WAW on rebound, toxic inlaws, mental health issues

[trbuste]

Hi all.

This will be a fairly long post because this story has so many complications it's hard to portray an accurate picture.

Background
Me 36, W 33, together for 6 years, M for 4.5, no kids.

We always had a very loving and stable relationship with plenty of good times and virtually zero arguments. We would argue at most once or twice a year.

W and I met overseas and moved in within 1 year, got married the next. We built up our careers and finances and decided to move to her motherland on the other side of the world 2 years ago. Neither of us had family involvements during the first 4 years of our relationship because all of them were living overseas.

We were planning to have kids soon and started conception vitamins and dropped contraception in January.

Employment issue
Coming into a new country we had challenges furthering our careers and after 3 months of unemployment I found my dream job. Unfortunately things became very rocky and I lost my job in a brutally unfair way being screwed over for tens of thousands of dollars. Shocked by the way I was treated I decided to fight my ex-employer and commence legal proceedings.
As soon as I did this my wife's step-dad (SDiL) pushed me not to go ahead with this. I ignored his comments and did what I thought was right.

Several months went by, my ex-employer was playing hard ball and did not want to admit any wrong doing. In the mean time my wife was nagging me to drop the case almost every day and sex changed into a monthly activity.
I had no concerns about our relationship as we were still going out having fun, seeing friends, smiling, kissing, hugging like any couple in love. I thought the decrease of sexual activity came down to stress.

Counselling
Around April this year my wife suddenly said "I believe our relationship is in crisis". My response: "WTH? What are you talking about?". She then suggested to see a counsellor.

We had 2 sessions at the C where she made a huge fuss to get me to drop the case. I defended myself as to why fair treatment and justice was important to me. The C helped see W why it meant so much to me and I felt satisfied, she stopped her nagging. Our relationship seemed back on track and we still continued with romantic activities as usual, sex was still at a low due to the stress of the situation.

Dropping the bomb
The weekend before my legal hearing was due I asked my W if she was OK with it all. She said "I'm going to see my mother" and left the house. She didn't come home that night.
Next morning I checked the bank account and half of it had gone. I suffered a breakdown myself, heart racing, panic attacks, hyper ventilation. I didn't sleep for 48 hours.
There was no indication that she was going to do anything like this.

We had 3 more C sessions since, where she said the infamous
"I love you but I'm no longer in love with you".
She said she was going to live with her parents for a while and needed time and space. During these C sessions she kept on being angry and blaming me for everything. No matter how much I apologised and said I would change, nothing was good enough.

We both went on trips for 1.5 weeks and returned to the C.
She then said "I no longer have the energy to work on the relationship". When the C asked her if that meant D her reply was "I don't know." My world collapsed once more.

Isolation
From that moment onward my W went into isolation. She moved to an unknown address (with her parents), changed her phone number and stopped talking to two thirds of her friends.
Any attempts I made to talk to her failed. Any attempt friends (who are shocked and disgusted by her behaviour) made were dismissed saying they have to "accept her decision", "she doesn't want to be judged" and "she doesn't have to explain herself". Eventually even her own father got cut-off.

Snooping and revelations
Not having received news from my W for weeks, I realised she left behind her old phone and I couldn't contain myself and read her messages. I found a msg from MIL to W's BFF saying that it was none of her business and she should leave my W alone. I found another msg from MIL to W recommending her to enter the dating scene and find a new BF. Within days I found my W on Tinder. Then I found evidence that my W had met up with 3 guys and had sex with 1 one of them (unprotected).
This bugged me a lot because it took me 3 years to get her to drop condoms whilst we were in a stable relationship. She seemingly committed this act whilst drunk.

Toxic in-law involvement
Throughout these 12 months of the legal battle my MiL had been pressuring my W to get me to drop the case. (For reasons stills unknown to me). My W was constantly feeding back to MiL how I wasn't listening and how annoyed she was with me being unemployed and so determined to fight this. This boiled MiL's blood to very high pressure levels.

I placed a recorder in our house whilst W and SDiL came to collect her belongings and found evidence that SDiL wanted to destroy my heartfelt letter I wrote to my W. My W protested saying "she had not made that decision yet". It was clear he was pushing her to leave me.

Once my W went into isolation I attempted to talk to her parents. MiL refused to engage. SDiL decided to meet up and we spoke 3 hours.

In this meeting he said I would never see my W again. I was told I had to pack up and move out back to Europe.
He said you are no longer welcome in this country, you disrespected your W. He repeated about 30 times that the M was over, I had to move on and find a new W because my W was never coming home.

I stupidly dropped some of my motivations for the legal case to my SDiL and mentioned hints that I knew about my W's adultery.
He dismissed everything saying that she is no longer my W and M is "just a piece of paper". Quote: "She stopped being your W the moment she walked out of that house".

The next day 4 police officers showed up at my house questioning me about "hacking my wife's account".

I postponed the legal hearing for my own personal well-being and found that SDiL used BiL to contact my lawyer and ask him to drop the case "on family grounds".
Then SDiL wrote a testimony against me and submitted that to my ex-employer.
When I finally got to the hearing 2 months later my ex-employer mentioned several facts that I had confided to my SDiL and he couldn't have known otherwise.

It was then obvious to me that my in-laws had tried to sabotage my legal case and had used my wife as a pawn to emotionally blackmail me to ensure I would drop it.

I managed to win the case with a full apology and emotional compensation pay-out.

To this day I still do not understand what has motivated my in-laws to go to such extremes to prevent me from winning this case.

AFAIK, my W is completely oblivious to the amount of sabotage and awful tactics her parents used against me.

Current situation
My W almost seems to be held "hostage" by her parents. Nobody can talk to her about the situation, I cannot reach her other than by e-mail (not suitable). I do not know where she is.

Friends who tried to talk got shut down, until last week her BFF finally managed to meet her.
As soon as the subject changed to the situation my W threatened to leave the scene. BFF told her to sit the *bleep* down and listen to her. In that conversation W disclosed that she was incredibly angry with me for reading her messages and betraying her trust. She also mentioned that she no longer trusts anybody that talks to me (including her own father.)

Then she mentioned that she decided to go "stable" with her Tinder date and has been in a 4 month re-bound relationship with him. This relationship started 10 days after last seeing her so to me it's obvious that this is a form of escape and avoiding grief.

Her parents have made it very clear she can never return to me because I have "disrespected her and the rest of the family".
It seems that she is enduring high levels of emotional distress.

Mental health issues
My W has been suffering from serious depression and anxiety for 15+ yrs. She takes citalopram in the highest legal doses daily.
I have always been a stable factor to keep her "sane" in her daily doings... as she described "her rock".
The moment that I stopped being "her rock" by facing challenges myself the marriage flipped upside down.

Her anxiety is so extreme that she has questioned having kids out of fear we have a stillborn or a child with autism or another debilitating illness.

She has portrayed a similar pattern of "escaping reality" when she was 16 and her parents divorced. She fled her dad's house leaving everything behind and without telling him where she was going. Now she has done it again to her husband.

Interestingly enough her mother is like a goddess to her that cannot be defied. Even though MiL abandoned her when she went through her own D and my W had to live with her BFF's family for nearly 2 years.

Both MiL and SDiL deny my W suffers from mental illness.

Conclusion
As you can see I have gone through a terrible roller coaster, I am dealing with unstable WAW that will not listen to any external source telling her facts.
Her parents have ring-fenced her by not allow interactions with her and pushed her on a path of a new relationship.

I have decided to do the 180, but I remain in frequent contact with people close to her. Our wider social circle (including all her friends) highly disapprove her actions, but nobody can talk to her about it. Most people around me are telling me to forget about her but I love her dearly and it's just incredibly hard to get over this. Also I have had no closure because she never told me she wanted a D.

Legally you cannot divorce until having been separated for 2yrs in this country so I can't do anything but wait and focus on myself.

I am doing well personally it has taken me huge amounts of strength to retain my sanity.

Thank you for taking the time to reading this story.