Just looking for some thoughts on how to handle this friend that is kind of feeding into this "fantasy" my wife is trying to create. Now, please, before you chastise me for saying my wife leaving is just a fantasy I am referring to her totally blocking out the reality of this and how it is going to affect her. Currently a SAHM and now believes she is going to be able to go out and get a job, take care of the kids, take care of a home, and juggle the chronic health issues (weekend was fairly bad: Migraine on Friday causing 3 hours in the dark, Saturday on the couch, heating pad, etc most of the day. Sunday was worse. Chronic intestinal issue putting her in the bathroom at least 15 times during the day. Exhaustion, frustration, etc.) These issues are all outside of the financial part with regard to just the essentials: Rent, food, car, health insurance (including co-pays and RX's which is a fairly high monthly payment when you add it all up), cable, cell phone, gas, etc.
This was my wife's fantasy too. Not too mention her fantasy that though she'd have her own apartment, we'd continue to be friends and function like a family for our daughter. Go read my threads, you'll see how similar our sitchs are.
The fantasy will start falling apart. For my wife it started as soon as I started to let go. You have to leg her go to get her back!
The minute I started letting her go she started to hedge on her fantasy. She even almost admitted it was a fantasy. I initiated BD, not her. I confronted her about an EA and the fact her web history showed she was looking for apartments. She then dropped the "I don't want to be married anymore bomb". I begged, pleaded, did all the wrong things that LBSs do.
3 days later I came across the "let her go to get her back" advice. I told her I couldn't stop her, that it took 2 to make a marriage, 1 to make a D. That I disagreed with the D but I couldn't stop it. She sighed heavily and said "I was hoping to keep this a secret and that after the holidays the desire to get a job and move out would go away."
A couple weeks later I told her that EAs were a dealbreaker for me. That for R I'd need full transparency moving forward. She said OK, she'd update her resume. The next day she spent most of the day working on her resume. That night she came to me with tears in her eyes saying she wanted to WANT to work on the MR, but wasn't there yet. That she knew it was wrong to D and split up our family. That she was still hoping the desire to leave would go away.
I believe that is when her fantasy started to break. She realized she would need to get a 8-5 job (she has a degree but has been a SAHM since our daughter was 9 months old). Apartments were much more expensive than she thought, especially 2 bedroom apartments so our D could have a room there. She also realized that her situation was pretty good. I make good money and we have a very comfortable life. So she started to realize that her divorced life would mean more meals at home, less eating out. Less carry out. She simply wouldn't be able to afford it. I keep her in new vehicles, that would likely end too, she'd have to try to make a car last a long time.
Once her fantasy started to burst, she still had a hard time giving up the dream. Even though for weeks she didn't do one thing to move forward with the "get a job, get an apartment, get a D", she still wasn't ready to say she wasn't going to. Her resume never got finished. She never worked on it again after mid-January. She shifted from looking for an apartment for her, to looking for a new house for our family. But she still couldn't say she was all in on the MR yet.
She finally admitted it 4 weeks ago at MC. That she was ready to work on the MR. But that was weeks, actually 2 months, after her last effort to move forward. Her last verbalization of wanting out of the marriage came in mid-February at lunch when we were at a church-based marriage retreat. It was like her last ditch rebellion at moving for full R.
The point of this long response is that you need to detach. Actively work on detaching. You need to give her space to figure things out. You need to find chances to help her fantasy bubble get popped. My wife would ask "How much is the payment for my car?" "How much is my car's insurance?" "What is our energy bill (gas and electric)?" I could see the wheels turning in her head related to the real cost of her fantasy.
Plus the online EA OM moved on which further helped for her fantasy to be shattered. At almost 50 she wasn't going to just walk out and find a guy in his 30s.
Her fantasy will eventually shatter. It might take moving out and getting a D, but one day she will wake up and realize how good she really had it. It might be too late, you might have moved on by then. But look at ItHurts thread, his XW is now pursuing him 4 years later!
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
