I wish I could have responded sooner. I've been sick and kept getting worse and worse and finally got on antibiotics yesterday and feel slightly better. Let me start by responding to the most recent comments from the most recent update and then I'll create another post with responses to older comments.
Jim, there are no literal signs that my husband is re-thinking things. I think he's recognized some of his shortcomings as a father and he's also less angry at me, but there are no signs he wants to fix our marriage. He's flying to our city tonight, staying with his family again, and he'll come to visit our daughter tomorrow. He wanted to fix the marriage I'd expect him to ask if he can stay with us, his own family, rather than his parents and brothers. But no, he would rather be with them. Perhaps he has a girlfriend and he promised her he'll stay with them although it doesn't appear to be the 26 year old nurse any longer.
Vanilla, to be fair, my husband calls our daughter every day but only manages to initiate FaceTime every two or three days. His track record of visiting since we've moved here seems to be every 14 days. So he talks to our daughter every day and see's her about every two weeks. I think you may have mis-read the numbers on calls vs. visiting. I really don't know if what he's doing is an improvement or not. Most of my thoughts about him as a father are related to how much of a failure he is, but it seems he's trying to tell himself he's a good dad if he calls every day for a few minutes and visits every few weeks. That doesn't seem sufficient to me.
Arsh, yes sure my husband may have back off the immediate divorce he wanted but he's done nothing to fix the marriage. His slight efforts to communicate with our daughter make him one step above the worst-of-the-worst. My updates are mainly focused on how the crisis we were going through has died down, but sadly it hasn't resulted in any change of heart from my husband.
Steve, unfortunately this has been going on with my husband for years and he left two-and-a-half years ago for eight weeks. He returned and I allowed it to be effortless. Unfortunately I was so heartbroken that I was too happy when he returned to make it difficult. He also came in tears one night, saying he's depressed, wanted to kill himself, was so sorry, etc.. I think one reason why I took him back as easily as I did is because I didn't have many details about his affair. Only later did I accidently find details on an Ipad he gave our daughter still logged into his account. I also found out later that he wasn't staying with his brother as he had said but he had rented his own bachelor pad in Manhattan. Then I was really upset but he kept stringing me along promising to fix everything with he finished his residency, finished his board exams, finished his first few weeks of work, etc.. I wrote about all that earlier so don't want to bore anyone but now I've learned my lesson and I know I can't take him back easily, if at all. But it's not something I need to be concerned about because he's been gone for nine months this time with still no sign of being sorry or wanting to return. If he wants to return in the future it will depend on many things, particularly whether he's received professional help and made verifiable changes to his life. He'd also have to be willing to be transparent again. There would be a long list of things before we could try again, but I've lost hope that will happen. He's long gone now. Perhaps he'll process the divorce when he moves to our state next year or maybe he's fine with staying separated indefinitely since that requires the least amount of effort. Who knows. I wish I had done the right thing when he wanted to return the first time.
