My story, my progress, my hope

[Tinman]

So not really sure where to start but I have been reading several different forum groups and really like what I have been reading on this one. A bit more positive and right now that is what I need.
My story is a little different than most I have read but a lot of similar situations. My wife is/was amazing. We both have kids from another marriage and we did marry a little quick but everything just felt so right. We married after 6 months together and have been married about 1 1/2 years. We are both professionals and both of us were basically starting over financially. She had a decent relationship with her ex and I have a very difficult relationship with my ex.
My wife is a child psychologist and has been tremendous for my kids and me. Our family’s blended together pretty well. Her family was very accepting of me and my kids and my family lives pretty far away so they really are not involved.
Our problems –
- Our main problem is my ex wife (We had been divorced for 6 years). She is bi-polar and very abusive to our girls and previously was to me also. At the time we started dating and then got married things were fairly calm in this area but once we were married or even right before we got married things started to heat up. I felt so bad for my girls and what was going on with the ex wife that I spent a lot of time on the phone texting and trying to make their lives more bearable. My current wife told me that on our honeymoon was when she thought that she had made a mistake because I spent so much time texting and answering calls from my girls. Looking back on it I do understand what she is saying and yes I should have handled it much different.
- My wife thought that she could make everyone’s lives better. She is such an upbeat person and everyone loves her so why not try. So she made contact with my ex wife and ended up going over to visit with her a few times. Things were great for about a month and then the ex wife went off the deep end and started causing problems and abusing the girls. It came to the point last July when my girls were with me for a few weeks for vacation and my oldest asked if she could go with my wife on her family vacation instead of going with her mother. my daughter and her mother had really been at odds and so I sent her mother a text and asked her if that was possible. My ex asked that my wife and I come over to her home to discuss it. We went over the next night and discussed it and my ex told us that my oldest was a cancer in her home and she wanted to give us full custody of the oldest in exchange she wanted full custody of the youngest. We could not believe our ears. Give up one child to save one. Needless to say we left. My wife’s heart broke. She started crying and said how any mother could offer to give up their daughter.
- So lots happened over the next few months including a number of CPS reports. A few by us and a few by the school and another one by the hospital. With all that was going on my wife encouraged I to seek full custody of my girls and I did but it has been very difficult and a very long process.
- Other issues ;
o My wife got sick with valley fever last October and could not shack it. This went on for about 5 months with no recovery. The Doctors told her recovery might not happen until she removed some of the stress in her life. As it turns out she ended up seeing another doctor and they put her one a different medication and within a few weeks she was pretty much back to being her. Unfortunately this was not until after she had already told me that she needed to leave.
o When we first got together my wife use to hang out with a group of people and I tried to blend into this group. It was a great group of people and I was kind of excited about having this. However, I am not a social butterfly and while I did enjoy most of the people in the group, for some strange reason my wife’s best friend did not like me. So any time we got together with them she would always make me feel uncomfortable. What was strange is that afterwards my wife would point out how rude her friend was to me and I did not really say much about it. Yes it was uncomfortable but my wife really enjoyed them so I wanted to try. As it turns out my wife knew I was uncomfortable and we stopped going out with them. It was a difficult situation and I even told my wife at one point that if anything ever came between us and caused us to separate it would be her friend.
o As it turns out in February my wife started to make contact her friend again and then they decided to have a girl’s weekend up at another friend’s cabin. When she came back is when she told me that she had decided to leave me.
o I certainly have my issues and things that she wanted me to work on but I was so consumed with the custody battle that I lost sight of what was really important. My new wife and family. I was miserable thinking about what my kids were going thru and not being able to do anything about it. The court system just keeps dragging things out and it just seems so helpless at times. I gained about 40 pounds in a year. I was overeating and spending way too much money on things we don’t need.
o After talking to her about all the reasons why she told me the main reason was because of the crazy ex wife. It is just too stressful for her and it is taking her away from her boys. She said at one point that without that in our lives the other things she thought we could actually work through but she can’t spend the rest of her life dealing with a crazy woman.
o I don’t want to down play my issues because I truly feel like I failed her. She told me that since I gained all that weight she was simply not attracted to me anymore. I was too needy of her and her time. She felt like my priorities were ex wife first, my kids second, her third and her kids fourth. I put too much of the decision making on her. She wanted me to make a decision about going after custody but I kept changing my mind because I was scared it would destroy our family and having her in our family was a huge benefit to my girls. They think of her as more of a mother than they do my ex.
With everything going on above I tried to kicked things into gear and felt sure I could make corrections and prove my love. I started seeing a counselor to work thru my own issues on the eating and shopping. I joined overeater anonymous, I started focusing on her and her kids, I started working on my weight (now down 35 pounds) and I have been trying to be strong.
I had hoped that we would she would stay in our home for a few months until the custody case was done but in the end it was just too hard. Living together, knowing that she did not want to be there and for her she felt like she was being forced to stay because she loves my kids and did not want to make it look as if I had an unstable home. But after trying to make that work for two months she decided that we needed to separate. She said that when she was done that she did not know how to get that back. I was heartbroken. As it turned out she found a house and a few days later I found two homes to look at. She saw the two I was going to look at and one was just a few doors down from the home she had just rented. She encouraged me to get that one so that the kids could be close and could spend time going back and forth.
We also agreed to try and work on the marriage and continue our date night. That worked and we had a few really good nights but that was while we were still living together. After we moved she has had me down for dinner with her and her kids and I have had her down but she decided that she would rather not do date night and has been spending a lot of time with her friends.
It is very hard for me to think that she is willing to through away something I thought was a life with someone I loved and who made me feel loved more than anyone ever has and to do it so she can hang out and drink with her old group of friends. She says she is not even thinking about dating and has no desire to be in any kind of relationship. She just wants piece in her life and to enjoy herself. She had a very long and sad marriage before me so I think she is very concerned.
I guess I have done all the wrong things. I have showered her with love and done everything possible to help her and to be kind to her but she says she feels like we are not equals. She said that she wants someone to be strong and be an equal partner in the marriage. It’s so hard to hear things like that when you are putting your own feelings aside and trying to make sure your once partner has everything they need. Her group of friends was suppose to show up and help her move into her new home but then someone in the group set up a birthday party for one of the main guys in the group (He has the money so everyone caters to him, kind of anyway) so they did not show up to help her and I did. She worked hard but I did the majority of moving her into her home. Then the next week when we were supposed to do our date night she basically stood me up because she was going out with her friends.
I want to think the best of her because really outside of leaving me and my kids brokenhearted I am not sure if I was in her position I would want to have to deal with a crazy ex and have it suck up all my time and energy either.
So at this point my kids go back and forth somewhat and we have dinner together in some form or fashion once a week but she really does not seem like she wants to work on anything to do with our marriage.
She did go with me to court last week and said that she would speak on my behalf to custody evaluators, so I am very grateful for that. We now have a final court date / trial in August.
About a week ago I went to her following Dr. Gary Chapman’s advice wrote down all of my problems and accepted responsibility for them. I told her that I wanted to reconcile our marriage and told her all the things I am doing to try and deal with my problems. She told me that she was really enjoying the alone time and being with her kids. She spoke about her being able to resolve long standing emotions about her mother and talked about her previous marriage and how she had made some bad choices in her life when it came to relationships. I asked if she was talking about us and she got upset with me and said that I want not listening to her as usual. I told her I was and really was only trying to understand what she was saying. She said that she was done talking about things but I encouraged her to talk a little more about just her life and what she is doing with the gym and her hobbies. She said that she could not live her life with my ex wife in it so we really needed to see what happens in August.
Now I am trying to give her space and let her heal and work on my own issues. I am not sure if she is just being nice and trying to let me down easy or if she is waiting to see if I get full custody of my kids before she decides if she wants to work on our marriage.
Just so alone and lost right now.