I will apologize in advance if this gets too long. I don’t write often but when I do I can’t seem to stop.
Two days ago it was one month when my W left me. I didn’t find out about it "officially" until May 8 (Mother’s Day!), 2016, but May 5th was the day I left with my D to go to Texas to see her graduate with her Masters' degree and that was the day the W started moving out. About mid-March my W said she wasn’t sure if she would go to the ceremony because she was worried about our dog. Our dog is old and in not the best of health. I thought it was a bit extreme to give more credence to our dog than our daughter, but my W adores our dog and she understands the closeness of my D and I, and I assumed my W was concerned about the costs of us going to Texas.
When my D and I came back home the first thing we noticed was a lot of items in the garage were removed. I was initially happy because the garage was getting so cluttered. I figured while we were away my W put some stuff in storage at her lodge she is a member of. When I went into the house it was obvious what had happened. She left me. I won’t go into detail about what she took, but a lot of the stuff she took almost seemed as if she was punishing me, but then some of the stuff she left it seemed she was thinking of me more than she should have.
We’ve been married for over 31 years, together for nearly 33 years. She was totally devoted to me throughout our marriage. I was the one usually more aloof with my feelings toward her. I did love her, but not to the extent she loved me. Only now do I realize just how much I loved her. The pain I’m going through is unimaginable, as I’m sure most on here can relate.
I used to work on the road a lot and throughout our marriage I let her take care of all the finances. When I got promoted I got to be home 95 percent of the time and I should have been happy. Well, what happened is I opened a credit card statement and fully expecting it to be a "zero" balance. It had a balance of thousands of dollars. The more I investigated the more of the discovery of our credit card debt hit me in the face. I was devastated. Years ago I worked over 80 hours a week to get ourselves out of debt and get our dream home. We were pretty much debt free. So to see my plans for the future crash and burn made me look at her in a different light. We still had a lot of good moments, but I was never as happy as I could be. It seemed I was always placing a dollar amount on everything.
I guess our marriage could still be considered a "good" marriage until 3 1/2 years ago. My W lost her job at a health clinic because it closed. The job was really beneath her anyway as her talents were way above the position she had but I was okay with that because she did have jobs that were high pressure in the past and I already had a high pressure position and I thought it best if not both of us had demanding jobs.
My W losing her job wasn't a big concern with me because she had never had difficulty getting a job and whatever position she got she ALWAYS excelled at it. But this time around she didn't even try to get a job. She went through the motions when she was collecting unemployment but when the benefits ended she still didn't try. My job allowed her to not work. The debt we had wasn't decreasing but we held it at bay. I'm not a chauvinist, but I really started to resent her because she wasn't pulling her share IMO. The house was never cleaned, she was always more interested in being with her friends, and the "dinners" she cooked for me was always something she prepared earlier in the day and I would have to reheat when I got home from work and eat it alone. Her laundry was everywhere, and I mean everywhere. I washed my own clothes and I was able to put them away, but she couldn’t. It irritated me to no end. I tried to talk to her about it but she would close up and wouldn’t talk, which in turn would anger me even more.
Our sex life was DOA for years. She had let herself go in the looks department (long story) and with my resentment towards her I just lost all desire for her. My D told me a couple of times it hurt my W's feelings that I never wanted to make love to her, but I didn't care at the time.
In October I finally couldn’t take the job I had. The pressures I had in the job were overwhelming and coupled with my home life I could not see the sense of going through with it anymore. I resigned from my job. I had no plans of what was going to happen but I figured whatever happened had to be better than what I was going through then. I’ve since discovered she completely stopped paying the credit cards in her name the same time I left my job. I have to wonder if she gave up even then.
I had thought about leaving her before, but for a variety of reasons I never did. Mainly because I couldn’t afford to keep up two households and I did not want to hurt her, and I knew I still cared about her. She got a low paying job (brings home barely $1k a month) a couple of months ago and I suppose she had been squirreling money away and when she saw an opportunity to leave she took it. Joke is on me now. I have no idea where she even lives.
I hired an attorney and served her papers for spousal support. It was basically a preemptive strike to keep her from going after me financially. I’m stuck figuring out when and how to pay the bills and the last thing I needed was for her to go after me for more money. From what my D told me my W was stunned I did that. She told my D that she doesn’t have money for an attorney to answer back. One of the things I worried about was my W is very outgoing and knows lots of people, including some established lawyers, and I thought I was at a serious disadvantage. I did not want to get caught flat-footed.
I have had very limited conversations with her. A sporadic text or an email once or twice a week and that’s been it, and after she got served it got even colder. The day before she got served I ran into her and she held back tears and we had a little small talk and we briefly hugged. I stupidly told her I loved her. I hadn’t told her that in years. I can’t be sure, but I think she really fought back her tears.
I’ve done a lot of research during the last month on how to get through this. As I’ve said I was smart enough not to call her to beg her back or bombard her with my apologies. I think I’ve made two huge mistakes. I think the first mistake was writing her a lengthy letter (19 pages) going over our history and how I’m feeling now. I didn’t sugar coat anything in the letter. I went over everything that was good and bad in our marriage. She never responded to me about the letter. She got it about two days after she got served. The second mistake I think I made was serving her the papers. I think she may just think our marriage is really over since I did that.
I purchased and the Divorce Remedy book. I’m trying to see how it can help me out as it seems it would have been a better read to help my marriage before she moved out and not after. If there is a better book for help me tackle the issues after the horse has left the barn then I’m open for it.
