OK, first post! Really glad to have found this resource and forum, after finding so much conflicting nonsense on the internet. Reading these forums for a few weeks has given me a lot of strength in my day to day.
My story in brief: I've known my wife for a little over ten years, and we have been married for 9. We fell madly in love almost immediately on meeting. We were both at crossroads/confused periods in our life, 23 years old without much career direction, and we bonded over a shared outlook of the world. We were best friends and lovers. She got pregnant within a year, which was the impetus for us getting married, which I realize now was the first unstable step in our life together. It wasn't planned and we probably weren't ready, but we figured we were smart, loving and responsible enough to do it, and for the most part we have been, though it has been a stressful road.
Our relationship has been mostly happy and peaceful, with all of our problems burbling beneath the surface. In general, I am a very agreeable person, extremely conflict-avoidant and sensitive to other people's emotions. W is a bit more fiery, opinionated, and used to asserting what she wants and getting her way. She's very easy going, but when it gets down to it, our dynamic is that I make accommodations for her moods, off days, and sometimes impulsive decisions. I am also someone who struggles with depression and anxiety, for which I have taken various ADs over the years and had IC (I am currently doing both). I am more or less open about my depression. My close friends and family know about it, W knows about it and knew about it when she met me. It's my belief that W also struggles with issues like these, in addition to several nagging health problems (stomach pain, joint pain, fatigue) but her approach is to put up a front of strength to those around her. She is very hard to help (unless she needs me to watch the kids all day while she is in bed) and usually diagnoses her own ailments herself. When we first met, she was seeing an IC and taking AD, but stopped soon after we began dating because she didnt like the side effects. Since then, she has sworn off therapy and ADs every time I have brought them up, and has also been less than enthusiastic about me taking them (pointing out the side effects a lot). She is skeptical to western medicine in general; she works as an herbalist at an acupuncture clinic and is far more inclined to alternative healing strategies to her problems, which I support but....I ultimately doubt how much they work.
Anyway: Our situation now is a bit of replay of something that first happened in 2011. After several months of growing distance between us (I was working a pretty crazy schedule, she was back in school, and we had two young boys), I drunkenly made a pass at a friend. Nothing happened beyond that, but it was still a betrayal. A few weeks went by and W did the same thing with OM, a friend of her BFF. We came clean to eachother and promised to work things out, but W very quickly shifted away from that to having an A with OM, which went on, off and on, for the rest of the year. I hung on, us each spending time out of the house, and eventually went on some dates with an LF (at W's urging) but broke that off after a short time. It made me feel good, but was too weird and soon. Soon after, W came back, apologized and recommitted to the M. I was so elated to have her back that I basically accepted her completely and things quickly went back to "normal". Almost immediately, she became pregnant again, which was unplanned and highly unlikely, considering we were using protection (except once I guess). I had fears that a new baby would introduce more stress than our fragile R could handle, but ultimately dove headlong into the whole process, being as supportive and loving as possible (I think I am generally pretty good at this and W would agree).
Beginning this year is where things started to slowly crumble down. Our newborn was now a year old, sleep was hard to come by, we were wracked by schedule and money stress. We had lost our insurance, so I had stopped taking ADs. At first, I thought I adjusted fine, but a few months in I started to realize what a mistake this was. My mood darkened, my anxiety skyrocketed. I'm sure I was not fun to be around, but I did still dedicate myself to taking care of wife and kids and job. I should say that W hates my job, but its always been hard to discern whether she just hates that I have a job that I dont get fulfillment from, that I have a job that doesnt make enough money, OR that I have a job that takes me out of the house, leaving her to be a SAHM. She started a job last fall, which was great for her and I wholly supported, but it added another aspect to our already complex schedule, and took a lot out of her energy wise. She has been a bit of a drinker for several years, but it got much worse this year, drinking wine every afternoon into the night. She said once or twice that she needed help stopping, and I, in my fog of depression, did nothing beyond lamely encouraging her to try to stop. This is one of my greatest regrets. I was too sick myself to see how sick she was.
In late July, she went out several nights in a row, in a manner that was a bit unusual. I started to suspect something was going on, and when she didnt come home one night until 5am, i looked at her open FB page and saw a message with a guy referencing them hanging out. Soon after, we went on a "date" which turned into her asking me for an open relationship. Everything after that is basically textbook. "ILYBINILWY, we are better off apart, we bring eachother down, i need to choose my path independent of you, i have never been single, its not about the OM, he was just the catalyst, we shouldnt stay in an unhappy M just for the kids, a M is just a piece of paper, I am not attracted to you and see you as a friend". All kinds of things that she never would have said a year ago, and if I had ever said to her she would completely melt down. While she put a lot of our relationship issues on me and my depression, she didnt have a lot of specific reasons for leaving, beyond vaguely accusing me of not supporting her emotionally and spiritually. I made all kinds of mistakes at first: begged and pleaded, announced all kinds of plans to work on things, called her BFF and sister and mom (I am close with all 3), acted hurt and devastated every time i saw her, etc.
Since then I have slowly been trying to get in control. She doesnt really have the $$ to move out, though she says she wants to, and has been looking at apartments. I opened a separate bank account, a move that she found threatening, but honestly I'm glad I did. One of her complaints is that she has always had to bear the stress of our finances, and now I am doing that, and its already felt like a confidence boost (and I think she is secretly relieved). I asked her to move out to somewhere temporary for now, as kindof a trial separation, which was hard to do as I dont want this to happen at all, but felt the need to make what shes asking for feel more real to her, as for several weeks now she has just been coming and going as she pleases, rather obviously pursuing OM, and seeming oblivious to how our poor kids are handling this (which is not well). She refuses to leave until she is ready. I went through a few weeks of obsessing with WTH is going on in her mind but now I am easing off of that.
Since discovering DB, I've realized that Ive been following some of the steps already, and have doubled my efforts on all the rest. My GAL plans are exercise, yoga, meditation, quitting smoking, and maybe joining a pickup hockey league. In just two weeks, I feel its much easier to be around her, and we have gone close to a week without any kind of discussion of the S, beyond some money Qs, which I have tried to handle calmly. She even called me "honey" twice the other day. I know this will be a long road, but I feel better now than i did just weeks ago. Any advice for the LBS dealing with a depressed, alcoholic, generally foggy/befuddled WAW? I love her with all my heart, though I have faced down a reality of detaching her from my life. Sad sad sad.
M: 33 W: 33 M: 9 T: 10 3 S's: 8, 6 and 1.5 BD: 8/3/14 Living together