is adamant that this relationship has nothing to do with what is going on with us.
Saturday night she told me that her plate is too full, she need to clean it off, and because of my comments, it includes me as well. I think my heart stopped. She thinks that we'll wait out the rest of the school year and then she's moving away with the kids. I'm devastated, as I feel I've done nothing wrong, at least to this extent. I'm sure there are more things I need to work on and I'm willing to do that, and have proven it in the last couple of years. She is adamantly opposed to going to counseling with me.
I found this site during my sleepless nights this week, and have found some success in just reading the information available here. I just got the DB book and will begin reading the other chapters during my wakeful moments tonight.
There are more details, and other significant events in our history. But this pretty much sums it up.
I love her madly, I worship my kids. I want us back. And I want us moving forward, learning new tools for dealing with the issues that drag us down. I just don't know how to get there. And I'm sure it won't happen fast enough for my mr. fixit attitude.
