She practically leapt off of my lap. She stalked to the opposite side of the room and looked sidelong at me with unveiled contempt and anger. All pretense at sympathy vanished. And she maintained her hostile attitude for the rest of that day. She wasn't interested in my feelings. She just wanted to stop feeling guilty.
And that, my friends, are the true colors of a wayward wife!
She will not feel remorse nor give an authentic apology as long as she is in an A. Remorse and apologizing may, or may not, come much later when her fantasy crumbles.
For any other first time newcomers who may be reading.......it is important that a man not emotionally fall apart in front of the WW. Go outside and leave, run into the bathroom and and bury your face in a stack of towels, whatever you need to do to get away from her presence until you gain control over your emotions again. The WW won't feel sorry for you, even if she's stroking you like the family pet. She really sees her H being weak, and when he breaks down in front of her, it simply turns her off even more. Ii know this sounds heartless, but it describes how the WW feels about her H. And whenever you toss it back in her face.......the above quote is an example of how she reacts.
These feelings can change, but it takes time. It is a process she must go through. In the meantime, you move forward with a new life, and let her work through the mess she has created.
It is not about what you feel should work in your M. It is about doing the work that gets the right results. Do what works!
This is the first time in my life that I've actually been depressed in the clinical sense. Thanks, STBX. Thanks a lot.
I think I mentioned that my new full-time (if temporary) job is causing anxiety, which is in turn blowing up thoughts of STBX to give them far greater validity than they deserve. These particular thoughts are generally fantasies of telling her that she's done an awful thing and actually having her listen and care.
I've been trying to figure out why I still feel awful about this. I mean, yes, of course it's a traumatic experience and it takes time to heal and recover, right. I got that. But I haven't been able to clearly identify the specific messages that drop me into depression. Part of this is that I haven't really taken the time to do so-- I've been keeping myself incredibly busy (thus not being able to allow her to pick up her stuff until next Tuesday), and each event picks me up and makes me happy, but it doesn't take long afterward for that pleasure to crumble and leave me in a ditch. And I'm not sure what I'm allowing myself to believe that makes that happen.
As far as I have been able to tell, I'm dragging myself down with thoughts of "it's not fair." Why should I be so unhappy when she's the one at fault? Why does she get to get away with it? She has a lover for weeknight activities, delightful weekend adventures, and sex. She hasn't been fired. And even though I know that she forfeited about 17 years' worth of savings in the process, finances have never been real enough for her for that to make any kind of impact other than "I guess that was the price to pay for happiness." As far as she can tell, her life is full and complete and SHE MADE THE RIGHT DECISION. As my counselor said, there is no evidence to the contrary other than the hurt she caused me-- and that's just omelets and eggs.
On the plus side-- such as it is-- it appears that my feelings are no longer making it impossible to function. It's essentially just like being constantly sick. No, no, it IS being constantly sick. My chest hurts, my arms burn, my head aches, all day, every day, with temporary relief when I participate in a social activity or go on a date (and I've now gone on a few, and each one wants to see me again, which is nice). I'm still able to get work done, now, and I couldn't do that before.
But I would like to stop feeling sick, and there's got to be a way to figure out what thoughts are causing it and counteract them. There's got to be. I met with a gal for an evening's chat just this past Tuesday, and she, like me, has two masters' degrees and a PhD, all on similar topics to mine. We had a great conversation, and when it was done, my marital situation just seemed small, petty, and blissfully unimportant. There must be a way to purposefully retain that mindset.
So today I began to wonder, why is it that this breakup has hit me harder than any other breakup I've ever had? I went over them one by one:
Girlfriend #1 (1 yr): we just lost interest in each other. Girlfriend #2 (2 yrs): I cheated on her (horny college freshman). Girlfriend #3 (1.5 yr): She was too needy. Girlfriend #4 (7 yrs): She cheated on me (repeatedly). Girlfriend #5 (2 yrs): I was pathologically obsessive. Girlfriend #6 (1 yr): I was too insecure. W (3/7 years): Current situation.
For 1, 2, 5, and 6, even at the time of the breakup, I was fully aware that I had driven her away by my own undesirable behaviors, so however unhappy I was I nonetheless had to sigh and let it go as my own screw-up. #3 was "too needy" just because I was impatient and selfish; that is, I wasn't fully committed to her, and dropped her when it became too much effort.
#4 was obviously the nearest to my current situation, and I was actually engaged to her. I can see now that she cheated on me for the same reasons as my STBX-- I didn't give her as much quality time as she wanted, and when I express emotion I tend to state it rather than show it. But when that happened, I still got over it relatively quickly.
The main difference I see between then and now is that she actually WAS remorseful. She wasn't having affairs; she was looking for affection. If I had changed my behavior, and given her the affection she wanted, we would have been fine. (I didn't see that at the time, but in hindsight it's obvious.) So I was unhappy with the way she had behaved, and I had "had enough", but I was still convinced that she loved me and didn't want to hurt me.
Now? STBX was not remorseful. She hurt me on purpose. She hurt me as punishment. She hated me for making her feel guilty about hurting me, and made me feel awful for making her feel guilty. That alone is bad enough.
And this was someone who promised a lifelong commitment to me and, through her affair and her subsequent miserable treatment of me, betrayed my trust and broke her promise. That's what's different from the rest. Thinking of this-- her betrayal, and her lack of remorse-- is what makes me feel truly awful.
And yet... I married her young. She was straight out of undergrad and had only ever had one other serious boyfriend before me. I knew, when I married her, that she might one day wonder what she had missed out on, but I just thought that we would be able to see the signs when they appeared and deal with them. I never imagined an affair, so I wasn't looking out for that... and, more to the point, it never occurred to me that she WOULD see the signs and would fail to take action to fix things. Which is exactly what happened. But that's the kind of person she always was. When things went wrong between us, she never acted to fix anything. She would just let it go wrong. I can see that now.
Which means that I will not forget something she said, shortly after I discovered the affair, in that brief window of time when she actually was considering the possibility of cutting off contact with OM: "I didn't understand what I was committing to."
In truth, what she was committing to was the conviction that we would remain life partners-- that we would work through our problems, however difficult, instead of running away. But here I had already gone through six other girlfriends in my life, and I knew, where she did not, how important and difficult it is to find a supportive life partner, even where that means no longer experiencing the intoxicating thrill of infatuation and accepting even the most serious disillusionments with your partner. Commitment means, in this context at the very least, knowing what you need to make yourself happy and figuring out how to get that from your partner. She genuinely didn't know what made her happy until she saw it in OM; and, once she knew, she didn't have the knowledge, emotional intelligence, or courage to get it from me.
Bottom line?
I shouldn't have married her.
We had some great times, and some great years together. There's no question of that.
But getting married-- that was something I wanted because I knew it's what I needed. It was something she agreed to because she didn't understand what it truly meant. And when it came time to live up to the vows she'd made, she didn't have the strength, the strategy, or the maturity to do it.
I very much despise the fact that here I am having to start over at age 43 (although I appreciate that there are no kids involved here). But, curiously enough, if I think of this as "being dumped" rather than "getting divorced"-- that is, from the immature perspective of "this didn't work out" rather than the mature perspective of "she destroyed our lifetime partnership"...
For some reason, that doesn't seem so bad.
[At least, for the moment. We'll see how long this clear-headedness lasts before again giving way to depression.]
Well, the clear-headedness has lasted at least one day, so that's a good thing. I still don't feel well, or necessarily happy, but the feeling is not blowing up into oppressive rumination. As of this morning it's just a lingering malaise with a stronger tinge of disappointment than depression. I'm certainly hoping this mindset continues to last for a while.
I'm still in touch with girlfriend #3-- she's the only one that I'm still friends with. She reminded me last night that she and I were actually together for less than a year, and that *she* dumped *me* for my being so impatient and unsympathetic. To be fair, I'm sure she's right. I was an awfully self-centered twentysomething. My memory of our time together is not as strong as it should be, and it makes sense that I would rewrite that history.
Another day gone by and still retaining the mindset! Again, I still don't feel well, no, I still don't feel good-- but each time I find the same ruminative thoughts starting to creep in (a fantasy about telling her what a selfish and sadistic person she has been, and having her actually feel awful about it) I can block them by remembering that I was stupid to have married her instead of just being her "boyfriend" all these years. The destruction of our marriage is her fault, but this consequence ultimately isn't something she did to me. I brought it on myself.
I suspect this thought is working, at least for now, because it seems to give me at least some of the power and agency that I forfeited to her. I haven't been cheated out of the past ten years of my life by her. No. Rather, ten years ago, I made a mistake. Now I've paid for it. I can't now do anything at all with W-- I'm powerless. But for myself, I can do my best not to make the same mistake again. I have the power to do something.
I'm not going to fool myself into thinking that this is a magic mindset that will solve all my emotional problems. But it may continue to serve as an effective management tool.
The thoughts that do still come creeping in without relief are the resentments. That she left me alone. That she goes out and has a wonderful time with him, doing things that she and I could have been happy together doing. It stings that she genuinely believes that she is now happy because she is *with him* doing those things, instead of the fact that she has given herself permission and freedom to do what makes her happy, regardless of her companion. When she was disappearing for days at a time to go be with him, she'd occasionally tell me about something they did together, and I'd complain to myself, there was no reason we couldn't have had that experience. There was no reason we couldn't have enjoyed that time together. You robbed us of that, I'd think to myself. You gave our life to someone else.
And she's still doing it.
These thoughts don't throw me into paralyzing rumination, as the thoughts of "she should have honored her commitment" can-- but they creep in and they make me feel lonely and sad.
I guess I've become a bit philosophical and abstract to elicit many comments from those who might be coming across this thread. That's okay-- I'm still gaining a lot from being able to use this forum to write out my thoughts and feelings.
Tomorrow, though (technically today, as it's after midnight), STBX comes by to pick up the rest of her things. This will be the first time I've seen her in more than a month-- and it just might be the last time I see her, ever.
I hope I have the peace of mind to smile and treat her kindly, and the presence of mind to say nothing more than "goodbye".
No, it's not because you are too abstract and philosophical. I've wanted to respond but didn't think I could do so in a compassionate enough way, so I didn't say anything.
Newpand, I know this is so hard and that you are hurting. I'm sorry for that. And I know that depression is debilitating. I don't recall-- are you getting treated?
I worry that your mindset seems to be placing all the blame on your W, giving her so much power over your feelings. And the extent of your responsibility seems to be that you "made a mistake" in marrying her. I worry because there is so much more to it than just marrying the "right" person, and that if you are not able to look deep inside and see what your role was in the M, and take responsibility for your own feelings and actions, that you will simply repeat this pattern.
It is no one else's job to make us happy. And we cannot be a true partner in a R if we are not happy and whole ourselves. What work are you doing on yourself, to find happiness within yourself? You seem no where near ready to start dating. I'm curious why you are. You've had a string of pretty long term relationships. Perhaps it's time to step back and work on you before entering another one.
Good luck to you. Also, if you want more people to comment on your thread, it would be good to comment on others'.
Good questions all. And yes, I am seeing a therapist (I'll see her again tomorrow afternoon, in fact).
There's a litany of errors I made in relating to my W. The most egregious fault was that I never gave her the time she needed, and in fact complained and denigrated her needs when she mustered the courage to request it. What's worse is that, now that we're apart, I find that spending my time on only a fraction of the things I actually want (or "need") to do has me running ragged from sunup to sundown and then some... and this is the way I like to spend my time. I could have changed, but really I'm no different than I ever was, and this always was and would have continued to be a point of serious difficulty. I expected a partner to be there when I wasn't busy doing anything else; she needs her partner to be busy with her before anything else. I finally realized this too late.
Her other biggest complaint is that I was "controlling". The error here isn't that I actually was controlling-- I wasn't-- but that I routinely failed to recognize and accept that she wasn't going to adjust her decision-making style. I never adapted to be more accommodating, allowing for her unassertive style; instead, I would become exasperated with her "inability" to voice her own opinions.
A third critical complaint was that I was never emotionally expressive. I never failed to express my affection for her, but when it came to our activities, everyday life, or anything else at all, I was never "excited" or "thrilled" or possessed of strong emotional response. This is, in truth, because I suppressed those responses-- most likely a general strategy of anxiety management that bled over into all other areas of life-- but it convinced her that I would never be able to join her in the delight she experienced from the things that made her happy.
Throughout the process of A and D I twisted myself into knots looking for ways to blame myself, and absolve her, thinking that if I fixed everything about me then W would come around and all would be well. But I was repeatedly met with "that she had an A isn't your fault, and you can't do anything about it [now]." Still, I can't make my peace with this by blaming her. I have to look at myself and understand where I went wrong. And my best conclusion is that I asked her for a commitment she fundamentally did not understand, and then (over time) I failed to do what was necessary to make her feel and know how worthwhile it would be for her to honor that commitment.
Why am I dating now? The quickest answer I have for that is because I'm not looking for love, sex, or a "relationship"-- rather, because I've always found it difficult to make friends, and I've never really needed more than one or two friends in my life anyway, and I much prefer the company of women to that of men, it's nice to have someone to talk to, share thoughts, and enjoy time with even when I have no expectation beyond having a pleasant conversation.
I am looking over the other threads (and posted a bit) while psyching myself up for today's potentially final-ever meeting with STBX. Reading the other threads is helping me keep from psyching myself out.
Point the first: if I find myself prompted to say anything, all I need to say is "I didn't want a divorce, and I still don't, but I won't stand in the way of your decision; and as long as you are still with OM, I will not be your friend."
Point the second: if she has the colossal bad sense to bring OM along with her, I don't need to rant about the awful things he's done or the despicable person I believe him to be. Just "you're not welcome here", and withdraw until he's gone.
Simple, succinct, and as non-hostile and "friendly" as I can manage to be.
I think I'm generally in a good place about this, but as the time draws closer I feel nearer and nearer to wanting to puke.
