No more denial, time to get to work

[MRay]

Hi sandi, thanks for taking the time to read and comment on my sitch. I'll try to answer your questions as best I can.

This account is disturbing. Did you ever make a connection to what happened with OM and when she came home completely "changed"? Has she ever talked about it? It sounds as if she suffered something traumatic. Have you ever threatened to take the kids away from her?

I agree that it is disturbing. This was the day after I confronted OM. I know him a bit, and he is not a bad guy (did I really just type that?). I talked honestly with him, and made no threats. I really got a feel that he did not want to break up our family, and felt terrible about the whole thing. Or maybe he just realized he doesn't want a woman that's 8 years older than him with 2 kids and some serious issues. I forget the timing of it all, but at some point W was in distress and cried out, "He won't talk to me anymore" and "she was finally happy!" So to me it sounds like she lost what she had with OM, and it was traumatic. I think that sounds reasonable considering they were in constant contact for months (1000's of texts, he was in her classroom every day after school, they clocked out together, etc. how nobody noticed at school I have no idea. Her mom works there and I have friends all over that campus, and nobody said a thing.) This is all just guess work on my part though.

No, I have never threatened to take the kids from her in any way.

Does any of her family suffer from any type mental illness? Please understand that I am asking out of concern for your W. It must have scared you to see her behavior......and the extreme weight loss.

Nothing ever diagnosed, but one of her grandma's had some sort of mental illness but I'm pretty sure that was caused by substance abuse. She is just like her dad, and he is definitely depressed a lot of the time. She has said she is afraid of ending up like her parents, and she sees how sad her father is in his marriage and life.

As for her weight, she's always struggled with putting on weight. She has a fast metabolism, and can eat like a pig and not gain anything. So she will lose weight quickly once she stops eating. It's one of the biggest reasons I cook all the time, and started the trend of pursuing. I would nag her about eating when she was stressed. I felt I had to make sure she stayed healthy, when that is her issue to deal with. I think I'm realizing where some of my mistakes were made.

Are you seeing the same IC that your W is seeing?

No. Once the decision was made for her to see him for IC instead of MC, he said he couldn't see me as well as it would be a conflict of interest. The one time I did see him on my own he was pretty clearly leading me towards divorce being my best option. This is why I get nervous every time she goes to see him. The IC is doing great things for her personally. I've seen tremendous improvements in her, but I do fear he is pushing her to leave the marriage.

Up until she had the first child, did she seem to enjoy sexual intercourse, or was it more the affection she really wanted? Did she try to avoid sex before D6 was born?

She enjoyed sexual intercourse very much early in our relationship. W had a very conservative, Catholic upbringing. When her mom found her birth control pills she called W a whore and some other nasty things. She was 21 at the time, so this was quite ridiculous, but it had a big impact on W. She was never really the same sexually, but it was hard to judge being apart most of the time. Sexually things seemed healthy when she moved home after school, but more problems cropped up when we were engaged. Without telling me, she cut me off during the engagement. Naturally, I noticed. She said she didn't want to get pregnant before the wedding and this caused a lot of tension and eventually she gave in and we had sex. I shouldn't have pressed the issue, but I was 23 and we were finally near each other after 6 years of being apart and I was cut off without even being told. I see why I was angry, but a more mature me would have handled it better.

I don't remember her ever avoiding sex before D6, and we were always very affectionate before D6 even if we weren't having a lot of sex during a particularly stressful stretch. After D6, she rarely enjoyed sex. The affection wasn't there either.

Waiting four months to approach your W about sex........is extremely thoughtful, to say the least.......especially considering you were only 26! Did I read that correctly?

The birth was a fairly traumatic one with tearing and an episiotomy, and W also had multiple infections while trying to breastfeed. So I knew she was not up for sex when the doctor cleared her at the six week mark. I didn't bring it up until around the 10th-12th week mark, and we had sex at 16 weeks. W says that is the night she remembers falling out of love with me as she cried herself to sleep.

Did you notice change (better or worse) in her behavior when she got pregnant with the second child?

Nothing that stands out as out of the ordinary. She hated being pregnant both times, but seemed to handle it better the second time. Our sex life returned to normal much faster after the second time as well. She even had some fun with it because her breasts were so big (she's flat chested, and I think she enjoyed them as much as I did while they were around).

Has she ever gone to the doctor for depression?

Never, but her IC does not seem to be worried about depression or the scary 2-day whatever the heck that was. This is all relayed through her though.