Hello

[714Dad]

Greetings. No offense but I wish I wasn't here.

I’m 36, I have two girls 3 and almost 6. My wife is 34.

My wife left in early July after a month of detaching after I yelled at her one evening on June, 13).

She left last summer in June (2014) as well, and I blubbered her back into coming home after 3 weeks. There were no boundaries made, or rules set.

I agreed at that time to go to counseling which i have done for a year, and we did marriage counseling at the university where she works. At the conclusion she said she thought the relationship was a lot better.

Over the year I have improved tremendously, but still had issues with validating her feelings and bouts of impulsive anger. The difference between the me then and the me now is pretty drastic I think, but it obviously wasn't enough for her to stay.

After i yelled at her (about 5 seconds and including profanity) because i was annoyed at my brother and I didn’t feel she was ‘on my side’ she was upset and tried to talk to me twice. I was still irritated (not mad at her) and didn’t see her.

I fell asleep putting my daughter to bed and thus it wasn’t resolved that night. Basically the way I acted a year and a half ago came back. No apology, going to bed mad, etc.

The next afternoon when I asked to her to talk she said she didn’t want to. Then the sound in her voice made me know her leaving was coming.

Over the next weeks there was a lot of ‘if you love me you need to let me go.” and she also said she “was not in love with me anymore.” That “We will always be together because of the girls” and she hopes we will still be great friends.”

Basically all the stuff I’ve now read is textbook for this kind of thing.

We’ve been married 9 years and together 18 years. Over the past year I’ve fallen more in love with her than it seems like ever before, but in that time she says every time she felt love coming back it was destroyed by a disagreement or argument. Then when I yelled at her she felt nothing and decided that she doesn’t want to be married to me anymore. She thinks about being alone and it’s a huge relief. She “doesn’t believe in the idea of marriage anymore” and thinks that the better example to our girls will be to live through this breakup and be normal rather than work out the marriage and be together.

I spent the first week or two reading what I could and sending links on the effect that divorce has on children, but she counters with an equal number of studies showing that if the parents treat each other well there’s no damage done.

My older daughter started crying when my wife told her we were separating. My wife has said divorce once or twice, but said “separating” to my daughter. I haven’t emailed her anything or argued since 7/8. I encouraged her to move back to her parents to give her space (1 mile away). Within three days she was no longer wearing her wedding band.

She “wants to let the world in” and feels that a third of her life is over and she hasn’t done anything she wanted to. She cannot see herself happy being married to me and “doesn’t think she’ll be in any relationship again.” She’s “letting me go to be happier with someone else” because “our relationship has never been healthy.” I’ve also been controlling and emotionally abusive according to her and she “can’t handle the ups and the downs anymore.”

I’m looking nicer and acting very positive around her, optimistic and being the person I want to be (which I told her I would do and that initially made her think I wasn’t taking her seriously). I’m dressing well when I see her and not mentioning the relationship. She already wants to split the girls time up and when i dropped them off after a day with me she wouldn't make eye contact with me for a minute or so. She was ‘getting the girls attention’ or so it seemed. I was super positive as she left this week to go camping with her family and the girls and I have been trying to stay positive. I’m praying more than i ever have, and hanging onto my hope.

I have been a stay at home dad (in school from 2009 to 2013) and raised my girls. I was bitter about this a lot, but had toned it down in the past year. Still, it got the better of me several times and it was always mixed with guilt that she couldn't be home with them like the original plan was. I love being home with them, but when I got down I would just dump complaints on her. Over the last month she was also focusing a lot on work and so we had little quality time.

So She has been gone since July 2. She has bought new perfume and seems perfectly happy, though she has seemed upset a few times that I’ve seen her. According to her it will be a long time of feeling upset but it will eventually be okay and I’ll be happier. “We’ll both be happier.”

Our entire relationship has been marked by my consistent depression and anger issues. Also what I now see were very nascent emotional affairs on my end.(to me they were more jokey and obviously ridiculous - of course now i look back and cringe) I’ve never hit her or even intimated that I would. But she says she felt threatened. We agree on education for the girls, both have a Christian upbringing (though hers much more liberal) and have always had great physical chemistry. She is the love of my life and I threw all of her goodwill away over the years. And now that I want it back and I want her to see me working, all she can remember is the past. She has rewritten our relationship to be mostly all bad. Even our wedding she says she has no happy memories of.

We met when she was 16 and I was 18 and she feels like she never got to experience life on her own, to be independent or to make her own decisions. She says she doesn't feel like our house is even hers because even though she's picked out every wall color and lots of furniture she says that i had to ‘approve’ them first and so she really had no say.

I oscillate now between praying (which makes me cry), having hope that she’ll come back, feeling that she’s right, and then wanting her back desperately but more desperately wanting her to finally be happy. (She’s seemed consistently upset over the past year and has done everything I used to do in arguments - bring up the past incessantly and telling me things that are very hurtful that she says she felt at the time).

I love her more now than ever, and I told her almost every morning this past year how amazing she looked. I’ve never criticized her appearance, loved her body and told her how much i loved her body every time she brought up something she didn’t like about herself. I tried to give her hugs almost every morning, to be more affectionate so my daughters would see, and tried to resolve conflicts as much as I was able. I tried to cheer her up when she had tough times at work and I had dinner done most every night when she got home. I didn’t make too many date nights because I didn’t want to rob her of more time with our girls.

I still yelled though and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She said that the last year was just too little too late and that she doesn’t believe that I want to get back together for our daughter’s sake. She says it just sounds like me wanting her to come back for myself.

She went from being somewhat accommodating and positive sounding when she moved out, to increasingly businesslike and (for lack of a better word) cold around me. It seems to have increased proportionally inversely to how positive I was acting.

I need to get a job now and even though I have a teaching credential finding a teaching job will likely be very difficult. I want to keep our house for consistency for my girls, but I don’t know how likely that will be.

I’m very upset now, as a job prospect seems like it won’t pan out and I need to make a decent amount to live where we do. To afford the mortgage and all that.

I am praying to accept this change and to accept that I have no control over it. But it is devastating and the fact that I feel wholly responsible for it makes it all the worse. She even gave me that year and I still couldn't turn it around.

I’ve read the 34 rules and tons of other pages about detachment and boundaries, so I don’t need those links, though I appreciate anything that you think might help me in my situation.

If anyone has any insight into my predicament I’d appreciate anything. Links, stories, or anything at all.

Thanks for listening.