One year in but a newbie

[Lifes Twists]

Hi everyone,

I am a newbie here. I have been reading through the forum and decided it was time for me to post.

My life and marriage really started to unravel a year ago. We had our problems and were going to MC and it seemed like everything was going well. On New Years eve a year ago I became really sick. I had high fevers and was delirious for the better part of a week. After the fevers left I was left with sever difficulty breathing. I was in and out of several hospitals. The told me I had everything from a heart attack, enlarged heart, weakened heart stroke, etc. I ened up seeing a lung specialist. He put me on a heavy dose of prednisone. Over the course of two weeks I reacted very badly to the prednisone. Police were called and I found myself in the psychiatric ward. They weaned me off the medications. The head doctor spent some time on the phone with my wife. The doctor decided that she would not release me to my wife and contacted my parents. I was released into their care and had to live at their home. My wife and three daughters would not talk to me. later that week I was served with divorce papers. This was late February. My wife and kids moved out of the house and into a 2 bedroom apartment about a mile down the road.I retained a lawyer and had the first court date. My lawyer rolled over and gave in to her lawyers demands. I not only had to give her a ton of money, but still had to pay on our existing home mortgage. I could not sell the house even if I wanted to as it was going through a rehab and did not have certificate of occupancy on the new addition yet.

I started to do a lot of reading. I got into IC and started to work through things. I got a lot of bad advice from my lawyer and from family. Did more reading.continued to try and reach out to wife and daughters. Did all the wrong things at first and drove them farther away. They called police on me several times for non incidents. The first break through came when the police got tired of getting calls from them. The final time the police stopped over to talk to me first before responding to their call. They then went over and had a long talk with my wife.

During this time, I kept asking my lawyer if wife and I should be working on an agreement or something. He kept telling me that that was what I hired him for. I kept reading books and online and finally figured my lawyer was full of it and useless. I fired him and found another lawyer who supported mediation. Told my new lawyer that I did not believe in divorce, but also had to protect myself from her lawyer.Started to try and get wife to work on an agreement. We met several times and I thought we had one worked out. Her lawyer kept interfering and we got no where. Got notice of second court hearing and got prepared with new lawyer. Her lawyer apparently did not feel that she needed to prepare. My lawyer buried her and I gained ground and wife lost ground. Her lawyer immediately requested a court date. I did not hear much from my wife for a couple weeks. She finally contacted me to see if I had heard anything from the lawyers. I told her that my lawyer had tried to contact her lawyer about an agreement but was getting no where. Turns out wife was extremely frustrated with lawyer and was out of money to pay. We met and agreed to stop the divorce and to live separately for now.The Divorce was stopped around the beginning of October.

I have continued to rebuild my relationship with my daughters. I spent both Thanksgiving and Christmas eve with them and my wife.

Since I found this site and started to read the forum I found that I have made many of the same mistakes and had the same ups and down of the roller coaster I am on. I am in the house alone and working on it to get it finished for probable sale in the spring. My wife and I talk mostly about the kids and their issues right now. I am working on myself and trying to get a life. I have started to follow the rules and hope my wife will see the changes I am working on. I am an engineer and I am used to figuring out how to fix things. I have had to really learn patience and that I can only fix myself.

Thanks for reading my story.