7 month rollercoaster ride

[DadsCB]

So I guess it’s time to stop lurking and write up my story.

Here is the TL;DR:
We have been together for 9 years and married for 7 years, we have a S6 and D5. Me 36 Wife 39
Wife starts acting strange, she calls it her awakening! But I saw it as depressed, drinking more, disconnected (11/2014)
Discover EA 6/2015 (Immediately start 180 and reading DR)
Divorce first mentioned 11/2015 (day after Thanksgiving, rescinded 2 days later)
11/30/2015 I go from 180/sandi’s rules to a mix of after the last resort/NC
Wife is still in home, sleeping on couch since September (my request), we have not talked relationship since 11/30/2015 (today is Jan 11th 2016)

Oh where to start? The beginning is probably best. We have been together for 9 years and married for 7 years, we have a S6 and D5.
I started to notice a change in our relationship in November 2014, it’s hard to place a finger on it but I could feel something was a miss. I tried to talk to her about it a few times but she just said it was stress, money, or women stuff. Now we have always had a great relationship, we were very close, had a date night once a week and would do fun stuff together not just a movie and dinner. Our friends and family would often comment about how great we are together, how in love we are, how respectful we are to each other, etc… We never fought, some small arguments and disagreements but we always seamed to find a middle ground (I now know this is an issue). My work had me traveling about 50% of the time so she wanted to be a stay at home mom until the kids were in school full time. I agreed as we live a very comfortable lifestyle provided by my career and we didn’t want to give that up. I had also been looking to find a job with less-no travel that still paid the same and I recently found it! She is going to a School for a new career for herself and I have been nothing but supportive, she needs to have her own drive and purpose outside of the home. That schooling is over this week and now she will start looking for a part time job.


Ok I think I hit the main points, lets got to the point.

In June wife books a trip with the kids back to her home town (1500 miles away) to help her parents finally get their home on the market and packed up to move to our state/city. Oddly she wants to go for two weeks and never invited me, that on top of her rapid weight loss (with Dr prescribed medication), change hair color from blond to brunette, tanning, and precipitous drop in our sex life, all raised red flags. I had never questioned her honesty or loyalty to me and our family but this was all strange. We agreed that I would come out the 2nd week they were there. Can you see where this is going yet?

My first day in town and we go out to dinner with some “friends” of hers, we meet him (OM) and his wife for dinner. I could tell with in 10seconds something was wrong here.
Over the course of the week we meet up with them a few times and the last time we meet at a bar around 9pm. He is drunk and by himself, within 10min he just walks out of the bar with my wife chasing behind him. This is when it all came clear! The next Morning, I asked her if she knew he was in love with her, she said maybe. I asked if she had feeling for him, she said yes. This was my discover day and the only day I cried, pled, begged and/or demanded she choose. Thankfully I found this forum that same day. It turns out she had ran into him at the store in August 2013 while we were in town visiting her family, he is an ex from high school. He is 18 years married and unemployed.

We fly home and she says it’s over and she will not talk with him again, she would like to go to counseling, etc… We go to counseling that she picked out, she saw the counselor 4 times before we went together, I saw her once before. In my 1on1 session she mentioned to me that my astrological sign is not a good match with my wife’s, WTH? Oh and she had no knowledge of the OM or the EA until I mentioned it. In the ONE joint session we had the counselor was coaching my wife through how to tell me she is not “In love with me” and at the end said we don’t need anymore counseling it was time to move on. This was in June, my wife still sees this counselor every week and texts with her at all hours.

Months go by, I am working on 180, GAL, reading (DB, DR), I also started IC and dropped 50Lbs (85Lbs total dropped in last 18 months).

Wife keeps talking to the OM, never wearing her rings, and losing weight. Then in September we go back to her home town for a family wedding. Within 10min of arriving at her parents she tells me she has to leave to get a Starbucks, I borrow her moms car and confront her with the OM in the parking lot. She tells me in a very cold voice sorry, then he comes over to apologize and ask if we can still be friends. I explain that none of us will be friends if she leaves me for him.
That night I left to stay in a hotel and cool off. She sends me a few text telling me I am being selfish and my actions will ruin the weekend/wedding for everyone. I don’t reply. That next day is the wedding and I put on brave face for her family and the truth is I LOVE her family, things go well until we head home from the reception. The grandparents took the kids home early so it was just the wife and I in an Uber. The wife completely looses it, starts screaming and yelling for the drive to stop. He kicks us out about 3 blocks from her parents, I am still asking her what is wrong and she just keeps yelling that she doesn’t want to be with me or near me anymore, that she’s never loved me, etc… She keeps falling down and I am trying to help her get home before the cops come. Well someone worse came, her MOM, still in her bath robe. I LOVE her mom!!

She gets the wife into bed then comes down to talk to me, since I am the sober one. I spill the beans; I cannot keep the wife’s secrets any longer

Ok I am getting into the weeds now. I will try a shorten this up a bit.

We fly home the following day BUT the wife it returning to her home town the next weekend for her girlfriend’s bachelorette party. At this point I think it’s over, I see a lawyer to get my ducks in a row, tell her to sleep on the couch (not sharing my bed with her) and for the first time give my family a heads up. Wife and I don’t talk all week. She goes to back for the bachelorette party and returns, I honestly thought she might not come home. Several days after returning she tells me its really over with him and that she is sorry and wants to try again. I fall for the bait, even offer for her to sleep in our bed again!! I find a counselor and it starts out great but on week 4 she falls apart in the session, she feels invisible, we never had real love, it was all superficial, ILYBNILWY, etc… The counselor is very confused and asks what is going on, I ask if wife is talking to him again and it’s a Yes. She then tries again to get me to understand that we are a mistake and he is her true love, her soul mate, the only person in the world that truly knows her. Practicing the validation cheat sheet, and my Lost art of listening book for months now, I’m surprised she feels that way but I still validate her feelings. The counselor tried to get her to understand Affair Fog in a very nice supportive way but it fell on deaf ear. I lose my cool for 1 min and say, I’ll make the choice for you and I will move out. As we get into the car to drive home she says to me “I don’t want you to move out” and I reply with let me take the rest of the day to think.

Later that day I see my IC and she helps me find the words I needed. “I am not giving up on us and I am not moving out, I will continue to give you your space and time”. When I talk to the wife that night she goes ballistic, screaming at me and telling me I am trying to make her the bad guy, making her leave her children, making her look bad, that she wasn’t buying my “Zen bullshit” (me staying calm), she would never stop talking to him but she will never be with him, etc… She eventually calms down and continues talking, apologies for yelling and says it’s the best conversation we’ve ever had. WTH? Oh and this is only the 3rd time in 9 years I’ve seen her yell like this.

A week goes by, we go to my parents for thanksgiving and have a good time, my family has always loved her. Her parents are now in town full time and we had fun. The day after thanksgiving I am cleaning up the garage and find a receipt for a travel lodge in her home town from the weekend of the bachelorette party back in September. That evening I ask her what this was, she says its from the last night there and she didn’t want to stay at her moms (still upset and embarrassed from the week before). I tell her I’m sorry but I don’t believe you, the check in time was 12:45AM. She then blows up at me again, and tells me she wants a divorce! This is the first time divorce was mentioned through all of this. My reply was Ok and I walked away. We don’t talk for two days, then Monday morning she says she doesn’t want a divorce, I said OK. She said she doesn’t feel romantic at all with me and never will again, I said OK. She tells me that even if we divorce someday that we will always be family and best friends, I said Nope. I’ve let go, I have no expectations and I continue to GAL.

It’s now Jan 11th 2016 and we have not talked relationship since 11/30/2015, I’ve gone on ski trips with the kids (invited her but didn’t react when she canceled), doing thing with just the kids, GAL, family, and work. On that ski trip we didn’t text or talk for three days. In the last week she had been reaching out to me more, asked me to watch a movie with her (The power of the heart), even asked for a hug (first one I’ve said yes too since Thanksgiving and the first one she has asked for since mid December).

Then last night she asked me to cancel my part of a trip to Mexico for her girlfriend’s wedding in April, she would like to go alone and share a room with two other woman in the wedding party. I told her I would think about it, but I don’t think we should be paying $3k for her to go on vacation right now. I just don’t trust her; my first thought is the OM is going now. How should I handle this? I am also friends with these people and now I am uninvited because my wife it cheating?


So her I am now, 7 months into this and close to giving up and asking her to move out. When times get tough I think of my kids and how close we have been as a family, RV/camping 12+ times a year, both on School PTO, School Dads club, Cub Scouts, weekly game nights, family movie nights, etc…

I don’t see the woman I married anymore, she is moody, angry, cold, and not fun to be around.

Last thing, she has lost many friends over this, they don’t agree with her and she cuts them out. She only talks to her own family at events and even then it’s short. Her mom and brother call me weekly to ask how we are doing. I don’t talk details with them but the wife never talks to them at all.

How does someone who tells me “I love, care, and respect you” continue to do this? BTW: Now I only say thanks when she says that.

Thanks for reading my poorly written story, and most of all thank you all for sharing your stories with me. It has been immensely helpful to know I am not alone in this!