My Sitch/any better ideas than going dark?

[Broken74]

Hi folks,

First time post here, I have read many of your stories and my heart goes out to you. I have Divorce Busting and Divorce Remedy and am working my way through both of them. My drama has been going on since before August 2011, as with many I have been doing all the wrong things, especially during the holidays looking back, so I am going black today to try and get some type of different response from my wife.

So a little history. This is my second marriage, I met her the same month my first divorce was finalized which probably was an issue in and of itself. Beautiful, smart, caring, loving young woman. She also was bankrupt due to issues in her first marriage, and has three children by two different men, father of the first is incarcerated for shooting someone in the back during a robbery attempt. Her home life growing up was not stable at all. She is 30 and her children are 16, 11, and 7. I never got the details of the entire story but she said she was raped but decided to keep the first child. The second and third child were fathered by someone who was effectively a deadbeat dad and left her bankrupt. So she had one child at 14, a second child at 19, and the third at 23. She also had an abortion at some point, I think after the third child on the realization that they could not handle a fourth child and then had her tubes tied. In addition to this her mother has been married I think 6 times in total. So all in all, she has had much adversity in her life. She is very smart, beautiful, is very hardworking and very successful in her career, and is a salt of the earth woman which is why I married her.

Then there is me, 37, no kids, successful corporate guy with my own bag of issues. Some being my selfishness and infidelity in my first marriage, my cheating on my second wife while we were dating (I never even looked at another woman during our marriage however). I also have significant self esteem issues that led to a womanizing streak between the marriages that’s really a long story for another forum.

We met in February of 2009 and got married in May of 2010. I asked her to marry me because I obviously wanted her to be my wife, and to prove to her that I was done messing with any other women. We got engaged in December 2009, I moved in with her at this time and our relationship was very good during this time in my opinion (probably mainly because I wasn’t going out at all and staying with her 100% of the time). She had self esteem issues with her body based on my prior actions and some things I had said, so I went to bat with 22k of plastic surgery for her just prior to our getting married in May.

I also helped her work out selling her house to a family member which allowed her to climb out of bankruptcy, and bought us a house in April of 2010, to allow her to get sole custody of her kids as well as give them their own rooms for the first time. Bought her a new car for her birthday in August of 2010 which was also a first. Her love language was receiving gifts so I definitely have done my part in this regard.

Up to this point I probably sound like a dream come true but that is certainly not the case. I had an alcohol problem, didn’t drink a lot but when I did I would get plowed and was verbally abusive toward her on a number of occasions. In all honesty I don’t know many of the things I said to her, but I feel that many of them were brought on by the financial pressures that existed since I was burdened by all our financial obligations. She was certainly contributing significantly to the household, but all of the credit was in my name and there was no support being provided for the children except she an I. I also had a hard time with the transition to the role of stepfather. I was always nice to the kids and gave them plenty of things, but I was not as generous with my time and attention and affection toward them as I should have been and I very much regret that.

So there were a number of altercations we had in 2011, and I will take responsibility for most of those based on my verbal abuse after drinking. We ended up physically separating in September 2011 (I took on all the marital debt including the remainder of her surgical expenses) at which point I stopped drinking and was making every effort to put 100% into trying to reconcile our situation. The problem was, that my wife had already started an online relationship with another man, and coereced me into leaving the home that I built for us on the guise of “giving us some time” while she was talking to this other man for hours on end and planning weekend getaways with him. She lied about this when I presented the fact that she started talking a blocked number at all hours of the night the night that I left our marital home.

This really becomes a hair splitting matter of timing I guess, because our last altercation was while she was on a business trip to Minnesota, at which point she says that was the breaking point of our marriage. This was never exactly clear to me. We continued to see each other at times, I spent a number of nights over at the house, and on October 9th had two of my stepchildren and took them to a band competition that my stepson was in. That night I came back to my house and came in because I brought them dinner back, and found a gmail account with all of the communications, naked pictures back and forth etc proving her dealings with this other man. I contacted this man and told him to leave my wife alone and confronted her with this information. I told her we could get past this and that I forgave her and wanted to work on our marriage. In response she filed a 50B restraining order against me on the basis of she was fearful for her and her childrens safety when I had never laid a hand on nor threatened anyone. She put this order in place because I busted up her affair and her affair partner dumped her at this point supposedly.

Despite the 50B being in place we continued to communicate at times. She was no longer comfortable living in our house because it was in my name, so she persued another rental property. I provided her funds to get into this rental property and she swore she was no longer corresponding with the prior affair partner. Much to my surprise this was not the case, and when I saw a Mercedes in front of her new house one Sunday morning without thinking I just knocked and walked in because I wanted to meet the individual who was interfering with my attempts to reconcile my marriage. My wife called the cops and I spent the night in jail for violating the 50B restraining order. She swears up and down and I believe that she is not romantically involved with this other man.

Ironically we continued to communicate, and ended up spending time together over Christmas and New Years even having sex a couple of times. I continued my gift giving trying to give her and the children the best Christmas possible, culminating in helping her get into a BMW that she had always wanted. She is paying for the car I just helped her with the financing.

After new years I finished the arrangements for renting the marital home and have moved about 30 minutes away from her. We really haven’t seen each other significantly since new years.

Her statements continue to be that “I can’t force the walls down to let you back in”. By all accounts from her the marriage is over and there is no chance of our reconciling.

In my heart I know that she still loves me. I take ownership of the things that I did to hurt her, but when you take a sum total of our relationship the good far outweighs the bad. I have stopped drinking, strengthened my relationship with God, and made many other changes but none of these things had helped our situation at all.

Our last positive communication was January 3rd, she said “Just want to say thank you for everything you’ve done for me and the kids over the holidays. You always take good care of me and I appreciate it. I need some time alone though, I’m not seeing or talking to anybody. I’m just spending time alone. I need some time to get myself and life together. I want you to be happy though, so I encourage you to date other people.”

Then I sent her this “Love is a cycle. When you love, you get hurt, when you get hurt, you hate. When you hate, you try to forget, when you try to forget, you start missing. And when you start missing, you’ll eventually fall in love again”.

To which she responded: “You need to learn to let me miss you”.

So in short, I really screwed up during the holidays. I should have “went dark” during that time as I still met her wants and needs during that time while still being treated like a doormat.

So I am going dark as of today. The 50B order expires on 2/13. I had extravagant plans for Valentines day but am going to scrap all of those. My only hope is that that day with no contact from me will be a really significant shock to her system. By her own admission I have always made her dreams come true. I can’t figure out to make her realize that I have a changed heart and want to do nothing but be happy with her and our family.

Any thoughts or better ideas than going dark at this point? I feel like the last resort technique is my only hope. Thanks in advance for any feedback you can provide, God Bless you all. :-)