Brand New here, my story, my ?'s

[Ichrus]

So update and possible "last" letter to W for your review, thoughts and 2x4s before I decide to give it to her. Very sorry for long post and thank you in advance for those who read and reply.

Sitch in home together has generally been much more relaxed, in same bed again, even cuddle/close (but no full ML). W is set on moving out 5/27 into apartment she has deposit on. Has meeting with doc prep company tomorrow 5/11 to put together divorce papers. W has struggled with stress and has bounced back and forth a bit on her reasons for going...but still says she just feels there has been too much that happened in the past and she thinks she needs to move out and move on (I can understand and see how she feels that, and how she would need a fresh start to gain the perspective and have life teach her the costs of all this). OM is still in picture at some level (calls and texts I think), but I am not really too focused or concerned about him other then fact that I know while he is in the picture, there is no R work for us possible.

I am sort of ok with her moving out, less ok with starting the Divorce papers and even though I hate it, I can see how and why she would need it for closure and to get away from us to gain better perspective on it all...especially since CA has a 6 mo waiting period, and as others have said, it is just paper and our our M was dead anyway. I also think this is the only way she will really experience the costs and more fully realize what she lost...my main problem and frustration is the affect this will have on our three young daughters. I feel like I want and need to do anything and everything I can to shelter and protect them from this happening...I know it will shatter their world, hurt them and could have some serious life long effects on them...thus I want to know your thoughts on a letter like this (I am really considering editing out most of the OM stuff and making it a bit more soft in how I approach it, if at all):


Dear W,
I am not sure yet that I will give you this letter, I might just use it as a way to write out my feelings, frustrations and thoughts on where we are now and where we are headed in the near future. In less than two weeks we are going to have to sit down with our girls and shatter and change their lives forever, and I need to feel like I have done everything I can to avoid that talk before it happens…which is a part of my reason for writing this as well.

You need to do what you need to do…I understand and get that. I can see and understand why you feel you need to move out on your own, I can see and understand why you feel you need to divorce me, I don’t agree with you that this is the only path to happiness for you, us or our family, but you need to make your own decisions and choices, and pay the price for them. I am just so frustrated that your choice, and the path you are on, is going to hurt and negatively impact so many in our family (our girls, our siblings and parents) when I believe we have not done everything in our power to try to fix it first. I know I hurt you, ignored you, disrespected and undervalued you…I know now that I did not give you the attention and love you wanted, needed and deserved in a husband. I wish I could have done a million things differently, and I never intended to hurt you and I never in my heart was trying to push you away or make you feel so badly…I just did not tell you and show you enough, or in the right ways for you, how much I loved and needed you. I am sorry for the ways I neglected and hurt you in the past and more recently, and it is always going to be a major point of regret in my life. But I also now fully see and realize the mistakes I made and have, and am going to continue, to grow and learn from them so I don’t make the same mistakes in my future relationships.

Back when all of this started, I said, and you agreed, that we owe it to our kids and ourselves to try to work things out, and do anything and everything in our power to save our marriage, or to better describe it, to create a new, better, healthy, loving relationship moving forward. I thought it was important that we would be able to sit with the girls and say “we did everything we could to avoid this, but something things don’t work out”, and mean it and know it to be true in our hearts. I feel I have tried to work on every part of that possible to me given the situation, with deep personal introspection and changes in my heart and my actions. Do you feel, and can you say honestly in your heart, that you did everything you could to try to prevent this? Those that are connected and care about you most wonder about that and are going to ask if you feel you did everything you could (and our children are going to ask, and ask again, and re-ask over the coming years). I don’t say this as a husband trying to change your mind, but as someone who knows you well, has known you half your life and cares deeply about how your choices will affect you and your family in a major way…I don’t think you can say that you did everything you could to work on us. Trust me, I know my role in getting us here, and I fully realize that me pointing at you has three fingers pointed right back at me…I played a major role in putting you in this position, but that is also part of why I need to share what I see and what I feel. Believe it or not, I DID NOT realize how unhappy you were and how bad our relationship was in your eyes, I missed your clues and signs, I choose to ignore some and discounted others, I downplayed how bad you felt and thought “things will get better in the future, this is just a rough patch because of young kids, work, etc…we will have time to reconnect and fix things”. I knew things were not great, but did not realize how bad you thought they were…that is on me, but it is also on you. We both should have communicated our feelings and thoughts better, we both should have recognized problems and said “wait a min, there is something wrong here and we need to step back, look at it, talk about it and work to fix it now”.

Just like there are many things you wish I would have noticed or done (or not done) differently, I have the same feelings looking back now for you. I wish you would have fought more to help me understand your feelings of loss and unhappiness instead of dropping “hints” or “clues” and then just distancing yourself and building a wall. I wish we could have recognized our problems earlier and both decided it was worth it to work on them for ourselves and our children. One of my biggest frustrations is that when this all came to a head and we both became fully aware that our marriage was at stake, and that heading down the path of divorce would hurt our children now and likely long into the future, you decided that things were already done and that it was not worth it to try to give honest effort and time (giving anything and everything for us and our kids) to see if we could make it right. Although OM did not cause the problems in our marriage, he is certainly part of the trigger that brought us to these major decisions. You knew and said your relationship with him was wrong (and knew it was helping us along toward divorce), yet you chose to continue it and pursued it anyway. There will always be that question and doubt in my mind, of what might have happened if we took a chance to work on each other without outside influences. I am sorry, but to me the choices you made recently, and somewhat in the past, were not fighting and doing everything you could to help save your marriage for yourself and/or for our children…in fact, you choosing to pursue a relationship with him was making the choice that you wanted and needed divorce in spite of all the pain and harm it would bring to everyone else in your life. And the real core frustration of all of this to me…I believe you’re chasing a fantasy that will quickly crumble and you will come to realize how wrong it really was, but too late.

I am so sorry that I unknowingly hurt you so badly for so long that you could not even consider the amazing relationship and life we could have together and that we could provide for our children together. I am sorry you can’t share my vision of us working hard to learn to communicate better and become such close friends, lovers and soul mates. The feelings you have are not unique, our marriage problems and overall situation is not unique, you thinking there is no way to love me again and that your future with someone else could be so much better is not unique, and unfortunately, it will not be surprising when things don’t work out as you think between you and OM, and you realize that all the costs of leaving were maybe not worth giving up so quickly. So many couples have faced the very same things, and even much worse, and have decided for whatever reason to really work together to make love and make happiness for each other and for their families…and there are success stories from that and there are plenty of those that don’t work out and they do end up separated and divorced…but at least they really tried first.

I hope you consider and think about how you are feeling toward speaking to your siblings and parents, and how they have spoken to you. You feel pressured and don’t want to be judged negatively, but maybe there is a reason deep down inside of you that you feel so pressured and judged by them, you shouldn’t discount that feeling just because it is uncomfortable. These are the people who know, love and care about you the most in life…they don’t know the whole story, they don’t know what you feel or what you have been through fully…but they do care about you and don’t want to see you hurt or make choices that lead to you and the girls being hurt. Ultimately you always need to make your own choices in life, for the little and big things, but it is worth it to pause and consider when you have those you love and care about most in life really questioning what you are doing…they are not doing it out of wanting you to feel bad, they are doing it out of loving you and being afraid for where you might be headed. You will still have to make your own decisions, but even though it can be hard and painful to consider and listen, it is worth it to really think about what they question and say to you for such major life choices. Then ultimately you can say to them and yourself, “I listened to you, I heard you, I appreciate your love and concern for me, I considered it and I still decided I had to make this choice for myself”.

Fear…I know I am really feeling it more as time ticks down. I know ultimately that I will be fine, and you will be fine, and life will go on, and things will eventually get better. But I am so afraid of what this is going to do to D1, D2 and D3 now, in the near future and how it will affect their lives, perceptions and relationships later in life. I think we will figure out how to be co-parents and will do everything we can to raise them well and get them through all this, and I think and hope they will grow and learn from it, work through the hard times and become great, beautiful, well-adjusted young women…I am just so afraid of the “what might happen” situations and I know they would be better off with us together rather than us apart. Should people stay together just for the kids and otherwise be unhappy in their marriage…I think it depends on the level of stress and unhappiness in the home, and how willing the parents are to work to make things better. Should people divorce when kids are involved because they are just done and unhappy and can’t see how it could ever work…not without doing anything and everything possible to avoid it first in my opinion, I believe the costs and the “What if’s” are too much to not try every other option first. We might disagree on this, and we both need to do what we feel is best for ourselves and our children…me making these points and thoughts very clear to you (and clear to myself) as we reach these critical points is part of me doing what I feel I need to so I can say in my heart and to my girls, “yes, I did everything I could…”