Joseph9, it's good to hear it's amicable. I hope there is still a chance for you to reconcile later for your children's sake and since you and your wife are getting along better now.
Anotherstander, thanks so much for sharing those other threads. That's great. I will study them closely as often as I have time because it would be helpful to compare what goes into a reconciliation and what doesn't. Not that reconciliation is a real option for me, but to better see the real life application of how DB can lead to it. I did a phone session with a Christian counselor, and my current counselor is very Christian-focused, and both recommended I keep feeding the marriage, trying to connect with my husband, have hope and confidence to fix the marriage, and trust that God with soften my husband's heart. This is a different school of thought and the Christian counselor on the phone kept saying "You can do this! You can fix your marriage! No other approach will work because it won't be based on love like this approach. Don't worry about an affair. It will end. You can have the marriage you want, etc.." The phone counselor gave me a long list of things to do and said I'd start to see results before too long. This was in January but I didn't do most of those things because I'm stuck between that and the DB approach and of course not really knowing if trying to save the marriage is wise considering my husband is now a serial-cheater.
Maika, thanks for your support. I'll try to do as you suggest and focus mainly on moving and then finding the right job. I do have a lot of social activities already planned in the new city which I'll probably still do with my daughter. Sometimes it's too easy to make excuses for why certain things won't work due to my daughter but I'm finding that being honest with people about being a single mom is ok. One of my friends who may offer me a job says she'd be ok with me taking my daughter overseas if I need to travel and can't leave her with anyone here.
Jim, thanks so much. Yes I feel like I've been sucked into a black hole. I can't even grasp what's happened sometimes, but I'm grateful at the moment that I didn't have to endure the immediate divorce my husband threatened because I was so weak in January that I honestly don't know if I could have made it. Now that I'm moving and the divorce is at least on hold I feel like I can at least breath. I do have a great life waiting in the new city (my old city). It's not what I want. I want to live here with my husband in our beautiful home surrounded by beautiful nature without all the stress of living in a crowded urban area, but I don't have that option. I will try to become a city person again. I at least loved my career and will be happy to work again although I have to try hard to make sure my daughter is the priority in everything.
This afternoon my husband came over. We spent over an hour discussing finances related to the move. It actually went well. It's the first time since last summer we were able to discuss something constructively without me ending up in tears or my husband being frustrated and walking away. We agreed on everything and both felt good at the end. The only bad part was my husband started making up some lame excuse about how he still doesn't have the car he wants because he's sending us so much money. I couldn't handle that comment so I reminded him this is his choice and if we had stayed together our finances would be better. He said "that's not an option." So clearly he wants to stay separated. He didn't mentioned divorce today though. This is coming from the same man who said "Even if I lose my job, lose the house, have to back to my country, and someone gouges out my insides I will divorce you" just weeks ago.
I think what happened is my husband was too lazy or busy to start the divorce process. Then some time passed, perhaps the euphoria from his girlfriend wore off a little, and my husband realized he doesn't *need* an immediate divorce so he'll just let things slide for a while. Now we're leaving and he probably figures he'll already have his freedom here alone in this city so he'll try that out for a while and see how that goes. This is my guess.
I'm not saying I'm hoping my husband will want to reconcile because logistically that's going to be difficult and my daughter and I's lives have already been destroyed so it's too late for any easy fix. I'm just grateful that I have the opportunity to recover a little, regain some strength, and stabilize hopefully before divorce is necessary or the topic is raised again.
There's always that small hope that my husband will realize all his mistakes and commit to long-term professional treatment and work hard for an extended period of time to fix everything, in which case I would still consider it because I loved him all these years and we have a child together, but that small hope isn't really on my mind currently.
I just hope everything goes smoothly in the next few weeks and then maybe I'll be better prepared for whatever happens.
