hi every one- so this is what is happening. when we first were married my wife had four different affairs in the first year. then nothing for the next twenty-four years. we worked at are marriage all the time, but it was not perfect. Then in December we had a argument over money and she left for a few weeks. I became severely depressed, so i think she felt bad and came home. but she had already started looking on Craig's list for other men which she started having physical relations with. i found out and she stopped and we started going to counseling. My wife was a victim sexual abuse and sexual assault. it makes me sick to hear her tell the small details. anyway she started going to abuse counseling at a crisis center. and soon I was being accused of being verbally abusive to her. I did have a anger problem when I was stressed, but worked on getting it under control to where I was doing good about not raising my voice when I was upset. but she acted like it was just yesterday that I had been like this to her, I was never mean to her or called her names, just yelled when I as upset, but that was years ago, with the exception of the fight in December which lasted less than five minutes and I apologized to her for yelling. so her accusation took me by surprise. So as she is doing this counseling I had to keep apologizing for stuff I had dealt with years ago, this lasted our twenty-fifth anniversary when she confessed to having another affair with my daughters best friends father. At that time she was heart broken and acted like she was committed to working on the marriage as she did twenty-four years ago, so I forgave as before and moved on. In our marriage we had four beautiful children the youngest is now sixteen. and she was a stay at home mother for most of that time by her choice.she is a good and loving mother so this crisis has taken us by surprise. At the end of July she went to spend time with a friend and never came home. I did all the things a LBS does when they don't know what is happening. and since I started reading this site I realized that it was all the things not to do. any ways she started telling me, she loves me, but not as a husband anymore. she said she was going to stay with some friends in the city and start a new life. I asked her if she had a new male friend and she became defensive and asked why there has to be another man for her to get a life. It turned out that this was more than I could handle. I spent the month of September in a hospital before they felt I was no longer a danger to myself. When I was released, I found out there was another man and she had move into his place and he was every thing I was not. and her time line for being unhappy went from a couple of years to the entire marriage. By the end of October she had stop seeing "Paul" and now seeing "Larry" and "the marine" all are very good men and financially secure according to her, which at this time I am not because of what is going on with us. I am not positive, but I think she is physical with both. and still making sexual advances toward me. when i found this site i started going dark to her and it started helping me get a life but she would start talking about us and i would go lite only to have her run back to new loves this thanks giving she was really making statements that she was having second thoughts so I went lite. she made arrangements to have me get her on a Sunday morning ,then Sunday night, then Monday morning, then finally she made a commitment for Tuesday night. we get she comes back to the house to stay until the following Tuesday to be with the family. the day before thanks giving she says a girl friend is in town and she has not seen her for twenty-four years and she wants to spend the evening with her at her hotel room so she goes and stays the night. then thanks giving day she says she wants to go home Saturday instead of Tuesday. her one male friend has Sunday and Monday off from what I can tell. This is getting long but that's the summery of what has happened to date. I'm trying different things, but I don't know after what happened thank giving day, if I can or should try and wait for her to do what she has to do, I'm working on myself getting my life back, but she is still doing the same old things and blaming me for not changing and keeps telling me I will never change. I love her dearly, but this hurts more than anything I have been through. Thanks for reading, my apologies for making it in to a book
The first thing you should do is be sure to read the Divorce Remedy book by MWD, Divorce Busting is also an excellent book.
Sorry you are here but you will meet some wonderful people here and get some great advice.
You may be on moderation now, post in small frequent replies and stay on this thread until you reach 100 posts (for your thread, you can also post on other peoples threads to give support)
I have read a good deal of books on the subject and can give you some suggestions when you are ready.
Take the parts of this advice that you need and don't worry if I have repeated something that you have already done.
I will give you a bunch of homework assignments to read. This is my ultra brand new and improved list of links.
Now you have all the tools to read. Let us know how your doing and if you have any questions.
I suggest that you read the entire thread in the resources. You can also pick out some people and read their whole story.
The stages of MLC as rewritten by HB from Jim Conway are a template which can only be laid over an MLCer's experience retrospectively. It's impossible to see the pattern until it has finished being laid or the crisis is complete.(nickel Cyrena). So do not be too concerned where your MLC'er is in this process. (Although my general guess is that they are in REPLAY)
Depression is the key to the whole thing and it is always present!
Believe none of what she says and 50% of what she does.
I would not ask her anything unless you can have no expectations. Sometimes asking them questions will be thought of as pressure. You do not want to do anything that can be thought of by your W as controlling or pressure.
Lets not worry about her. Lets work on you! Start your homework assignments. Something to DO while you are on moderation. GAL. Eat, sleep and take a deep breath. In general take care of your self first. Detach the single most important thing to DO.
Your W has given you a gift THE GIFT OF TIME use it wisely
I can't believe how hard it it to let go,to get a life. I find myself fighting temptation every waking moment, not to look at her picture or wanting to hear her voice, or just have her acknowledge my existence when I'm on Facebook. The uncertainty of what gods future is for me, brings me to a stand still. I feel like I'm pushing through mud trying to live day by day, moment by moment. Trying to run a business that has suffered because of my marriage problems and make it profitable again just adds to the feelings that I'm not going to make it, that I'm a failure. I keep telling myself that I need to quit thinking about her and stop feeling sorry for my short comings, but they dig in deeper it seems, and mock me. My wife's MLC has triggered my own, I just wish i could ignore her as well as she does me, find myself a band aid like she has, but I can't and won't. as Robert Frost once penned " I have promises to keep And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep."
She says she been in bed all day crying, I "listen". she tells me she just heard a song by brad paisley "she's everything" says that it is something I would say,
Starts crying again, states she is dealing with a lot of things and emotions. then goes quite.
I go visit with friends, come home go to bed. wake up around three am, she left me a text a little after twelve am. asking how I was doing.
Fine I tell her.
She is still up.
Says she called "Larry" to pick her up, take her back to his place.
He talks about his day and takes her mind of her negative thoughts.
I tell her I'm glad she feels better.
She text that she sleeps on his couch, makes it kinda nice and private for her.
She says, when he goes to work, she has peace and quite during the day.
I text glad it helps
She says, she brought her cosmetology text book and work book, along with the celebrate recovery book, and Bible study books.
Then talks about a christian show she watched.
Tells me she is getting tired. asks if we can talk later
I tell her it "sounds good, night"
She text back "Night Love"
I have no expectations; but that maybe the first time, in maybe more than a year and a half, (if not longer; I can't remember), that she said that with out me saying it first.
Maybe, just maybe, the light at the end of the tunnel just got a little brighter.
I just hope it's not the train headed at me
What roll "Larry" is truly playing in all this I can't say.
Whether she is in an emotional or physical affair, I can only speculate.
Because of her abuse as a child, she has always attributed sex as what love is, so I will leave it at that.
well today happiness has been elusive, can't seem to find it any where in my being. talked with the wife a little today. played the roll of friend again. It's hard being friends with a teenager, funny I have known her since she was sixteen and she didn't act like this then. she is so happy she can finally put her hair up in dreads. anyone that says anything contrary about it, she tell them she is going to do it whether they like it or not, almost like a child throwing a fit. and her language, she never used foul words like she does now, she drops the f word like I can't believe. she use to give me a hard time when I did it. now it's totally unattractive. her whole demeanor has become unattractive. I'm guessing that it's probably a little depression trying to make in roads in my mind. I have been trying to stay away from taking drugs to control it. they seem to make my life worse not better. so I will journal here where it can't be found (I hope that is) All the post I read today seem to be about mlc'ers that became x's not good for my mental state right now. I was hoping to find other men who had wives in crisis now, but kept running across men who divorced. that only made it worse. My form of quitting was trying suicide, but my wife managed to save me, so here I am with a middle aged teenager for a wife and four adult children that act older than their mother. waiting on her to wake up and become the beautiful woman that I knew before this all started. oh well, time to quit complaining, my step-dad use to tell me if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen.that was his kind way of telling me to grow a pair and get over it.on a positive, db'ing seems to be working I don't contact her, she has been doing 99% of the contacting. but since she is in replay I take nothing she says at face value,she seem to forget the next day any way. well that's all for now, tomorrow we will see what life in the twilight zone brings.
My advice is to head to newcomer's and post there, there is a lot of traffic and you will find many people who are beginning their journey just like you.
This isn't to say don't take Cadet's advice and please read everything suggested, it will get you moving forward in the journey you must make.
I am sorry to see you here and again, there are wonderful vets (men) who can give you awesome advice.
We also talk a lot about paper divorce and spiritual/emotional divorce and that paper is just that paper.
Many people suffer from depression on here and will be more than willing to share their journeys with you.
GAL, show your wife that you the amazing person she married. Show her our strength and or DR?
KP- Thank you for the reply I am new to this form stuff so I have been trying to learn the ropes I have read both books, I have been doing the work as best I can I have managed to get my life restarted it's moving slow, but at least it's moving and my wife seems to be warming up a little, so I have hope. she keeps cycling, but her contact is becoming more frequent and positive. she called me "love" the other night. I had to restrain my self from waking up the neighbors. never would have thought I see or hear those words from her ever again
I have been texting my wife only when she contacts me , but I thought I would test the waters a little and see what her response would be if i sent her a little flirt. so I will see what happens.
