I know there are no guarantees but.....

[XFit14]

I posted a few days ago about some concerns or questions I had prior to spending a good deal of time typing my personal story. For those that may have missed that, I just wanted some….hope …in the form of a current success story to bolster my spirits being that my divorce was final…..today. I have read halfway through DR and then switched to DB because I thought maybe I had made a mistake not starting with the first book. I have not skipped ahead but I have also not reached something tangible I can use to work on….. I have read and read stories and posts on the forum and have not found a similar situation as mine either. I have hope……its ALL I have right now. I am instituting what I learn here but my major question (and why I am looking for similar situations ) is how is it going to work when we have little to no contact and DOES it in fact…work?? I know there are no guarantees but…..I am in need of h o p e. (I apologize up front for the length)

So here is my story thus far… My ex-wife and I met, sort of, online and, sort of, at work. We had met at a job fair (we were both working at the job fair) and had lunch together. At the time she had a boyfriend. I remember thinking how much I liked this woman and it was too bad she had a boyfriend. I’m not the type to hit on someone that is taken so I left it at that. Fast forward approximately a year and I am on a dating website. Online I never give out my last name. So I am emailing back and forth with this woman and we have not exchanged any pics or last names or talked on the phone as yet. At one point I get home from work, check my email and get a message from her. It says something about how she thinks I am a very nice guy, she thinks I would be fun to meet and date and see what happens but she already knows who I am and then she says my full name (again…I never give this out until I get to know someone). My mouth hit the floor. After telling her some CSI nonsense about how I was going to take her picture and get it blown up and pixilated so I could see who she was (she had a picture online but the face was obscured to hide her identity somewhat). She didn’t buy this, of course, but eventually gave in and sent me a pic and I immediately recognized her. I was ecstatic and we swapped numbers and began talking on the phone until the wee hours of the morning. Over the next few months we started dating and I spent more and more time at her place and less and less at mine. She had a son (7 years old at the time) and we eventually met and hit it off. At some point I moved in, we got engaged (with her son’s permission) and married on 07-07-07. (Of course we were the ONLY ones to think of using that date)

One of the issues we began having right off the bat was her father. He was VERY involved in her son’s life. I will refer to him as C. Her son’s real dad has never been in his life….his loss! C was basically pseudo dad and was quite obsessed with being so. He would come over several times a day (one day I counted 13 times) he was at every practice, every game, and bought him anything he wanted. At first I didn’t mind because my own father lives on the other side of the country and as much as I would have liked it to be my dad and my step son, this was the next best thing. We bbq’ed a lot and went swimming at their house (C and his wife) but I never had any real alone time with my step son. ON the weekends, if I wanted to do something with him it always seemed like I was the 3rd wheel or my plans would get changed to include C or my step son would want to (or get talked into) spend time with C instead of just me. C was ‘dad’ for all intents and purposes for the first 7 years of my son’s life so I understand there was a bond there. But, I also (wrongly) assumed that C would back off, take more of a grandfatherly role and allow my son and I to bond. Not so much…..

Things got bad. He refused to back off. My wife’s mother had called and asked my wife to get him to back off saying he was obsessed. We spoke to him and told him we wanted time to bond as a family and we weren’t saying he could never see my son….just to give him and us some space. He ended up sneaking behind our backs to see my son (7 years old at the time) and we caught him several times.
Additionally he was getting my son to lie to us about it.
Things got progressively worse.
The bbq’s and pool days at the in-law’s house stopped.
The words were said between my wife and her parents and a yelling match took place on the front door step between her and her mother…..which we didn’t quite understand because she had called months earlier voicing her concern that C relationship with my son was over the top and obsessive. Then the complaints at my job started (C would file complaints where I worked attempting to get me into trouble and then the law suit for grandparent’s rights. C had found a loophole in the law that was originally meant for children in abusive families or families involving unfit parents or parents involved in drug abuse.
The law allowed the grandparents to take full or partial custody. The loophole was that since C and his wife had been a large part of my son’s life for the first seven years they were viewed (in the court’s eyes) as some form of parents. I, being the step father had no rights or say PERIOD. I didn’t count at all in the court’s eyes.
The court granted the grandparent’s rights.
We were devastated. We now had to share custody of my son with his grandparents. Let me clarify quickly…..my wife and I both have excellent jobs, we do not use and never have used any drugs and drink very very rarely, neither of us have ever been arrested, we live in a very nice neighborhood and have never abused or failed to provide in anyway for my son. Just wanted to make sue that was out there. We are not ….dirtbags in any shape or form. We were then further sued over the next several years ( a total of three times) for more time for him to spend with my son. The complaints continued at my place of employment from C, investigations were initiated and well……I got mad and then madder and then madder.

This was not how I ever expected a marriage to be.
The marriage itself was great. We had some problems in some respects with discipline and who should give it out (grounding and chores and the like). Our main issue, every day, was the issues with her parents, specifically her dad C. Then there was a lull in the battle. We were looking for a bigger house because we were trying to have a child between us.
At this time the market was horrible and I had to short sale a condo we were renting out. When we found our ‘dream home’ I couldn’t be on the mortgage because of the short sale several years earlier. Her dad stepped up and offered to cosign.
BIG MISTAKE!!
Immediately after the ink was dry things went right back to the way they were and now….he held part of the note on our house and I wasn’t on it at all. The anger continued to build. My step son was now 12 and looked like he was 16. He began deciding that he didn’t always want to go over to see C when he was supposed to. The court order was written to say that we had to ALLOW my son to go, we did not have to MAKE him go.
If he decided he didn’t want to he didn’t have to. Well…that didn’t go over well with C and when my son decided not to go C would call the police. So they were at our house at least three times (2 officers and a Sergeant each time) which was very embarrassing considering the neighborhood and what we did for a living. So….I continued to get more and more mad and it began to bleed into our relationship.

My step-son and I were not developing a very close relationship at all. I felt (years earlier) that he was constantly choosing his grandfather over me and when all the complaints and issues started happening I, like an idiot, quit trying.
I interacted with him but it wasn’t like I should have. I made a huge mistake and I gave up trying to bond like a father and son should (this is so painful and embarrassing for me to admit….especially to strangers) and we kind of just existed in the same house. I cared for him and loved him and took care of him but I had allowed my anger over the situation with C to infect our relationship and it wasn’t recovering. The older he got the more uncomfortable I got with trying to make that connection that I should have made when he was 7.
I spoke to my wife about adopting him and chickened out. With all the things we had already been through as a little family, I didn’t think I could take another hit. C still had a lot of influence over my son. I was afraid if he found out I was planning on adopting my son, that he would figure out a way of convincing him to say no and I knew I couldn’t take another blow. So…I didn’t pursue it. On top of ALL that we managed to get pregnant three times. After two rounds of IUI and one very expensive round of IVF we had three miscarriages. . . . . Throw another huge log on the anger fire.

So that is the back story that led to this. I couldn’t stop being mad. I would come home to our gorgeous house and remember every day that he owned part of our house (his name was on mortgage…he never gave us any money to move in…just signed his name). I would see my stepson and remember that every Wednesday and every other Sunday, plus several holidays and two weeks during the summer, he was court ordered to go spend time with a guy that was ruining my family. And the anger, like I said before, was bleeding into my relationship with my wife. The littlest thing would make me mad. No physical abuse or anything like that but we would sometimes spend three days giving each other the silent treatment. We would be late for something and not talk during the entire time we were there. I look back now and realize I was acting like a complete jack$$$. I just couldn’t let it go and the sad part is I didn’t even realize I was doing it. I look back now and I am SO embarrassed with how I acted sometimes…three days of being silent with someone that I love. We went from being back-to-back taking on the world (in this case C) to me leading the charge leaps and bounds ahead of her being angry. We have this huge couch in our family room (we did) and we went from sitting side by side to gradually drifting further and further apart. I didn’t even notice………….

Finally, in October of 2014 we got into a small argument about…nothing and she said that’s it. I’m done. Several days later I was downstairs making her coffee before she left for work. She said she was sorry to do this and handed me a packet of papers that had dissolution of marriage as the heading. I was in shock!!! Now I look back and think….how can I blame her??

I didn’t get crazy and break all the rules (I didn’t know about any rules at this point as this hadn’t sunk in and I believed that it was still possible to save this marriage.) I knew that begging and pleading were not attractive features to a woman. I tried talking about it and convincing. I told her we could work on it, counseling, the grass wasn’t greener etc. I went to anger management counseling, two different ones. I suggested a marriage counselor but she was not interested. At one point, just before Christmas, she told me nothing I did was going to matter and then dropped two additional bombs.
She told me she wasn’t in love with me anymore and that I am the one that killed the marriage.

Putting myself in her shoes I can’t say that I blame her. Who wants to be unhappy. And if you aren’t unhappy, who wants to live with someone else that is unhappy….and I was.
As I stated earlier, I NEVER thought marriage was going to be a law suit filled constant battle of hate with my in-laws. I never thought I would have the police called on me multiple times, law suits, complaints at work and CPS being called (nothing was found to justify the call….as I stated we have never and will never abuse my son in any way) and a criminal investigation (unfounded) at work. All because of C. Needless to say I … was …. Pissed!!!! It started to affect me at work and with my own family to the point that I was asked if I was ever in a good mood….even my 86 year old grandmother took me aside at a family gathering and asked me why I was so mad!

The wife and I had become roommates.
I refused to move out of the bedroom since I figured it was our bedroom and I was still trying to work on the marriage.
I continued with counseling and basically did a complete 180 in the attitude department. I even called her mom and spent an hour on the phone apologizing for anything and everything. I then…..called her father and we met at a neutral location and for the next hour or so I tried to convince him to make up with his daughter and let all this anger between the two of us go, that life is short and family is more important than us hating each other. He responded by telling me (twice…I have it recorded) that he ‘hated my f-ing guts’ and that he was doing this to get revenge. (The revenge part is that since he is on the mortgage, when we sold the house he, and his wife, both got a 3rd of the profits of our house….this equaled 56,000.00 dollars. All they ever did was sign their name….no contractual agreement that we would ever give them any money and they never gave us a dime…only their signatures. His revenge was taking that money we needed to buy another house, or in this case two houses since we were in the midst of divorcing, and keeping it for himself.)

So in January every year I go to Tucson for a few days to work an off duty gig that brings in quite a bit of extra money. The day before I left, the wife is getting ready for work and is in the shower. I happen to see her phone get a text. She had been getting texts pretty late at night and played them of as being email alerts and facebook posts to which she didn’t know how to turn off the alerts. I looked at the phone and it was from a guy that she has been friends with for quite some time. It talked about how he wanted to touch her side (she had just gotten a new tattoo) and make her pain go away. I read more from a friend of her and there was talk about at least two to three different guys that she was interested in. How one was a nig “hunk’ of a man and her and her girlfriend talking about one that was still married and how she shouldn’t be the ‘other woman’. Unfortunately this happened to be the same girlfriend that I had contacted months earlier hoping for some friendly help on saving my marriage since her and her husband had gone through a rough patch (separated and moved out) and made it through about a year prior. I was devastated. And then I read one from her (wife) to a guy telling him that he can’t be texting so late at night since I ‘refuse to leave the bedroom and am sleeping right next to her.’ I went to Tucson (was gone 6 days and miserable the whole time) got back, confronted her with it and she told me I was wrong, she was not dating anyone and did not even start talking to anyone until she filed in October. (I guess that makes it ok as long as she filed for divorce it was full speed ahead). I moved out a week later.

Since then we have each purchased and moved into our own houses about 6-8 miles apart. I have remained in contact with my son (he is my step son but I consider him my son). This has caused issues with her and with him. They both feel it is “too little too late”. My son and I have talked at length and, now that he is older and sees all the things that C has done and is still continuing to do, it makes a lot more sense to him. It does not change the sad fact that I gave up and could have been a much better step dad to him. We go to dinner once a week or so and go riding when we can (We have quads and dirt bikes) and I take him driving (he is due to get his license next month) (SCARED – ME!!!). His mom has come straight out and said, “Why now? You had your chance!” But I refuse to just walk out of his life just because things didn’t work out with his mom. I backed off and my son and I spoke some more and even his mom said it is his decision and he has elected to have me still be a part of his life.

So with that taken care of I pretty much went dark. This wasn’t hard to do since we live in separate houses, there is no need to speak about my son really, we already divided up the household equitably, etc. She blocked from her Facebook the day I moved out and has made very few attempts to contact me over the past few months. We last spoke on Easter Sunday regarding my son and I don’t remember the date I last physically saw her but I remember the day. She was crying but I can get into that later as this is getting quite long.

The day she moved into her new house I came by early in the morning and dropped off coffee for her and breakfast burritos for her and my son.
I left them by the front door and left and then texted her that they were outside. There was a truck parked out front that I didn’t recognize but I didn’t think much of it since she was having the garage floors done with epoxy and they were open.
A week or so later I came by in the evening to pick up my son to go to dinner and the same truck is parked in the driveway. I couldn’t help it so I asked a few questions to my son. He said the guy is just a friend of mom’s and is helping her get settled and stuff.
A few weeks go buy and I go to pick up my son to go riding and a different truck is parked outside but the same stuff is in the bed. I ask my son about it and am told that it is the same guy and yes that is pretty much his mom’s new boyfriend.
He doesn’t sound all that thrilled but he also is almost 16 and really doesn’t want to be in the middle of all this (his exact words).
I can respect that.

Then this past Monday we both show up at court.
I get here at the same time she does.
I meet her at the car (not sure if this was a mistake or not) we chat briefly. I ask her if she is ready to do this? She says she guesses. I am dressed nice, I have on cologne she likes and I have been working out like a madman. (I have always been in good shape. We both Crossfit and I have worked out since highschool. For personal reasons and because of what I do it is important to stay in shape. Proud to say that at my age….I can see abs and get compliments on the size of my arms etc) Anyway, I took her hand and we walked into court hand-in-hand. I was cheerful and we talked like we had just seen each other last week. We went in and basically got divorced. I held it together then whole time, didn’t cry, beg, plead, stayed cheerful etc. Walked her to her car and we chatted a bit. We spoke briefly about how we had both made mistakes. I told her I would like to continue to be an emergency contact for my son and asked her if I could stay in his life. She responded with (and this hurt because it’s not like she said it mean…..she just said it) you weren’t much of a step dad so why now? I responded back (no loss of temper etc) and explained the same things I had explained to my step son. We hugged and kissed a few times and she said she wanted me to be happy and I wanted the same for her. I told her I was only a phone call away for her and my son (probably a mistake). We kissed again and I walked away. That was yesterday…….

So that is my story and I am sorry it is so long folks. I have read a lot of Sandi2’s posts, her rules, her post on WW and WAS. I have read a bunch of Cadet’s posts and am reading Mozza’s success stories (started today).
I’ll be honest folks….I’m a wreck today. My dating life….my ENTIRE life has been one woman after another that ….leaves. Then 6 weeks to 6 months later they come back saying they made a big mistake and will I take them back. I have showed up in the middle of the night at a girlfriend’s house to find another truck in the driveway and she answers the door in a sheet….yes…..a sheet. I have stories that are even worse than that. I have learned something from each one on what I will, and will not, put up with. I treat the women I am with very well, I have a good career, I am in good shape. I don’t get it…….. I waited til I was 37 to marry and thought I had found the perfect girl and the perfect family. I never thought divorce was ever going to be in my future especially since she had already been married twice before (her last divorce was at least 7 years before we met).

So here I am….divorced as of yesterday….standing here yet again in life going, “What the HELL just happened and why me AGAIN!?!?!?” I love this woman and have not spent much time in my life chasing after any of the others that have left my life. I am open to any and all suggestions up to and including someone saying, Dude…..bail…run. I don’t want to though. I have searched and searched online for a story like mine….i’m hoping with a positive ending but I have not found one as yet. She is stubborn and headstrong and independent, which is why I love her….but those qualities, and the fact that she has been through this before and already has someone else, don’t exactly play in my favor.

HELP!!!!!