My DB story.

[EricC]

Sorry about the delay.

The months after our move are a blur now, but I will try to summarize what I remember into buckets of stuff that worked and stuff that did not.

Starting with the bad. I was obsessive. I checked her emails a few times. THAT DID NOT WORK! Definitely the worst idea i had. I guess the rationale for that was that I was trying to understand what went wrong. And how to fix things. All this accomplished was to make me torture myself more: because of what I read, and because of the fact I read someone elses email.

Another thing mistake I made numerous times was demanding that she behaved in certain way. It did not matter how small the demand was, and how reasonable I thought (and still think) it was. I was not in a position to demand anything. It took time, but I eventually taught myself not to demand anything, even if it related to our daughter.

Something she did to alleviate the palpable pressure at home was to invite her mother to visit (she asked me first). It really helped to have another person. She probably did not know about the affair, but she definitely knew we had problems. It was too obvious. She made a point that she would poke my eyes out if I left my wife (how ironic), but other than that, she behaved accordingly (not that i paid too much attention). Most importantly she kept my wife company.

Another not so good idea that I had was discussing our situation with a few of my friends. I do not think it did any damage (in my case) but it got me in a quite embarrassing situation. I eventually talked to a friend of mine about this, and she took it very defensively, as if saying I do not want to be a part of this. I then realized that she was primarily my wifes friend, not mine .

Detaching and not reading into stuff she did and said was harder and took a while. It is very difficult to keep it up. One day it seems that you have made it, the next day things change a little and you fall in the same trap. I see a lot of people have the same problems. All I can say from my experience is that it takes time. A bit of pep talk does not hurt either. I gradually i trained myself to a state where I could buick block out almost anything.

One thing that helped me a lot was to figure out the big picture for myself. What am i doing here? I realized eventually that if I look at it from a neutral point of view, the worst case scenario would be that I would live with my daughter a few more months or a year more before divorce, custody etc. battles. Once I managed to put things in the perspective of I am living with my daughter for as long as possible, the rest is secondary that made everything else easier.

I realize that everyone has different situation. They may be facing leaving spouses, money and health issues etc. It is really important to get a big picture idea of who you want to be and where you want to be with or without a spouse. Once you have in mind the 2-3 most important things in your life it is easier to block everything else out.

There are always considerations that distract you from that. Some are minor, some are no so minor. It may be the lifestyle you will lose or need to forgo, it may be friends that you may lose etc. One thing for me was the fact that nobody in my family has divorces, with the exception of one of my uncles. It bothered me a lot that I would be pretty much the first to get divorced. After a while I got used to the idea and stopped paying attention to it.

Among the things that helped, I would put getting physically active first. It may not be the most important, but it gave the most immediate effect. I had troubles sleeping for a while, and would regularly wake up at 4 am unable to sleep. I would go outside and run for a while. It was a great relief. I started playing tennis and worked on improving. When not playing, I constantly watched instructional videos, read blogs etc. It was a great distraction.

Another thing I managed to do right, albeit much more slowly, was to fix my work situation. I was working 2-3 part-time jobs. I eventually quit two of them to focus on looking for a more serious and better paid job. That caused some friction, because my wife complained that I was not making enough money etc. It did not help much that I did most of the house work (in a genuine case of gender role stereotypes reversal).

Finding a job that made money comparable to my wifes salary immediately put things on a different perspective. I had more confidence. I had more independence. I had more respect. Most importantly, I had more opportunities to GAL.

I will send another post to talk about that soon.