I hate that I'm here, but thanks for having me. I've been reading this forum for over a week now and have started reading DR. Any time I feel completely hopeless, which is at least twice a day, reading this forum gives me some solace. My BD was in August 2017. I just found out about DB a week ago. Is it too late for me? Here's my story, as short as I can make it.
My wife and I met in college, lived together for years, then had six months of a long-distance relationship before I proposed. We were married in 2006. I'm 40. She's 39. We have two beautiful Ds, 4 and 7. Like a lot of you, we had what I thought was a great marriage, in fact, one that many of our friends and family members admired. When our first daughter turned one, my wife and I decided that she would leave her full-time job to be a full-time mom. I found a higher paying job in another city. We moved and she continued to work remotely part time while caring for the children. Neither of us were happy living in this new place, so we made an effort to return to where we lived previously. That led me to taking a higher paying job, which allowed her to cut her work-from-home hours further to care for our now two children.
But the job made me miserable. It's not what I want to do and the organization is completely dysfunctional. I brought that home with me. I was short, overly critical, and generally not a fun guy to be around a lot of the time. I now see that all of our energy went into our children and we left our relationship rot. Both of us. Several years ago my wife also lost her mother and younger brother unexpectedly and we suffered through a miscarriage in December 2016. I don't know if these issues factor in to where we are now, but I mention them because they were major, negative milestones for us.
I discovered my wife was carrying on a texting relationship with a divorced friend of ours in July 2017. I discovered them texting one evening, thought nothing of it, but then I got curious and decided to look at her phone to see the conversation only to find the texts were deleted. I confronted her. She told me it was just friendly banter. I told her it had to stop and she hurt me. She said it would stop. But it didn't. A month later I got the ILYBIDLY BD.
She carried on the EA until October--as I vacillated between sadness, despair, anger, hope, and pursuit--when she finally agreed to end the EA and "try" counseling. Her heart wasn't in it, and I was still too hurt and angry to make it work. I tried, though, and she claims she did, but it didn't seem like it to me. She did not like that the point of all of the talking and touching was to get us to have sex again. I didn't like the therapist. She did. But then she abruptly changed her mind in March of this year and said we needed to find another therapist. After weeks of procrastination, she told me that she didn't want to work with another couples counselor. "We tried it. It didn't work. I don't think I can get those feelings back."
Of course, I have done all of the wrong things. Begged, cried way too much, asked about the children, sent her articles on marriage, wrote passionate emails, forwarded our loving email banter from the past, pressured her, asked why, asked her out, said ILY, stopped saying ILY, started saying ILY again ... you get the picture.
Since I discovered this site I have begun reading DR, attempting to detach and 180 and laying down some boundaries.
On Wednesday, after contemplating it for a month, W signed a one-year lease for a 2BR townhouse near our marital home. She tells me that she doesn't know when she is moving out. She tells me that she doesn't know what she is going to tell our Ds. She tells me that we have grown apart; that she doesn't love me anymore, and too much "stuff" has happened in our relationship. That's all the details I can get.
She doesn't talk to her friends about this. She chats online and texts with one friend who lives states away from us, but that is all. Her friends don't know. Her family doesn't know. She refuses to even consider IC (though I am going).
I have be DBing for a week. I bought some new kicks and clothes yesterday. It felt great for a while, and she even noticed. I know ... don't read into it. But I still like the shoes!
So, dear wise counsel and veterans, is it too late for me? This has been going on for year. A year of me doing everything wrong.
The most confusing part for me is that we get along great. We talk. We laugh. We enjoy each other's company. We don't fight. We are a team. We are friends. Why does she refuse to work on us? Is it cake-eating?
And talk about putting the cart before the horse! She has signed a lease but we haven't discussed custody, finances, or anything that typically should come before this drastic step. It's illogical, but I guess women don't think logically.
Until she moves out, how do I DB successfully? Can I take the kids out to dinner on my own (we have always done things as a family)? Or will that be viewed as me being spiteful? I want her to see some of the consequences of a separation, but it's hard for me to do it 1) because our young girls are clueless and 2) because I don't want it to appear that I am being a jerk. I know ... excuses.
I'll stop rambling now. Is it too late for me? Are her actions those of a WAW, a MLC, or something else? Is she just done? It doesn't add up for me at all.
Thanks for listening. Love to all of you who are going through this horrible time in your lives.
