got here late

[duke]

Hi Sandi,

You are absolutely correct, she feels that she trusted me to manage the finances and I let her down, a lot. I always managed the finances, paid all the bills, did the investing. I had a financial advisor manage 50-60% and I managed the other. I was very aggressive and at times it was way up and others way down. She was always too nervous to look or ask too many questions, she was afraid to "jinx" things. When I did try to show here what I was doing, when things were going well with investments, she would gloss over. At times she was excited about how much we had and was proud of me, others just nervous and didn't want to know. Recently she decided to look into it at a bad time and was upset at the amount. She thinks I gambled with our money and future. I think its always been a simmering issue, she always felt we were waiting for either the housing market to fall or the stocks to go up to the point we could buy a house.

Anytime investments were going well I would tell her and say in another few months we can start looking, then something would always happen and we had to put it on hold.

I make good money and she works 50% time. We were always able to go on lots of nice trips, our kids never wanted for anything. We rented an OK house, had nice cars and never argued about money.

This was just a culmination of a few bad factors all at once 1) disagreement, me going quiet, her leaving without saying goodbye resulting in prolonged period of not talking much
2) her deciding to look into the finances and was not happy
3) the next day she decided to trial separate
4) I panicked and insisted we work it out, chased her
5) it snowballed into full blown legal separation

She is in Europe until the 30th and after that I am sure the mediation will begin. We haven't communicated at all since Aug 2. I am hoping this time apart will allow her to remember the good times and miss me. She did really used to love me.

Its like a switch just went off and she turned into someone totally different. The harder I pursued the worse it got.

At the airport I will dress nice, have gifts for the kids, hug and kiss them but just be nice and smile at wife.

I will offer to pick them all up but I suspect MIL will be there with a scowl on her face because I am "butting in". Wife may not be too happy to see me.

thanks for all your help