1. I didn't have female friends who I hung out with on my own without my wife. That is a boundary I respected. As a man, I had male friends, or I would hang out with my male friends and their wives/girlfriends simultaneously, but not on my own.
2. You undermine your own credibility if you are going to tell me there was nothing wrong with my wife secretly hanging out with her ex-boyfriend for 10 years behind my back. I found emails between her and her ex-boyfriend where she was asking him to go to a burlesque show with her and offering to clean his apartment. meanwhile she was telling me she was going out with her sister or other friends. But that's ok because the WAS is always the misunderstood person who gets a free pass to do what they want? One of his ex-girlfriends actually had to tell my wife to leave him alone, and she told me this after she found out the circumstances. The more recent actual EA was from June 2013 and was literally her going on dates and texting non-stop with some guy she met who told her he had feelings for her and tried to convince her to leave me. He even mailed her a stuffed squirrel that she was carrying around the house for about a week and when I asked her where she got it she would lie to me.
3. I stated the instances in which I was supportive of my wife since a number of people JUMPED TO CONCLUSIONS and told me that I was not supportive of her when I have always tried to be supportive of her.
4. I am not trying to blame shift. I know I have issues that again, I acknowledge and am going to counseling for and working on. How is that downplaying the issue? I am doing everything I can. What I am trying to do by talking about my marriage and my W is give people a better idea of what is going on in my marriage so they can offer more helpful advice and not just "well you're a dick".
5. And finally, on the "she was afraid of me issue", she never once stated she was afraid of me or attempted to retreat from me during the course of our marriage. Not even once. I haven't punched a wall in probably over 6 years and I never really put a hole in anything, and I didn't do it directed at her. Say my behavior was inappropriate, ok, but I know she is using that issue now to try to manipulate people into giving her permission to divorce me. And no, that's not mind-reading. Her parents don't believe in divorce and I know for a fact she was trying to get them to accept her divorcing me.
T 10 years, M 4 years, both 28 years old 7/3/2013 - W wanted D, we attempted to reconcile 7/20/2013 - discovered W's EA, attempted to reconcile 8/24/2013 - W told me she wanted D, filed papers
