Wild ride and now trapped in the Bermuda Triangle

[dmoy]

Not even sure where to start on this. I'm in the midst of trying to 180 and save my marriage from the big D.

I guess to start, I pushed my wife away. She may not have needed any help, but I certainly didn't do any favors. Last summer we found out we were expecting our 3rd. We didn't have insurance at the time and I think I stressed too much about it. I already had a drinking problem and for whatever reason my wife and I lost our connection. I started talking to neighbors, and ended up having a short lived affair. We went through the usual shouting "I don't feel loved anymore" and she was the one that didn't want to give up despite me feeling like it was over. Eventually she took our vehicle and kids and went to stay with friends. Took me about a week to realize my mistake and to end things with OW and another week before my wife decided to talk and make things work. This is where things got even more unfortunate and she had a miscarriage. It was devastating for both of us because it would have been our first son, but she held on to it more than I did.

In the short term, we both got jobs, she moved back in, we were close, I stopped drinking. She literally threw herself at me, like sex every day throw herself at me. What I didn't put together until later is that I think some of that was tied to me not drinking at the time. I had stopped cold turkey from years of drinking half a bottle a day. I think maybe she hoped that if she gave me everything I wanted, I'd never drink again.

A month or so later we sold our house and relocated closer to her job. We were going to counseling together. Things seemed to improve for a few months. I started drinking again. Just a little at restaurants, then a few nights at home. I made a very conscious effort to limit myself to one or two drinks per night and only a few nights per week. I saw this is a compromise with her when really I think she wanted (knew, more on that later) me to stop completely even though she never explicitly said so.

Fast forward to spring of this year. We stopped counseling because things seemed to be going better. Insurance had changed and we had to transfer to a new person within the practice. Given the seemingly good state of things I didn't want to restart things if it wasn't necessary.

Spring later turned a bit rocky, I missed the expected due date of our late son which I didn't realize she expected me to remember. Fights happened. I did everything I could remember from counseling to try and keep her happy. There were more fights. I later realized my "anger" as she would put it was more frustration with not getting through to her. I couldn't understand why she didn't respond to my needs when I tried to bend over backwards to keep her happy. I could tell things were off, but I was in the midst of a big change at work. I almost called and got a counseling appointment but didn't.

In late June I went on a business trip. A week before this she had picked a huge fight which seemed really out of character for her. I feel this was a setup for what happened next. Halfway through my business trip she calls me in an apparent attempt to end things. I abruptly ended the conversation saying I didn't feel it was appropriate to have when I was across the country. Little did I know she had spent the day moving out. I talked with her once or twice in the days after not yet understanding the gravity of the situation. Finally I booked a flight home a few days early. I raced home from the airport only to find our apartment completely empty. She left my things in my office, and one of the kids' bunk bed mattresses on the floor. No bed, no couch, no furniture, no table. It was all gone.

The next few days were filled with rage. I was angry. She had taken my kids and my life away from me. She wouldn't let me see my kids or tell me where she had moved. Eventually I realized that I had pushed her away (I was reading a book on couples communication I had ordered while waiting on my flight home). I immediately started to change. I stopped drinking. As the weeks progressed and somewhere around the 1 month point, I confided in her that I realized I needed to give it up for good. At this point she tells me a story about a late friend of ours that had been sober twenty something years. My wife had confided in her. The friend told her that I'd have to hit bottom on my own to realize and that my wife needed to hang in there. She'd hoped I'd realize before it was too late. This was something that my wife at no point had ever admitted to me, not even during our first counseling sessions.

It was about this time I finally got back into counseling sessions for myself. I had called within a day or two of arriving home but it took a few weeks for an open appointment. This gentleman was much better than the person we had spoken with before. He was also the one that recommended I buy Divorce Remedy.

At one point we were in the car together with the kids, she told me that I cheated on her because I hated her, that I was verbally abusive, and that she blamed me for the miscarriage. This was devastating. I knew I had an uphill battle. Given that her friends had convinced her of some of this, not only was I going uphill, but I had people throwing boulders at me on my way up. Most of this made it into the custody filing too-- I hit our kids (spanked, how I was raised), yelled, called them names, and drank.

The rest of the summer seemed ok. I was learning, and my wife even seemed somewhat open to maybe making things work. Eventually at the end of the summer I was able to move to be near my kids. I went from being an hour away to 3 blocks away. Unfortunately the custody arrangement has me seeing my wife almost every day of the week and while I love my kids and won't ever turn down an opportunity to see them, it certainly makes it hard to go dark and avoid her.

Communication seemed good for the most part, we were talking and friendly although there have been some apparent times she maybe didn't want to talk. There were other times we were on the phone together for an hour talking with or about the kids. The past month has been the worst and just the other day I decided I really needed to detach as best as I could and do a 180 from some behavior that wasn't working. She wanted 2 months to "be parents" ... I gave her over 3. Things seemed ok so I started trying some things. She said she hadn't been sleeping well, and while she has an excuse the nights our kids are at her house and wake her up (kid sleep issues), there's no excuse for her not sleeping the nights I have the kids. I figured it was worry about something-- maybe that I changed and she didn't expect that and that she had said some somewhat inflammatory things online and she'd have to explain to friends why we got back together if we did. I told her that I stood by her decision to move out because it was the best thing she could do at the time and it triggered my wake up. I said it felt like we still had some type of connection and that we'd go through it together and I had her back. At the time this seemed like a net neutral effect rather than negative.

About a week later she randomly dyed her hair and wore makeup which I found odd, but had no explanation for. A week after that happened to be the 10 year anniversary of when we met. I left her flowers and a letter on her porch. This seemed to be a big negative trigger. Her behavior changed. She avoided me a few days later on our actual 7 year wedding anniversary and had apparently called a divorce attorney again this week. Up to this point she had only filed for custody. Since Wednesday or so I've significantly curtailed communication other than about the kids. Though even just now as I type this she called to inform me that our daughter cut her hair (at my house) and seemed very blame-y towards me. I'm not sure what triggered this big wave of negative energy towards me after things seemed to be going so well. I'm sure she's getting some encouragement from family and friends who all refuse to acknowledge me.

My head is spinning and I feel trapped.