Hello! 20 year marriage teetering on the brink...

[7720]

yes labug...The only way out is to detach..some days easier than others....both in the R have to change and come back and start a new relationship. Not the same old one...Just left wondering if the other is going to grow farther away...

[labug]

You have no control on whether 'the other' will grow farther away so it's not worth the worry. I know that's easier said than done but that's the reality.

Figure out who the problems belongs to. If it's yours work on it. If it's hers, leave it with her.

[AnotherStander]

Wow, thank you all so much for visiting, I appreciate it First some responses, then I’ll post a journal update in the next post.

Definitely something to think about for me as well, after all, her lack of communication kind of got us here in the first place. How do you hint you're still around without it being pursuing though?

Exactly right on the lack of communication, that was definitely a huge factor. I'm not in a hurry to drop any big hints, for now I'm just trying to engage W in friendly conversation whenever we're together and that has been going quite well. She’s laughing more and generally seems to be enjoying herself when we’re together. I’m going to let that run for a while with no pressure, don’t want to set things back, feeding the squirrel and all that

Menopause on its own is not something that is a death knell for marriage.
I was told this by PHD therapists and councelors, and other women that have been through menopause.
However as one ingredient into this perfect storm I believe it is absolutely essential on the impact of marriages.

Thanks again for the input. I did some reading on perimenopause over the weekend and some things rang true, especially that many women come to the point where problems they’ve lived with for years out of a sense of duty to family suddenly become big issues that they can no longer accept. Other info described how some women will all but completely abandon their families to “find themselves”, my W certainly hasn’t gone to that extreme but I do think that things in our M that were never a problem before have suddenly risen to the surface as reasons to end the M (in her eyes).

You are much closer to the beginning than you are to the end.
When was the trigger for BD?

It all started around my birthday in early June. We had a fight, didn’t talk for a few days, then I reached out to her and apologized, talked about how distant we had grown over the last year or so and how I wanted to talk to her about what we could do to fix that. That’s when I got the “I’m not happy and I want to leave” talk.

So whether she hits the other two or not, like you said, remains to be seen.

I don’t think she’d ever leave her job, in fact during the pathetic begging/ pleading stage I actually offered to let her quit her job and be a SAHM (thinking maybe the job was why she was unhappy). She said something like “No, that’s not going to happen.” She had complained about her job so much that I thought she hated it, but she actually likes it there and likes the people, she just likes complaining about it too! As for God, she’s a fair weather believer. An ambivalent Catholic.

Did your W start these changes before or after BD? I imagine before if you noticed the sexier underwear. I'm close to her in age and trying to put myself in her shoes. I don't quite get the motivation yet.

Yeah, that was before. She started dieting maybe 9 months before BD. By the time she dropped 20 pounds she pretty much had to buy new clothes and underwear (4 or 5 months before BD). I’d say the clothes were along the lines of what she wore before, but the undies were a departure. She went from beige grandma panties and bras to Victoria Secret panties with bows and VS push-up bras.

As someone else said, I find you really clear and insightful both when writing about your own sitch and when commenting on others' sitches. I suspect that your hunches as to what to do will be spot on.

I learn a lot from following your posts. Thank you very much and good luck in your sitch.

Thank you, that’s so nice to hear Believe it or not I often find myself responding to W by thinking about something I advised someone else to do, LOL! So in a way I’m coaching myself when I coach others!

Hey anotherstander...thanks for your comments on my sitch..I was reading yours and see a lot of similarities....I too have been exploring the peri menopause and menopause connection..I think my W is going through this as well. What have I done that works- well I am trying to figure out when she is about to have her P and stay way away...

That is very good advice, but I haven't been able to do that for quite a while because even W isn’t sure what her cycle is supposed to be. I think I mentioned earlier in the thread that she has had a bleeding problem for 9+ months, she bleeds 3 weeks a month. It’s been very frustrating for her and such a problem that she can’t even tell when she’s having her period and when she’s just bleeding. They’re talking about doing a full hysterectomy on her to cure it.

have you picked up any new hobbies or done anything for yourself? I have always wanted to learn how to dance...ball room and swing etc

Yes, thanks for the reminder, I’ll talk about that below in the journaling post!

AS, I think I'm married to the male version or your wife-minus the sexier underwear. But what do I know? He may be wearing sexier underwear now!

LOL! And you want to know the really sad thing, I washed all that fancy underwear for her every week, haha!

As his niece so aptly pointed out to me this week: "He's got a big ego that won't allow him to admit he's made a mistake even if he thinks he has."

I honestly think this is the reason many MLCers and WAS’s never reconcile, because they’re not willing to say they were wrong. Even just the act of reconciling would imply that they were wrong, and they’d be too embarrassed to let anyone know that so they’d rather just leave the M in the ditch. I read a story somewhere on these forums about a woman who when she came out of the tunnel and reconciled said the hardest thing she ever had to do in her life was go back to all those people that she had told her H was a wife-beating, child-abusing, evil devil worshipper, and explain to them that none of it was true and that she didn’t even know why she had said all of it. I really think a lot of people are just not willing to deal with the embarrassment. I’m thankful my W never went there, that is one less thing to stand in the way of reconciling some day.

Good luck to you. You're doing a fabulous job at this.

Thank you so much!

I just finished reading your whole posts.

Wow, you probably know more about my sitch than I do One of these days I need to go back and review everything I said here!

I feel the same way, if I don't let him know I still want to try to fix our relationship, then he will just presume I don't want to.

One of my complaints about W is she never told me what she thought. She dropped hints, but guys aren’t good at interpreting hints. We need to be told in clear terms. So that is a concern of mine, I’m afraid I could drop hints and she’ll never pick up on them and I’ll be as guilty of poor communication as she was. But at the same time any R talks would be pressure/ pursuing. Tough call! DB is pretty clear that we need to wait for them to make a move, but I really don’t see W doing that as it’s not in her nature and never has been. I may have to break DB protocol on this at some point. I’ll report if/ when I do that and how it’s received.

Your doing awesome and sound like a really great Dad. Your kids are lucky to have you.

Thank you, that’s sweet of you! I do love my kids to pieces and the hardest thing about this whole experience has been having so much less exposure to them every other week. But we’ve been a lot more involved on the weeks I have them, I cherish that time so much more now. So there has been a plus side to it.

What's happened for me over these months of being here and working on my stuff is that I now know that without change, I don't want a R with my H because we would be right back in the same predicament. Only now I would be wondering "When is he going to drop the next bomb?"

There is that risk. The stories I’ve read here in which people reconcile and then separate again almost always involve both spouses going back to their old “more of the same” behavior. I don’t see myself doing that, after all this work who could just fall back to old habits? Plus I don’t even think about the 180’s anymore, they’re just me now. And the way I look at it, W doesn’t want to go back to the old M and frankly I don’t either. I would like to build a newer, better R with W. She doesn’t want to right now, but that’s my hope- that someday she will.

[7720]

Hey Anotherstander it is nice to have your optimistic self around here. I feel like I can picture you in my mind...I remember Will and Intent...that is how I got my W in the first place...I willed her and I put forth the intention of getting her....It seems like you have a good grasp on this...keep it up

[ForeverYoung]

There are a lot of stories around here about how much people fight during this process and DR even addresses that, but it seems like cases like ours where there is no fighting are fairly unusual.

Definitely! But in most other respects W hasn't really changed much. She's still a loving and caring mother, a responsible worker, a kind person in general and has not exhibited the "opposite" behavior that I've seen described in MLC threads. She's never once gone monster (or anything close to it) throughout this whole process. She's actually been very kind and considerate towards me and was there to support me in the worst stages of depression after BD. Now there have been some MLC signs- she dieted and lost about 20 pounds, she started wearing sexier underwear, changed her hair style a bit. But no radical transformation, no "alien transplant". Maybe that is still to come, only time will tell.

No fighting over here. No monster either. We live together, do things together and generally get along good, she's just not "In Love" and therefore thinks she needs to move on.

[*]

Of course, in a touchy situation where our spouse wants out, we still have to choose our battles wisely. But things haven't been as tense in our sitch as they used to be, so I think I'm on track.

[ForeverYoung]

I just looked back at your opening post in this thread and noticed the "we are like roommates" comment. [*]

[labug]

Maybe I should read that book.

[keep_going]

In his 20 plus years of marriage counseling he found "not fighting" to be quite common in this situation. Even claims that the failure to argue constructively, and therefore work out differences, is what led to the falling out of love.

I think that perhaps more than the "not fighting", it's the failure to argue / communicate constructively what gets the IDLY speech.

Some couples never fight and some do all the time (like me and my H). Both are unhealthy dynamics where issues don't get resolved.

[Starbag]

Just wanna jump in and say that my H described us as "roommates" as well...and he was very very serious about it when he was saying it, and went on about how we couldn't work. And we barely fight before...I used to think he had such great temper but now looking back, it wasn't all that healthy.

[Soul.Searching]

My H told me that "It has been too long since we were friends and not lovers" I was floored at that point and said nothing. I felt like screaming! "Yeah because I ML to my friends Etc

We fought but not all the time and usually once we said what we had to say, it was over. I actually still think we had a healthy balance when it came to fighting IMHO . I think a lot of the time, it doesn't matter what we do, if the OP has deep enough issues, then they will find any excuse they can.
Heck my H told me at one point it was because I didn't wear dresses and do my nails!!! WTF??
NOT that it matters but I do wear dresses if its hot enough! I'm not one to wear a dress to look good if it's cold! I can't do my finger nails because of work and I do do my toe nails in winter. Seriously! How can a sain person even think about dresses and nails as an actual reason to throw away 13 years and tear a family apart?


I know I have made mistakes, I know I could have handled things differently but ultimately I'm starting to think that this was inevitable no matter what I had done.

From my point of view, we had had one of the best years this past year. Minimal fighting and having fun both as a couple and as a family. One thing H didn't like was me getting angry/ upset about the money being spent at the pub. It wasent a lot of money but money we couldn't afford to waste.
We had nearly paid off several bills that took years to pay. A few weeks before BD I was telling H how in a month or two we would have more money and that I won't mind when he does that because there will still be enough to pay everything and I won't have to stress about what I can and can't pay.
He gave me such a strange look when I said. A few weeks later he wanted to leave.

I think that a lot of the WAS has such deep inner demonds that it doesn't matter what we do or don't do before BD. they will find some reason to blame us for their feelings.