OK, here goes, I'm ready to just give up at this point. I realize now that I wasted my entire life taking care of and loving someone that was never capable of returning that care and love. I know now she wasn't even able to love her own daughters, not really. In the end, her own terrible childhood, her inability to trust others, her constant fear, her feelings of not being good enough made it impossible for her to have anything close to a "normal" life. For a time she was able to deal. As long as things were calm, easy and she wasn't asked for much. While the girls were little she had them around. They saw her as mommy, she didn't worry how they felt about her. To them she could do no wrong. No need for her to worry that they would see the "real" her. She totally lost touch with other people. When I would ask about someone she seemed to have made friends with she would tell me that she no longer was friends with them anymore...always because of some "slight" they had made towards her. Every time we started to make friends with other parents something would happen to where she got "insulted" over some off hand remark that to anyone else would have been forgotten in a second. We would go to parties and she would seem to have fun but on the way home she would go on and on about how this person or that person said or acted in a way that she didn't like. She would complain about me being either too talkative or not enough. Spent too much time with her or left her alone too often. No one was good enough for her.
When the girls got older and started to become "people" with there own opinions and ideas she found that they weren't always happy with mom. She was no longer their whole world. By the time they both started school she felt lost. She had no real friends, spent her days alone at home while I worked and she became "isolated" (her word). This was when she started to become depressed. No matter how I tried, she wouldn't want to do anything. The house became a mess. At the same time I was trying to make a living where we could afford the girls going to private school. I didn't know what to do. Then her grandfather, the only steady male figure in her life died. Her father who up until now hadn't made any effort to be a part of her life, asked her to come and stay with him and help plan a memorial service for him. She was to stay a month and I would join her and the kids there for the service. Well, when I got there my W had changed. She was rude, mean, uncaring towards the girls. I had no idea what had happened. After her father excluded me and the girls from a party he was having for my W and she didn't care, that was the last straw. The next day I told her I had had enough. I was going to take the kids and fly home (we were going to drive her GF's car, which he wanted her to have, home as a family). She begged me not to because she was worried what her father would think! I relented (which I now wish I hadn't). When we got home she said her father had said how sorry he was for all the bad things he had done to her over the years and wanted to "make-up" for it all and she had "forgiven" him. At the same time she also said she was so unhappy and didn't know why. That was when she was diagnosed with depression which she blamed on her isolation, the girls getting older and not needing her anymore, all kinds of things that weren't the true reasons. The next 4 years were her so depressed she couldn't function really. She stopped cooking, cleaning, taking care of the kids. At the same time her father was starting to try and get back in her life...only he didn't like that she was "only" a stay at home mother. Would tell her how she was wasting her life (which she was but not for the reasons he was saying!) told her to come away with him to Europe for a couple months (alone without me or the kids). When I told her that wasn't possible she freaked saying I just didn't want her to have a life of her own, ignoring the fact that we had 2 kids that needed parents, that I worked full time and needed her around. What got me most was her father really was insulting and treated her poorly when he was around. All the things she said other people were doing but really weren't he WAS doing and she just sat there and smiled saying I didn't understand his "sense of humor" ...believe me there was nothing funny about what he was saying. This was the beginning of the end of our M.
After years of depression W finally went to IC. There she was told that she needed to go back to work. It took months before she did. Well, that was when she became totally involved in only her work and her father. She lost all interest in doing anything as a family, worked late all the time, spent all her "free" time with her friends from work. The only time she took off work was when her father would visit and she would do things with him, alone, not even inviting the kids to come along. Then her father became sick with cancer. That was it. She was fully into MLC. All that mattered to her was work and her "friends" at work and her father. I was just in the way, trying to stop her from doing what she wanted. The rest is her history of MLC which you all know.
What all this tells me is I never had a chance. My W would have ended up right where we are now no matter what. Doesn't matter what is best for her kids, for me, for herself. Nothing I could have done would have changed the outcome. I couldn't have loved her more. When she was relaxed and it was just the two of us, she really was a fun, caring person. It is just that she has zero skills in R's. Friendships, M, even being a mother scares her. When the girls got old enough to have personalities of their own she couldn't cope with parenting even. She functions at work because she has to deal with the people there every day, she can't just cut them out of her life. She gets 'insulted" often by people she works with, gets angry and upset for a time but because she must deal with them every day it gives her time to get over it (although she NEVER forgets and remembers every little thing she was upset over).
I will never understand why I became the enemy to her. Why she would no longer care at all about me, even if she is trying to feel better. I know I could never do to her all that she has done and still is doing that hurts me. She says she wants me to be "happy" yet does things to hold me back. How she see's others as being mean or insulting when they aren't but eats up attention from her father who actually IS insulting and rather mean to her, has done so many awful things to her and the people she loves like her brother and mother. It makes no sense at all. I feel like I'm being punished for something I didn't do. I feel for my Daughters and how they must feel having a mother who acts like she does and doesn't take much interest in them. I wonder why I trusted her as much as I did looking back on the history. Why didn't I see this coming? Why didn't I leave her years ago? (The answer to that is because I loved her but why did I love her?).
I wrote this all out to remind myself what I'm in for. To remind myself not to allow my w to take me in this D. If not for my daughters I wouldn't care. I'd let her have whatever she wants and just move on. But I need to be able to take care of them. To do the things parents should do for their kids and I know W won't do those things. They need me if only so they don't end up like my W did.
Today I found out that my D19 is having some problems with living with her boyfriend. She left to live there when her mother left. She had just grad high school a month earlier. Her plans were for W and I to help her get a car so she could get a job (we live too far from any place and there is no transportation). Well, since her mother had decided to leave we couldn't afford to help her. The only way she could get a job and go to college (community college) was if she moved in with her BF. Her mother refuses to help her at all and I just can't yet. D19 is kind of trapped. She asked about my new job and how long until I start. She wants to move back in with me but knows I can't help her get to school and work. I have told her that as soon as I can I will help her get a car. She has been working and saving as best as she can but it's hard as she has to pay for food and all her expenses. She won't move in with her mother. I D19's own words "I can't trust her". My heart aches for her, feeling that way about her mother, having to grow up so fast. I don't want her to be affected for the rest of her life, to have the kind of problems my W had with her father but there is nothing I can do at all. It's out of my hands, all I can do is be the best father I can be for her and let her figure things out with her mom on her own. I don't discourage her to spend time with her mom, try not to say anything that could be seen as "bad". I answer her questions if she asks, let her vent when she is angry at her.
So, this is where I'm at. I don't see how any amount of DBing is going to help at all. It may help somewhat to keep my W from getting angry and lashing out. I really fear that she will be one of those that never come out of the MLC. Her father never came out of his (left his wife and family when W was 10 years old, ended up M to OW, the whole 9 yards) and I fear she will end up the same. If only she hadn't done this when she did. If she had done this years ago I would have been making enough to not need to fight so much, to help my D19, to afford a great lawyer. No, she waited until I needed her for the first time in 20 years. The timing of the MLCer at work. She even waited to leave until all the savings (including my cashed in retirement) were gone. Coincidence? I really don't know anymore. I wanted to think it wasn't on purpose. That she waited until the money was gone but who knows, really? All I can do from this point on is my best. She can out spend me on lawyers (and daddy is paying), she lies with ease and is believable because she actually believes her own lies and distortions. She has an advantage as a W in D proceedings, at least in my state. I just have to keep trying and keep trying to get my life in order and take care of my girls as best as I can. I don't see much happiness coming my way this holiday season, that's for sure!
