Hi Gordie - catching up on your story and I see a lot has developed in your situation since I last was here. I can’t add much to what the others have already said but I continue to be amazed at the excellent support and advice that is offered here. Priceless!
I do have one comment though and it relates to something you said a bit earlier in your thread:
Quote:
I hear what you are saying and I see now how I failed her: lack of attention, lack of support, lack of passion. I was happy and on autopilot and too blind to see she was unhappy and in crisis. My changes were too little and too late.
I can somewhat relate to your comments in my own life (autopilot, lack of attention, support and passion). I wasn’t guilty of this - we BOTH were guilty. We had a great relationship in many respects but there were some clouds on the horizon none the less. It took a long time for me to notice the clouds - I was happy enough and assumed my H was too. He never once gave any indication he was unhappy in the marriage until his chance encounter with someone who is now his OW. If I was aware our M was deep in trouble I would have made endless efforts to get it back on track. H, on the other hand, took the easy way out and tossed away a marriage that by his own admission was 80% great and 20% not great. It was an incredibly selfish move on his part with total disregard for the devastating consequences to me. So who failed who here? I would have to say that we were equally to blame for the problems but the question is still - who failed who? My H failed me terribly by not giving us an opportunity to work on a decent marriage that had problems that could have been remedied if both of us were willing to put in the effort.
Can you relate to any of what I’m saying in your own situation? If you can, then you need to stop saying you ‘failed her’ and stop blaming yourself.
There is also another consideration here - that MLC cannot be prevented, circumvented, diverted, escaped from, etc. etc. The roots of MLC go way back (childhood, teen years), and it was coming no matter who the MLCer is married to. The most perfect spouse in the world could not stop a MLC from happening. Again, not your fault, not your failure.
So in the end, even if I had seen those clouds on the horizon as soon as they appeared, and got to work on fixing things, it’s very doubtful that it would have changed the outcome I’m dealing with today.
Take care Gordie - stop blaming yourself for your wife's decisions. You are a solid guy and you deserved much better than you got. I’ll be following along.
