Marriage = busted. Help me bust my divorce too!!

[mamabird]

Hi everyone,
I posted this to the newcomers forum but I'm not getting much traction there. I think it might be appropriate to post here too. I need help!!!

Here is my story - working backwards I guess:
About 6 weeks ago, my husband discovered that I was having an OA (of sorts). I say "of sorts" because the relationship was a little hard to define. I knew the person but the relationship (and transgression) was entirely over text, so it wasn't really online in the traditional sense. I guess you could call it a "TA". It was very short lived and I wasn't even interested in him or interested in sleeping with him. It was really just an avenue to make myself feel better since my husband consistently rejected and emotionally/verbally abused me. Needless to say, I said my goodbyes and ceased contact with the OP THAT DAY.

My H asked me to move out of the house, which I did in order to appease him. I am currently staying at my parents' house, but we basically alternate time in our home with our two boys. He took off his ring, he defriended me on Facebook, he emailed my friends, my sister and the "OM" and gave them all holy hell. He has taken control of our finances to the extent he can (basically not putting money into our joint account, but I still can have cash if I ask for it and use credit cards). He is threatening/planning to date other people.

He spoke to our mutual friends and gave them his version of the story, which makes him look like God's gift to husbands and makes me look like an ungrateful lowlife who has no moral character whatsoever (he left out the emotional abuse and withholding love part I guess), and has now irreparably damaged some of those relationships for me.

H has moved from anger to depression back to anger again. We can't have a civil conversation at this point. He gets angry and starts demeaning me, at which point I hang up or walk away or otherwise discontinue the conversation. He has emailed father with me on copy and declaring that there is only one option for him, which is for us to get a D. He says that although he has given it a lot of thought, any person who would behave in "that way" is not who he wants to have for a wife. I find this a very odd means of communication and I haven't responded to any of it.

Prior to this "bomb" event, things had been rather ugly anyway. H had been idly threatening divorce for about a year (I never took it seriously). He had been seriously angry, rejecting and demeaning and I felt I couldn't talk to him. We have had some trust issues in our past (I lied to H about a friendship with an ex-coworker that I was a little infatuated with, but nothing happened and coworker wasn't even aware). We went to counseling about 2 years ago, which did help and things were going well for about a year. H also has deep seated, unresolved abandonment issues related to his mother which I think have been in play for a while, and now he is projecting that anger onto me.

We have had other stresses - I recently quit my job, and we bought a house a year ago, which we then renovated and moved into. We are leveraged to the hilt and had to borrow money from our parents to get in.

I have taken Michele's advice to heart as much as I can. I did apologize sincerely and profoundly, both over email and telephone, at the beginning. But now I have ceased all schmoopy emails and such, although since I am sharing the house with him, I am still doing the family's laundry and grocery shopping, and I clean up when I am here. I am still maintaining a "positive friendly attitude" and am thanking him for doing things (such as scheduling the plumber and leaving the porch light on for me) to demonstrate that I've changed and to remove the negative generalization. But otherwise, I pretty much leave him alone and do my own thing. He won't talk to me or even look at me anyway. I had a great weekend with my sons last weekend and as soon as he realized that I was having fun without him he went from "kind-of-being-sort-of-a-little-bit-nice" to Grade A jerk.

He has also agreed to counseling. We found someone who I think will be great. She handled our situation (he wants D, I want R) with aplomb. We are all in agreement we will work towards healing in order to be better co-parents. A step in the right direction.

At first I thought I could go right to LRT but since we are in therapy together I am not sure. He's already given me a clue to a 180 that I could do - he said, "I've been looking for your approval through our whole marriage". He really wavers between jerk and nice and I'm just trying to keep that smile on my face no matter what.

Thanks for listening and for any advice that you have. xoxo