Newby here, desperate for some advice (thread 2)

[albac]

This is the toughest question and I know I ask it daily.

Why do I want my W back after all she has done and she doesn't want me.

The answer I have is I don't know that I want her back. I can't distinguish if I really really want her back because I love her or because I was so use to my way of life and the thought of starting again is something I don't want to face. This also leads into do I really love my W and I am I really missing her or is it my ego wanting her to love me to make me feel better.

If I am totally honest with myself towards the time when she left we were both unhappy she was doing lots of things that made me unhappy and in turn me being unhappy made me do things that caused her to be unhappy BUT the point where I thought we would be forced to talk about it and maybe do counseling was the point where she was done and left.

If I could rewind and have another go at all this I would do things so much differently but that's never going to happen. All we can do is get ourselves right be good people, good parents and hope that in time they can see that and want to be a part of it. I really see it that simply now.

I do not want things how they were again. I do not want to spend my life with someone who doesn't love me and I don't want to make someone unhappy. I don't blame OM he will disappear in time and if it wasn't him it would be someone else. My W needs to find her purpose in life and what she wants, maybe she's just not up for marriage.

[lt0402]

She fought it in secret, I guess, but kept me completely in the dark until finally blindsiding me...

This is EXACTLY how I felt and when I was in the pleading/reasoning phase, I argued this exact point w/ my W. "How could you say we worked on it when we simply didn't? You suffered your grievances all by yourself, and made up your mind all by yourself. Don't we deserve a chance to work on this together?"

In my case, my reasoning has ZERO effect because she had already dived head first into an EA. I would've thought that someone who wasn't in an EA/PA would give that some consideration.

FG that seems to be a common theme around here. My W completely shot down that logic and I now know it was bc of the EA and now PA she is involved in. Can't speak to how a WAW reacts to that logic, but maybe they are so far at the end of their rope that they just give up all hope of it being better. My WW was there and used the EA/PA as the spark to set her leaving in motion, as far as I can tell. Maybe the WAW is in the same place but doesn't need a spark to move forward.

JR, I'm catching back up with your sitch after being away for a week. Hang in there brother, here to support you!

[JRuss]

Thanks to all for responding.

I am very much like albac in that getting back what we had years ago doesn't interest me. I would never again want to be the guy she fell out of love with because, if I'm honest, there was enough there to create problems for most spouses (setting aside the fact she never told me she was struggling, which I think was a violation of her vows), and I didn't like myself at all, either. So I don't want the old me back. But I also don't want the new her, either. She'd have to be in love with the new me, and that just ain't happening, at least not yet. And I'd have to be in love with whatever her she evolves into, i.e., this "her" would have to be some phase she grows out of, because it is for the most part marked by a set of behaviors and attitudes I don't want to be around, certainly not for the rest of my life.

And yet, I still hold out hope that she'll pull herself back out of the perfect, imagined future she sees herself starring in and just see me, as I am now, and not as a frozen-in-time doppelganger of who I was 2-3 years ago. But it never seems to happen, at least not for long. It's almost as if she feels herself soften at times, if only ever so softly (maybe I've been particularly good for a while at GAL or on a run with 180s), and then she needs to retrench for several days, giving me the ice treatment, flinching if my arm strays in the night and touches her by accident, giving me the dead eyes look or deliberately not making eye contact.

The when and the how of extinguishing all hope is something I struggling hugely with. When I'm down and prone to self-criticism, I feel like it should have already happened; I should have told her to hit the road if she's really that disgusted to be with me. That's what a man with pride would do, right? When I'm worried about my children, I feel like I'd live the rest of my life like this without complaint if it meant insulating them from suffering through a D. And then part of me just sees her across the room, or she'll forget she's supposed to be killing things off so the marriage can die and will smile at me, like she used to, and my heart melts, and I just want to have a future with her.

I'm just tired of the weight of it all at this point. Life has such a heavy quality to it so much of the time. It's exhausting.

[albac]

JRuss,

I feel your pain. The constant questioning of everything that happens. Wondering about the future, trying to figure out what we should do. All of these things drive us crazy and are so bad for us but humans are flawed and we can't control what our mind wants to do. If we had control over what we could and couldn't think about wouldn't this all be so much easier?

I never had to do in house separation my W left on the day I found out things were bad. You say you could live with it to insulate your kids from D but how much damage is living in a house with parents who barely talk going to do them?

I'm not tying to tell you to kick your W out or anything like that but I think in the same situation and if I had the balls I would start asking some serious questions about your R and why she is still around if she doesn't want to be.

Easy for me to say my W is gone and at the start I would have killed for her to stay and even in house separation but now, 7 months in and the way I see things now? Life is to short and if she doesn't love me and doesn't want to be with me I don't want her here. It is that simple.

Another very common theme I have seen on this forum in my time here is how many of us LBS are getting walked all over. It's not a coincidence, it's lost respect for us as men and I am going to do whatever it takes to be a real man again.

[JRuss]

albac -- I think we honestly do a really good job faking when the kids are there. We act pretty normally, like a happy family does (which just further $#%@s with my mind). This wasn't always the case; we used to fight quite a bit, and they definitely heard things I wish like hell they never heard. But that's ~2 years or so gone at this point. I think they'd be genuinely shocked if we told them we were separating, because it's been so "normal" when they're around. It's only when they are asleep or doing their own thing that the Cold Front blows in, if it's that time of the week.

I definitely play the "getting some balls" thing through my head, and telling her, "You know, if I'm so unattractive, and you're so miserable and think you can do so much better, hit the road". I think that quickly gets rebranded into me kicking her out of the house, though, me looking like the bad guy to family and friends, being disadvantaged in the courthouse re custody and financially, etc. I'd also hate for my kids to think I was the one who gave up and forced mom out of the house. And I'm not moving out. Period. Just no way I'm going to do that and then try to turn around and tell my kids why I bailed on them.

She was about to move out at the end of June, and I talked her into slowing things down, thinking it might give me time to make inroads and salvage the situation, but I'm losing optimism by the moment and do find myself wondering where I'd be if I'd just let her go. I'd personally be in a better place I'm almost sure; there'd also be much better opportunities to implement some of sandi's rules better, going dark, etc., where there's very little of that when she's playing house with me at home.

[AndrewP]

kept me completely in the dark until finally blindsiding me when I was at my lowest moment post-surgery.

JRuss - just a bit of warning from a fellow sufferer. One thing my WW would do - not sure if intentional or not was to wait until I was vulnerable / unable to defend myself when she had a bomb to drop on me. One of the reasons I didn't drink around her was that I was afraid of what would drop next. One example is telling me from inside the change-room at a store that she wasn't carrying OM's child. "Thanks for that". So since this has happened to you once take care not to be vulnerable and when you are be wary.

I really hope it doesn't happen to you again.

[ForGump]

One example is telling me from inside the change-room at a store that she wasn't carrying OM's child. "Thanks for that".

Can't make that sh1t up! Geesuz...

(BTW, pregnant at age 51 would be pretty unusual...)

[AndrewP]

One example is telling me from inside the change-room at a store that she wasn't carrying OM's child. "Thanks for that".

Can't make that sh1t up! Geesuz...

(BTW, pregnant at age 51 would be pretty unusual...)

She'd had her period the month before - could have happened. Put quite the scare in her. I got fixed over 20 years ago so protection was never a concern. A second scare was when she thought I'd found the receipt for the pregnancy test kit - oh the laughs we'd share ..... Like the time the night before she moved out when I told her that when I got STD tested I was imagining the lab tech wondering what sort of crack whore "I'd" been sleeping with.

[ForGump]

JRuss --

I know your situation is a little different but ... still, it's uncanny how much you say rings true for me. 90% of what you wrote, I could just sign my name at the bottom and it could be my post.

One thing I don't hear you guys saying is ... well, I think my wife is hot. My attraction for her never waned. I know it's affected by everything else in the relationship, but that one part always never went away for me (despite years of bad sex life).

It's my next to-do project to do some serious reading about the effect of divorce on children, and to discuss it w/ my IC who seems pretty damn convinced that amicable divorces are really not all that bad on kids.

My W & I have been doing pretty well keeping things amicable at home. Actually, maybe amicable is too strong. It's somewhere between "cool" and "amicable". But we were a very affectionate couple, with lots of hugs and kisses, so I think the kids have noticed how we no longer even touch each other. But no fighting.

[JRuss]

ForGump -- For the record, I still think my wife is hot. Definitely. It would be a lot easier if I didn't. We've never been overtly touchy, and still do the pecks on cheeks when leaving and kids are around. I think the main thing the kids might notice is that dad's not as happy-go-lucky as he used to be. Or that mom does this stupid thing where she looks off into space, like here is just the worst place possible, and out there the future is glorious.

AndrewP -- yeah, I live in fear of that second (or third, fourth) BD. And it makes me feel week, which I hate. Can you ever be detached enough that that wouldn't tear you up? I guess so, because people move on all the time, but it seems like a long way to travel.

As I think back through the last week or so, I'm realizing what happened, and its just the return of our nonsense. I get a lot of momentum going on the 180s and GAL, she notices, starts to drift closer, I get happy because I'm so hard up for some niceness and affection, she pulls back for several days, and I get sad. Need to get and stay detached and just go with the flow. Easier said than done, but that's the mission pretty much at all times, I think.