Sorry to see you here. As starsky said, most of us are all in somewhat of the same boat. It is the toughest thing I've ever been through, bar none. It's so tough seeing someone that you love do this and seemingly look out for no one but themself. Kids compound the pain for me, because there's so little we can do to make up for the sitch.
This is the best place to be, given the circumstance. There's vets here that do all of us a huge service by commenting and guiding us. They've seen most everything and most have successfully repaired their marriages. Then there's all of us novices. Most of the time for us, it's comforting to know how many others are going through the exact same circumstances and feelings. You'll see us commenting our opinions and they are just that. Mostly its group help for us and the things we say to others often help us put our situations in perspective. Sometimes the folks have constructive criticism, that's the best kind, the things that hurt to think about are usually the best to address.
A couple things that have helped me, so far. But also the toughest for me to handle.
- Take care of your kid, be their stability here. Make sure he knows you love him - If in doubt about something, see if you can get advice here first before confronting your spouse. - Try to realize that your wife is in a fantasy world right now, everything is right with OM and she thinks you caused all of the issues. My W told me the A was a symptom of How I treated her and Had nothing to do with her leaving. Believe nothing....don't take it personally (I should heed my own advice) - they can only dodge 'life' for so long. Try to be prepared for when it starts to catch up with them. That's when the best time for reconciling, but there's little we can do to get them there. That's normally longer than we can stomach up front. I read last week 6-9 months is the average time to even start any reconciling, if it is going to happen. - Try to balance out being cordial compared to enabling their activities. It's a fine line and hard to see what is what (another advice I need to work on myself) - Try not to compromise things to protect yourself and kids because of trying to work on the R. Another really though balance.
M:36 W:37 T: 15 M:11 S6 D5 BD: 8/10/14 IDLY: 8/12/14 S: 8/13/14 (she left, I stayed w/ kids) D Mentioned: 10/15/14 Confronted about OM: 10/15/14 EA: ~4/13 PA: ~10/13 She filed: 8/15 (not final)
