Another WAW

[anclost]

Sorry for your problems, but glad you found your way to our community.

I feel our relationship changed about 6 years ago when my wife went back to work.

So up until that time six years ago, your MR was good? How about her complaints against you, were there many before she went back to work?
Yes, I thought so. I had only one girlfriend prior to meeting my wife and that wasn't very serious. So in some respects I wonder if I know what a good relationship really is. I do love my wife and want to spend the rest of my life with her. But going back through my relationship to even before we were married, she would get angry at me. I recall once after we had just begun dating when she found an old card from my previous girlfriend(which was over with for a couple of years), she got mad and locked herself in the bathroom for a while. I know that I have felt that I wasn't ever good enough for her. I know they are just words but when your wife tells you on your honeymoon that we will be divorced within 6 months it tends to make you insecure. From 1991 when we where married until 1996, I thought things were good but I think I felt unappreciated somewhat. Plus we had our two sons in that time as well. And I can say that I probably took her for granted as well.

It's great to hear she has remained cancer-free for five years! How was the R during the time she was taking treatments and had her surgery? Was the mastectomy pretty hard on her, or was she able to see the logic and make the best choice of the options? Some women handle things like that much better than others.

She had the initial mastectomy in 2006 with 8 weeks of radiation for treatment. Her mom was there with us for the surgery and recovery. When the radiation treatments started she seemed to handle it well. As an RN she knows the medical world very well. When she said she was fine going to the appointments on her own I thought everything was okay. I never should have done that. Thats where lack of communication and insensitivity on my part was lacking sorely. I should have been there by her side making her feel special and beautiful. The second (elective) mastectomy was in the fall of 2010. I was the only one there for her and made sure she was okay. I took care of her like I should have before. She was very pragmatic about both, she didn't care about losing her breasts, she just wanted to live. She has reconstructive surgery so she looks great. Again I could have done a much better job making sure I thought cancer is an ugly disease but she is more beautiful than ever.

W complaints have been I work too much, put my career ahead of the family, don't pay attention to her, wasn't there during the cancer treatments(radiation) because I was had to work. Talked about living like roommates for the past couple of years and why didn't I want to do something about it. I was too hard on our oldest S, wasn't a very good father and role model for our sons.

Any of that true? Was this before or after her surgery?

Yes these are true in the way that she feels, so that is all that really matters. These complaints really didn't manifest until after the initial surgery. I do work on the management side now and the first surgery was right after I had started a new job so I was all eager to prove myself at work. Not trying to make excuses but looking back I can see what I did and where my priorities were.

In summary, I've made every mistake you could make in a relationship it seems.

Is this how she sees it or how you see it? I'm just trying to get it straight in my mind.

This is how my wife has seen it for a while, don't know how long exactly, she can't say definitively. After reading these forums and all the books I've mentioned like 5 LL and "If He Only Knew", I felt like "Wow" have I been a complete fool. You read the situations of the couples in the book and you're like, "That's me, I did exactly that". When my wife tried to talk to me about our relationship and how she felt like we were just roommates, I of course felt attacked and then would stonewall or withdrew. The more I read the more I start to get it. I love my wife but I certainly didn't show her love in a way that she appreciated. Her Love Tank was and certainly is empty.

Also, 15 years ago, I had a couple of incidents with drinking too much which led to inappropriate behavior of kissing and fondling. I did walk away from the situations before they went too far. Three years after these incidents, I told my wife about them so she knows everything. We worked through it and it seemed she forgave me, but she has always been extremely distrustful of me, which is understandable.

Was this behavior with the same female or different ones? Why did you wait until three years later to confess?

These were different ones, I didn't even know them other than that night. I'm no saint but my wife is the only women I've ever been intimate with. I have never had any type of PA or EA. I couldn't be involved with someone else, not something I could do. What I did was egregious enough, it was cheating. I was scared to tell her. With the way she reacted on other things, I knew she would really be angry on this. What a fool I was..

When did her mistrust of you begin?

Well, I think once I told her of those indiscretions she lost her trust in me although from how she reacted my old girlfriend, maybe she always was somewhat insecure. Maybe I just wasn't aware enough to realize how being sexually molested by her brother would affect her trust and security issues.

However she feels like I didn't do enough to help her with the trust issue and now says she should have left me back then and has never forgiven me for it.

Was there any professional MC? What did she mean that you didn't do enough to help?

We have never had MC. Look, I'm guilty of being the classic stoic pilot that can handle it. I'm not sure back then I would have been reseptive to MC. I don't think she feels that I was transparent enough. I don't have a separate email account, she has access to all the finances and does all the banking. I couldn't spend a dollar without her knowing about it. She has the cellphone account and could always see any phone call or text I made. But she would ask "what is your work number?" and I said "I'm never at my desk, just call my cellphone" and she took it as being evasive. One complaint she has been relentless with is why were there no pictures of our family on my desk. I'm just never at my desk, it isn't that kind of office, I don't even use the computer at my desk. Almost no one at work has a picture of their family. She never had an issue with this when I was in the Air Force or at a previous airline. When I'm at work I'm in the simulator or briefing a crew. My cellphone is always with me and I would always answer when she calls. I am never unavailable to her. I finally got around to putting together some pictures last some and she got mad and said it was too late to put pictures on my desk. "Don't pretend now" she said. So she feels that I'm not or haven't been actively trying to allay her trust with me. Again I am late to the party in understanding it is about how she feels, not what I think, and if she wasn't comfortable then I should have made a better effort to comply with her requests.

Let me go back to this statement:

Talked about living like roommates for the past couple of years and why didn't I want to do something about it.

Whose idea was it to live like roommates? She would make the comment, maybe three times in the last 2.5 years. She works 5 days a week, many times she be gone when I would get up in the morning, then she would be in bed by 8-9 o'clock. I couldn't go to bed that early. I worked on projects at home a lot the past few years. My boss allowed me to work at home as much as I wanted as long as things got done. When I had a big project I would stay up until 1 or 2 in the morning working on it. But like I said, I've been home more much more than my wife since she went back to work. She is tired all the time from her job. From sixth grade on I've been the one there helping my sons with their homework, projects etc. Football practice, riding practice, lacrosse, it was me primarily. My oldest has been difficult at times, doesn't always follow the rules and can be a little disruptive at times. I was probably too hard on him. My youngest is a outstanding student, is one of the top cadets in his class. Overall my sons are doing very well. Anyway, there just never seemed to be a lot of time for us. My schedule is never set, I could work early one day, late the next. Sometimes weekends. Occasionally fly a trip every other month.

Did this sort of revolved around the surgery or her treatments? What happen to turn things around last spring? I know I'm asking lots of questions, but try to bear with me while I get it sorted.
I think the initial surgery is when this really started to gain momentum.

Was your W distrustful of you before she found out about the inappropriate behavior? A pilot can turn the heads of some women just b/c he's wearing a uniform. Did you have women hitting on you a lot? Must have made time away from home rather tough.
Made me chuckle. No, I have never been someone who has had to worry about women hitting on me. Like I said earlier, maybe my wife was insecure before the inappropriate behavior, but certainly distrustful after. One decision I made back in 2000 was to work in the airline flight training department as an instructor. I was home almost every night when my kids were young, my wife didn't have to worry about me being gone, and it gave me the experience to move to my current job in management at a much more financially stable Cargo airline.

I also was aware of the airline pilot issues of being gone, laying over with flight attendants etc. I knew I never wanted to be in a bad situation like what had happened before, so the entire 9 years I worked for a major passenger airline, on layovers I never went out to eat or did any activity with the flight attendants. Just did my own thing, usually worked out, sight-seeing and never drank. Again there was no way I would be in a bad situation again.

Thing is, we got intimate a lot last spring, then in July we had an argument and from then there hasn't been any physical contact between us.

That argument must have been a doozy! Did she go back to the stuff 15 yrs ago? During the the time after the fight in July, did you ever try to initiate intimacy?
How does that quote go, "My wife doesn't get hysterical, she gets historical". At the point my wife is at, I think she sees everything in our marriage as bad. She compares me against other men and their relationships with their wife's, especially her friend in Dallas. How well she is treated by her husband, why can't I be more like him. That is what she wants from a relationship, not a loveless marriage like ours.

Let me explain this past spring and summer. She started to shoot skeet last spring, I thought it was great she found something she really liked. She shot in a league very Thursday night, it was almost all male except for her and one other female. She was doing well and started to receive a lot of attention(male). She really likes it and wants to get better.

She starts to practice with a coach and shoot in some tournaments. Coach tells her how good she is and with practice she could really be good. I think it is great. But then I find her under the covers texting this coach at all hours of the night. i just happened to walk in on her and she tried to hide her phone. She says it is no big deal, but I get pretty upset, why hide it like that. She says it is fun to talk about shooting with him.

Well after this argument, that is when she initiated being intimate with me after maybe a year of not being intimate. We doing well in this area for about two months up until July 11th(at least I tight so). Although the anger with the F bombs was never far from the surface.

However, she spent a lot of time shooting, she was either at work or shooting, didn't spend much time with me and the boys. I saw her at night of course, I was going to bed with her more often and just trying to be available to her. The texting incident made me a little uneasy. I have always trusted my wife implicitly. This was something new with texting a male friend all the time.

July 11th was the AK state skeet shoot, my wife shot all day for three days straight. The last night she called and said she was going to stop and have a drink with her coach and other guys to celebrate. I said it was fine but I felt a little hurt she didn't want to come and celebrate with me or invite me to join them. I was insecure about it looking back. She got try angry that I had any sort of problem with her going to a bar and having a couple of drinks. But again with the texting incident, I just felt a little uneasy.

Well that was it for her. No more kisses, holding hands. no more ILY's. She said that was the last straw. Two days later she had bought her own cell phone. A week later I was in Shanghai and happened to see a hotel charge on the credit card and wondered what that was. My wife was at work supposedly so I called the hotel and they said she had just checked in. They transferred me to the room and my wife answered which I completely caught her of guard. She came clean and said she had set up this with some doctor at work and it got carried away. Said the doc was probably never going to show any way, she was totally embarrassed and didn't know how I could have ever done what I did to her. So nothing happened, but I will never know what could have happened had I not called.

So now I go into the full panic, clingy, what is going on mode. She says she doesn't know how she feels about our relationship etc.

Again for the whole summer she was either working or shooting. The boys and I were on our own. She never took time to be with us. The F bombs got more and more, even directed at my boys somewhat. She never used to swear like that.
Took my sons back to college and prep school end of August with my wife. After dropping my last son off(his first year of college), my W and I went out to dinner, had a great time. She had some drinks but seemed fine, when we got back to hotel room she initiated sex with me. The next morning she said she didn't remember any of it and it didn't change anything between us.

Things seemed to level out, she took a shooting clinic on Sept 11 with a national shooting coach(he lives in TX). He of course told her ow good she could be, how fun she was etc. She started talking to him on the phone that next week every night for 2 to 3 hours. I got the "we need to talk" the next week and she said she wanted a divorce on Sept 20th.




It seems that she needs the help of a good therapist (who is pro-marriage). If she's been through all this other with her cancer, etc., there is something she can't turn loose about the inappropriate behavior. There's either more than you've told us, or she refuses to forgive anyone that she sees as betrayal.

I stopped pursuing my wife in Sept. She still takes to the man in TX a lot but also has made friends with the mans girlfriend, so I don't know if there is anything going on there. She no longer talks with her shooting coach from this past summer, she said she was talking to him too much and has let that go. She has her own cell phone, but I rally no longer care who she is talking to. I've learned I can't control what she does!

So now what, I feel like I've been run over by a truck.

Lost in Alaska