Jim0987 #8 - A bit clearer on the rebuild

[jim0987]

After my wife returned from her MILs she said she wanted to speak to me about a couple of things particularly in relation to her moving schedule.

We talked for about 2hrs on a bunch of stuff and i tried to validate where i could, I think i did ok at not being defensive or critical. Having said that the 37 rules went out the window on a bunch of stuff. despite all of this i felt it was an honest (ish) discussion. It was a long conversation which covered a lot of ground so its a relatively long post.

As well as discussing next steps and our concerns my wife was the clearest she has ever been on what she felt I did wrong in our relationship and why it is now over.

I obviously cant cover all of what was said but I'll give some key bits of what she said(order is a bit all over the place)

* She used to love me, she was 'all in' to our relationship and would have followed me anywhere. she wanted to marry me and have kids with me. She is now angry with me because I destroyed that and took her hope for the future away - the life she wanted with me of joint parenting and grandkids. She said we could have had something amazing and I ruined it. I said I'm angry at myself for this as well (hence kicking the wall)

* She said i was bullying and controlling and that whenever she was doing something to make herself happy i just played out my insecurities to make her miserable. I disagreed but apologised since that is how she felt. She said i said the right things but my actions showed different and that i seemed to be after a tablet of stone to say she would never leave, and the more distant she was the more controlling I became. It became a self fulfilling prophecy.

* She made the decision to leave me months ago she was just working up to it, and then the arguement around BD gave her the push she needed.

* She feels she tried to talk to me and made mention of times where she raised it with me including one i had forgotten. we had a nice day out but then argued on the way back and both said 'what are we going to do to fix out marriage?'. I basically forgot about this by the next day.

* She feels I was never there for her when she needed me. when she was struggling i just left her to cry and abandoned. I was not the kind supportive husband she needed. She knows that a lot of this comes from my Cr@ppy upbringing but as she said she made excuses for a long time but that doesnt stop it being not good enough. She says that i created a void and she had to fill it with herself and then realised that i was making her miserable and she doesnt need me. She 'knows' she will be happier on her own than with me and she doesnt want to take the risk that i will let her down yet again.

* She said that the way I treated her when her dad died was the final nail in the coffin for our relationship it just took her a long time to accept that. She also said later that its water under the bridge. apparently she felt she couldnt grieve for him and had put her grief on pause until BD - she is now grieving for him properly. I explained that until this I had no idea of what a sense of loss could feel like and the emptiness that goes with it - I just didnt understand how it feels, which made it difficuly for me to be able to properly empathise nor did i know what to do to comfort her - its only people who have supported me through this who have actually shown me. we talked a bit about some of the things i thought i was doing and she called me stupid.

* She denied the relationship with OM1, admitted going on one date but said it didnt go well (swore on the kids lives) - I know this isnt true as there have been multiple dates but didnt push it after she swore on the kids lives. She also said that nothing in her life is any of my business and i need to stop watching her and asking anything about her - that it wasnt fair for me to ask questions if what she was saying didnt make any sense. She also said 'i'm not your possession anymore'

* She asked if i've dated - I said no, it doesnt feel right. I'm nowhere near that place yet and that she has had a lot longer to get used to this idea. She said she knows as she had a similar experience with one of her exs. She also said its why she needs to move so that she can move on and I can properly grieve for our relationship.

* we discussed the house move a bit. I said i need to speak with my solicitor she said she is just being reasonable and that if i cant be then our solicitors will have to speak to each other. I said that i've always tried to respect her decisions and am not going to deliberately do anything to make this difficult but that i need to protect myself. I explained my concerns and my thinking and what I've asked my solicitor. She said she cant stand coming to the house as she thinks of it as mine and so whether the purchase is complete or not she is moving out mid january (to her mums if necessary)

* I admitted that previously I had snooped her phone and apologised for this. She said she knew anyway. She said if I do it again she will 'add it' to the unreasonable behaviour in the divorce citation. She also said she has no intentions on filing at the moment but that she will tell me before she does.

* She said she is pleased i'm trying to improve myself though it feels like a 'tactic' i'm trying out after reading something in a book. I explained that not addressing this stuff had cost me the most important relationship in my life and that i needed to fix this stuff for me and my future. I also said its a bit awkward at the moment because its all new and so not natural to me yet. She said that she had read something which says its possible to be an awful husband and yet still a good dad.

* She said she is tired of going round in circles, she's fine that i'm on a 'voyage of self discovery' but she already knows all this stuff i'm finding out about myself

* She said she was annoyed that i've made changes to things like the childcare arrangements which she wanted before but that i only do this now it affects me, that i wouldnt do it before. I tried to explain its because it didnt occur to me to suggest this and that i felt we always discussed at the wrong times (when we were both upset by it - rather than when we were calm). we didnt revisit when

* she has watched MWD's Walk away wife video that i sent her mum about a week or two after BD. She said she isnt a WAW and that if this was about me not doing the hoovering then we wouldnt be getting divorced.

* She is happier in her relationship with the kids now, she has reestablished her bond with D3, she felt it was too much me and D3, her and S1. she said i never had to deal with the jealousy that D3 had toward S1 and that I didnt do enough to help her


* she over the course of discussions listed a bunch of my behaviours that made her miserable (nothing really new but this came from her) which included
- I made everything a debate even when I didnt care. she ended up rather having blank walls than face trying to talk to me about it
- I have selective amnesia to ignore things when she tried to talk to me about it
- I made critical and sarcastic comments all the time
- I didnt show her i cared
- life stopped being fun. even when we went out it wasnt fun
- She stopped wanting to talk to me because it was always a debate or something serious and negative
- I always seemed more interested in material things and money. She liked going out for coffee and cake and I said we couldnt afford it (even though we still went out)
- I was rubbish at big romantic gestures
- I should have bought her an engagement ring and that if I loved her I would have proposed rather than her to me.
- I bought too much negativity home from work

I tried to validate a lot of these but in places that drifted into more of a 'I can see why you think that but....' or a 'And now i know I should have.....'

* She was firm (repeatedly) that our relationship is over and that we both need to move on so that she can be happy in a way that my controlling stopped her from being. That she has drawn a line in the sand and our marriage is dead. It has been for sometime.



After all of this I felt a bit sick and had a terrible nights sleep. I kept waking up with my mind racing on how awful I had been and all the terrible things I had done and how I had wasted this. I used some of the mindfulness techniques to slow my thinking down a bit which was alright but i need a lot of work here. This kind of destructive rumination has always been part of me and my worst behaviours/outbursts were 99% at the backend of one of these.

Strangely though in a lot of ways i felt more positive about some things at the back of this, whether its because my wife told me this stuff or she had previously, but the for the first time I properly listened.

Theres a lot I could have done differently in the conversation and once again i said things to the affect of how amazing she is and how upset i am by this, but i was also really firm that what i'm doing is either to support her or for me, rather than trying to persuade her to reconcile. It might be pursuit but actually I think it was more of a 'I love you, I always have, and thats why i'm letting you go'

As always your advice is much appreciated.

Thanks