Newcomer

[jaylove]

Hi
Thanks for accepting me here.
Ive read many posts here including Sandys rules, detaching and have started the DB book too and also tried to familiarise myself with some of the abbreviations.
I am in the U.K. My wife dropped the Bomb Shell on Friday that she had filed for divorce, her having spent the last three weeks in a psychiatric hospital being treated for anxiety and depression. In fact she will be there for at least another week.
Meanwhile I have been at home looking after our two young children (8 and 10) as well as my two teenagers from my first marriage (my first wife died tragically)
My wife has had a massive alcohol problem for many years and following the passing of her mother two years ago, her drinking has got much worse. There have been incidents involving the police, rows with taxi drivers involving her use of foul language in the middle of the street in the early hours, as well as abusive behaviour to me in front of the children.
Sadly she doesnt accept her drinking has any bearing on her behaviour, anxiety or depression.

She had a very difficult childhood with parents, who neglected her at 13, they moved to another part of the U.K. and my wife didnt want to come with them, so she was left in a huge house with lodgers acting as her guardian until the age of 18.
On top of this her parents continued to be self absorbed and failed to show her any real love throughout her teens. Her mother passed two years ago which in turn made my wifes drinking get even worse.

There are a lot of issues from my wifes childhood that have damaged her and are too lengthy to go into now.
When she was admitted to this private psychiatric hospital she put her brother down as next of kin and told her doctors to not divulge any information about her treatment to me.
As far as I know she isnt having the alcohol problem dealt with there either.
After three weeks of therapy and counselling we had a brief talk last week before she dropped the BS and she was dredging things up from the past and catastrophising things saying always xxx instead of sometimes xxx and you never xxxx rather than you sometimes etc.
I had been trying to follow Sandys rules last week but stupidly succumbed and called my wife on Friday to see how she doing at the hospital and we had a huge row which ended with me losing my cool and swearing at her, the phone call followed two hours later that she had signed the divorce papers.
Lesson 1 learnt
I find it incredible that she can be making such a rash decision while still clearly mentally ill.

This is a complex situation as I really feel my wife isnt In a good mind state, I acknowledge that weve had our problems Ive had cancer three times in the last ten years which left me depressed and also in debt, but it really seems like my wife has put all of the blame for her depression on me since shes been in the psychiatric hospital.
She has said she wont do couple counselling or mediation but still wants this to be an amicable divorce. That seems contradictory to me!
Im going to try and finish the DB book today, I still love my wife and Im willing to do whatever I can to try and resolve this situation, despite having the divorce papers signed I remain an optimist a divorce will be so damaging to our young children and despite the current anger Im getting from my wife, I still believe that she loves me.

As there is an issue of mental stability here, Im not sure how much I should be trying to follow all of the 37 points in Sandys rules, clearly my wife doesnt want to hear me say I love you right now.

Id be so grateful for any contributions to my thread.

Thanks so much for listening

Herbie