When my H took my D away last New Year's with our his friends and their kids, she had a baaaaad accident in a wet bathing suit. Yup. She had never once had an accident before. I'd be lying if I said I didn't smile a little bit.
Re: feeling like this is the dumbest divorce ever... I'd be willing to bet that crosses the minds of a lot of us on here In fact, this week I was actually thinking to myself "What is H going to say to some future GF or date about why he got divorced? 'Well, I just fell out of love and I didn't really feel like trying to figure it out, it was too much work.'?? Good luck with that one, buddy!" Here we are telling them we'd be willing to go to counseling and do basically whatever it takes, but they're willing to just walk away, despite vowing to us they'd stick by us for better or worse and whatever else they said when they married us. For me, that's where I'm trying to look at him with some compassion instead of just thinking he's an idiot - he must be in a very bad place personally to think that's the only answer.
Me:30 H:29, no kids T:12, M:4 (when D was final) 12/13: "Don't think I want to be M anymore" 6/14: Separated (I move) 1/15: H filed for D 5/15: D final
KGirl-- here I am, laying in bed late at night, exhausted but for some reason can't bring myself to close my eyes and try to go to sleep. ... thinking the exact same thing as you.
The life I was building with my husband just went away poof like that. No effort to make it work.
The friendly email exchanges we have now make me feel a little ill when I let myself stop to think about it. There is nothing amicable about this.
We deserve more.
Sorry to hijack. KGirl's post hit a nerve tonight.
Heh Claire. We all hijack each others post. Don't apologise and I'm sure Maybell doesn't mind.
I think the same things about my WAW. It annoys me that she won't even consider working on our issues. I fully admit to my faults and am prepared to give our M 100% in the future. But I'm also beginning to have this feeling of detachment. Yes, I think about her everyday (and I have real bad days... this week in fact) but I believe it will get better for us all at some point.
In the meantime my thoughts and prayers are with each and every single one of you on these threads!
Last edited by bashy; 07/04/1405:06 AM.
M 35 W 31 D 10 Married 3 years Together 11 Single since Nov 13 Moved out Dec 13 ILYBNILWY, 'I don't want to be a boring housewife, 'I don't fancy you any more' OM confirmed Jun 14
Not a hijack -- I knew when I wrote it how many of us would feel the same.
The night after BD#1 H and I sat outside with a bottle of wine and talked about how we'd gotten to that place. We asked one another a bunch of questions that had been bothering us and I thought we'd cleared the air.
His were:
did you get pregnant the 3rd time on purpose even though I didn't want another kid? (No of course not, we were planning a major move, and duh I had trouble getting pregnant the first two times so why would you even think I could?)
It seemed like you didn't like my sister when we were first married? (No, I didn't, and for cause, but she & I resolved that ten years ago, as you know)
I really hated the haircut you had when D8 was a baby (that one he's brought up repeatedly over several years. It's never looked like that since)
Why didn't you go back to yoga when we were on the west coast? (I told you why a lot)
No, he will tell a future girlfriend that he only married me because everyone else was getting married at that time and us divorcing was just him correcting that mistake. I even read a letter from his OW where SHE says she could never understand what was so wrong with the M except he maybe wanted a little more sex.
It makes me mad just to write that sentence.
I'm sorry, labug, if you're reading this I won't be writing about compassion today. I still feel it, deep down, but not enough to write about it.
H doesn't know what his plans are for today. He has an invitation from the couple we spent last Sunday with but he doesn't know if he'll go. As with every time he's invited to spend time with my friends, who were meant to our friends, he's reluctant to put himself out there because he's concerned about how he'll be received. I'm glad he's aware that he's behaving poorly. But he's still getting invitations! And from me too! Someone needs to find his big-boy underoos and recognize grace and opportunity when it nags for him to take it.
It irks me that he's willing to put me and the kids through all this but he's reluctant to show his face in public because he's worried people will think poorly of him. It's like he feels entitled to us loving him so he's worried about where the real damage might come from.
Yes, by trying so hard to work things out with him I probably gave him grounds to feel entitled. I'm done. He can have his lonely life in our small town and do the best he can with it. This is what he wanted, after all.
Wow, I am still really, really mad.
I think I'm glad about that. I've been treated horribly and I shouldn't have put up with it for so long. It's about time I found my limit. It's a year since BD#1. I should have found my anger a long time ago.
I do have compassion for my H feeling what looks to me like desperation. But I didn't cause it and I've done the best I could to help him address it. He has had better opportunities than most to address his problems and instead he chose to lie and dodge and blame me. My compassion has grown passive. These are his problems. I hope he solves them. I hope he doesn't visit them on our children more than I can compensate for. But I can't do anything about them and I'm done putting myself at his mercy.
Sorry for the ramble, y'all. I guess I've had a breakthrough.
Me42, H40 D12, S8, S7 A revealed: 7/13 Sep 4/14; Agreed to D 1/15
Thank you very much for your encouragement. I feel like a much better person already, it will be interesting to see where I am in another year. SO MUCH STRONGER than I was a year ago at BD#1. I wish I'd found this forum back then, and actually believed that it applied to me. Shock lasted much, much too long.
I believe that "How to Improve..." will be useful. But I think I will pick it up with everyone else in my life in mind. If H ends up getting the benefit of it too, then lucky us. I'm sure it will be useful in my parenting, too.
You were right about moving into a new stage of detachment. I think last night's meltdown was about getting there. This morning as I was breathing through the rest of my anger, I tried out ideas like "I hate him," or "He's such a complete jerk" and many others.
None of them really rang true for me. I don't hate him. I'm hurt, but I don't hate him for hurting me. I'm angry and disappointed, but I don't hate him. I do love him and wish the best for him. I happen to think he's choosing a terrible path for getting what he wants, but that's his right and I don't hate him for it. As I have gotten to know his family more deeply over the years of our marriage, I have often wondered how he managed to get through his childhood with such a healthy sense of himself. Now I've been shown that he didn't. I can't hate him for that.
(my mom thinks that I'm excusing him... I don't think it's "excusing" because that implies that I'm submitting to it. I'm not anymore. But I am trying to see clearly because that's to my benefit)
No, I really don't think OW was happy. I do think she's moving towards it now as best she can, and that's part of the reason she ignored him when he tried to get into her pants when he was last in her country this past May. (mind-reading perhaps, but I've done enough investigating to have reason to think this). He texted her a lot before he got there and she ignored them, and when he saw her at an alcohol-based work event he asked her about it and she said "I don't really check texts" -- and he believed her. Please, what 26 yo doesn't live and die by text? I'm 42 and I do. And her JOB is social media. Duh.
Anyway, no, I wouldn't want to do lunch with her or even shake her hand or greet her with a civil tongue, but I recognize that the anger I feel toward her is partly proxy for the anger I feel towards H. And I feel so grateful not to be her -- I so easily could have.
What I *saw* made H care for her was her vulnerability. She characterized herself as verbally abused by a bully of a baby daddy from whom she had separated herself with difficulty. She's a single mom of a cute little girl. As part of his "closure" when he sent the NC letter in July H also sent a message to the baby daddy that he showed me. He wanted my approval. It basically berated the baby daddy for not being a man his daughter could be proud of. The irony of that message escaped my H. I deflected pointing it out to him by saying I didn't want to be put in the position of commenting on a scolding of his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend.
Also, judging by their texts, their sex life was quite... adventurous. I know H has spent time on porn, which he assured me is normal for guys. Since it didn't really impact our sex life I didn't worry about it but considering how things... changed... after he slept with her it's an area that I don't know will ever be recoverable. We weren't each other's firsts, but we did figure out how to make it good together (if you get my drift) and I wasn't prudish about trying new things. This makes me wonder if he just needs life to be bigger than what he's let it be in the last 8-10 years. Or if there's some other problem that I'm not getting at. (I could go on here but I think I'm going to not worry about it till it becomes more relevant)
One last thing and I'll close this chapter. The trip I have been wanting to take... There are many, many reasons, most of them inarguable, why we never took my dream trip (moves, children's ages, financial & time commitments elsewhere...). It's actually one of the ways I feel freer now that I have determined that I *will* take this trip next summer, and I've gotten a commitment from a friend with similar interests that she will go with me. This freedom is one of the things I absolutely will not give up if we manage to reconcile.
As an aside... I've been keeping an eagle eye on finances in the last two months. I'm not so worried about H shafting me, both because of his attitude towards the money, that it belongs to both of us, and because I've given a BOATLOAD of financial evidence to the attorney when I retained her and even if he did try to shaft me now I have strong recourse. So I was checking on it a few minutes ago and noticed some things I had questions about and asked H via text about them. He was reasonably friendly and open about answering them. This is so curious to me. He's still treating it as "our" money, and our financial situation as "our" situation, and apologized for all the spending getting his apartment set up. I realize this means nothing. I just wish I understood where his head is. I'm sure he does, too.
If you've made it this far, thanks for reading the novel. I know I'm verbose. I just feel like I have a LOT to process and laying it out here REALLY helps me a lot.
Me42, H40 D12, S8, S7 A revealed: 7/13 Sep 4/14; Agreed to D 1/15
Maybell, FWIW, my H has a porn problem, and part of the function of the OW was to act out some of those fantasies.
Eventually, he couldn't really function with her either, without porn and Viagra. So there you go.
Don't take it personally.
Believe me, I could live the rest of my life without ever feeling again like I am role-playing a porn flick running through his head, while for him, Goat Gal isn't really "there" at all, just some body he's enjoying.
It was degrading, which I can guess is how my H's OW eventually felt too.
For the record, I was pretty adventurous... that stopped after I realized I was the one trying to meet all of his needs, while he essentially ignored what I liked.
Just something to think about. It's probably not about the OW much at all in your H's case either. She's just a vehicle.
--GG
Me 54 Him 63 M 23 T 29 0 Kids Funny Farm of Rescues 12/12 OW-- 5/13 ILYBINILWY: A denied 9/13 Proof OW: ENDED 2/14 Got D papers on my BD I kicked him out for my sanity 9/14 He wants to "talk"?
You know, GoatGal, I actually enjoyed sex with him a lot before he found her. Sometimes it was kind of rote but not always. I gained a lot of weight during the whole house/finance debacle and it made me really self-conscious about being naked with him, so I probably withdrew from him some... but he was withdrawing from me at the same time in other ways (I *think* related to the finance issues and my reaction to them) and things weren't great in that area or any other during that time. We hurt each other quite a lot during that period, both of us nursing hurts of different kinds. I don't think the porn was a problem prior to OW, although he did have some difficulties before I knew about her that I now attribute to the affair.
Can't do anything about the sex now or for a long time to come.
Since my tantrum my goals have changed. I want to be a better listener to everybody around me, and I still want to slather on the words of affirmation to my H, but also to many other people as well. The conversation thing will have to wait till he starts one.
And to get my house tidied up and my resume circulating. Off to the real world!!
Me42, H40 D12, S8, S7 A revealed: 7/13 Sep 4/14; Agreed to D 1/15
In fact, this week I was actually thinking to myself "What is H going to say to some future GF or date about why he got divorced? 'Well, I just fell out of love and I didn't really feel like trying to figure it out, it was too much work.'?? Good luck with that one, buddy!" Here we are telling them we'd be willing to go to counseling and do basically whatever it takes, but they're willing to just walk away, despite vowing to us they'd stick by us for better or worse and whatever else they said when they married us. For me, that's where I'm trying to look at him with some compassion instead of just thinking he's an idiot - he must be in a very bad place personally to think that's the only answer.