It is very surreal to be home with D, putting her to sleep, doing all of the wonderful father duties while her mother is who knows where, drinking at a bar with other men hitting on her? That behavior is NOT normal.
OK picture yourself as being divorced and single again. This woman who cruises bars getting drunk and sleezing around with strange men, does that sound like someone you would be interested in an R with? I think this is perhaps one of the hardest concepts for people here to wrap their minds around- your old W is gone and this is your W now. Is it even someone you want to be married to or have anything to do with beyond being co-parents? Something to contemplate.
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How does it seem that all of my other friends on FB have happy families
I promise you, they don't. People like to paint pretty pictures of their crap lives on FB to make others jealous of them. It's the strangest thing, people will bitch and complain to you in person about their SO but then on FB they paint a very rosy picture. That's social media for you.
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For those of you who have done this for much longer than myself...PLEASE tell me this gets easier!
Absolutely. You really will get to the point where you just won't care where your W is and what she is doing and who she is with because she will cease to be a factor in your life. You will be too busy being awesome to worry about her. And if she ends up being too stupid and/ or stubborn to change her mind about you then you will have another SO in your life that'll make you wonder why you thought you needed W back so bad.
So, this person is not your W. It's like an alien took over her body and has hijacked it for a while. Don't try to reason or communicate with the alien. You are from different planets and do not speak the same language. And you're right, her behavior does seem very MLC. You have to keep living your best life, and let her spiral out of control. You can only control you.
As far as comparing and FB and all that, get the hell off social media. 1) it's bad for our brains even when life isn't a mess and has been shown to lead to depression and anxiety, and 2) you will eat yourself alive with comparisons when you ARE feeling a mess. I got off FB for a while when this all started and it was one of the best things I could do. Unless you're using it as a way to connect with others so you can GAL, get off of it.
Stander as always your comments always make me think and view my sitch from different perspectives that I don't normally see. W sleazing around I think is a bit extreme as when she is not on a trip I don't "believe" she is being that way and even when W takes trips, no way to know what she is really doing. It seems that W is trying to roll back the clock in her life at the very least and for sure get away from all responsibility.
May thank you for replying to my sitch! There are many things that make my W seem like she is MLC'ing but I have no reason to doubt she takes wonderful care of our D when she has her and W is from her emails full speed ahead on D filing. From both you and Stander, she is definitely not the woman I married and yes definitely seems like an alien has hijacked her.
Just put my D down for the night. Tomorrow after daycare W will be back and get her. I could not love anyone/anything more than I do my D! She is the absolute light of my life! When I said does it get any easier, I was really referring to exchanging custody of a child instead of getting over a W/H. I will take the great advice of Maika earlier and when I do not have D with me, I'll work hard on myself to keep growing as a better father, son, brother and friend. It is INSANE to me how W will not even so much as consider trying to save our marriage for our D's sake. To just destroy the family of a 3yo without exhausting all attempts to save the MR...but in cases of abuse...I simply can't accept that.
So this morning I'm feeling like our marriage failing was all my fault.
W has expressed to me how resentment/anger had built up inside her and I feel like that was on me to fix/address all those things that had built up inside of her although it sounds like it was a long list. To be honest I don't understand resentment all that well. I mean the way I did some things or did not do other things I know bothered her, but I guess I never knew to the degree that they did. Thing is I don't feel like I ever had anything about her that I resented or if I did I was somehow able to process them through without losing my feelings of love and respect for her.
I just feel like there is SO MUCH I failed at. W has said I didn't listen, said she told me over and over, said she was frustrated that we didn't seem to be on the same wavelength. Now my IC has said a long time ago that W took all of her resentment/anger/etc and projected it on to me. I loved my W and would have done anything to make her happy. I feel like I was just deaf or didn't understand what really bothered her. As I've been through before I don't believe she was vulnerable to really sharing with me her feelings by saying "This thing that you do really hurt me". I wonder why if W felt we weren't hearing each other, then why didn't we seek outside help to figure that out.
Of course then the other thing is...as I'm told her believe nothing that she says and 50% of what she does. Could all of this be W just painting our sitch in absolute worst case narratives? Maybe I truly do deserved to be D'd a 2nd time. But if she did not handle/process her resentment effectively with me, I mean no one is perfect so won't this just recur for her if she moves on to someone else? If I'm this terrible/oblivious to this type of stuff in relationships...really perhaps it's better if I stop trying to find a true love.
Really would love comments on this topic. I feel like such a complete mess and failure. It's like W had a million and one complaints about me, some I could have addressed, but others I couldn't. Only got 2 hours sleep last night. Feeling like giving W the D she wants would be an act of compassion on my part for all of the failures/unhappiness I've supposedly caused her.
Could all of this be W just painting our sitch in absolute worst case narratives?
Absolutely. WWs are notorious at putting all the blame for the failed marriage on the LBH.
Look at it this way, no matter how bad the marriage was, what is worse. What she is accusing you of supposedly doing, or going out and sleeping with someone else? See the dichotomy? "You were a bad husband so I jumped in the sack with someone else!" Its laughable.
So yes, WWs try to spin everything to be your fault. It was your fault she couldn't keep her legs closed. It was your fault that she found another man attractive and acted on her impulses. It was your fault that After committing to someone for life, for better or for worse, she decided that worse gave her an excuse to break that commitment.
ballast, we all struggle with the feelings of it being our fault. Even if the WAS doesn't put all the blame on us, we do. It is a trap though. We like to take blame because then we have the potential to fix it. The thought of it being our fault is better than the thought it being out of our control. Most of us like to be in control, and we'll even take the blame if that means we keep control. ballast, your actions may have contributed to your sitch, HOWEVER, if she was going to do this then she probably would have found another reason eventually. (The big one that most fall back to is that "we should never have gotten married" or "I am not sure I ever really loved you".)
In my sitch my W used my behavior as an excuse for an EA in 2005. Then again at the end of last year. Admittedly, I was a bad H. But the fact that this is revisited tells me that she has a predisposition for this once a MR "settles in". No one knows the future. I could be exemplary for the next 10 years and still have her step out of the marriage. Who knows? This is a potential I need to face up to and decide how to proceed from this point forward.
This is what you need to face. Maybe it is a type you are drawn to? Maybe it is bad luck on your part? Maybe some of it was in your control. But the point that you can't get past is: anything short of extreme mental and emotional and verbal abuse, and of course any form of physical abuse, there is never an excuse to step outside of a marital commitment that was taken for life.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
Steve...as always buddy thank you for your reply! All of what you say I understand but as has always been the case I simply DO NOT know if W actually has had an EA/PA ever. I mean my gut says probably, but frustratingly I have never definitely been able to find out. All of her words seem to suggest that is the case as well, but again no proof.
Steve...as always buddy thank you for your reply! All of what you say I understand but as has always been the case I simply DO NOT know if W actually has had an EA/PA ever. I mean my gut says probably, but frustratingly I have never definitely been able to find out. All of her words seem to suggest that is the case as well, but again no proof.
I hate to tell you, but usually your gut about those things is right. You know the woman better than anyone else. So if you suspect it more than likely there is something there to suspect.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
Yeah Steve I hear ya on that...but what if my gut is simply wrong? Just don't know.
Ovrrnbw...even in my thoughts on resentment and what my role if any was in that and even though I was up almost all night...I was actually feeling detached from thinking of W. I guess perhaps I've underestimated the degree/amount of BS/randomness that might come from her via email/text.
It's a very strange place to be...impossible to believe anything especially when it is said so literally and matter of factly. Definitely need to just continue to focus on myself and D...anything else is just unknown/uncertain regarding W.
I know how you feel B. I truly do. But here's the thing - WW rewrite marriage history to rationalize and justify their actions. They exaggerate issues as if they are mountains, but they are actually hills that could've been summited if they were addressed in a timely manner. Okay, so you didn't listen and didn't do this and that. Now is your opportunity to turn that around for yourself.
The other thing about blaming yourself is this. AS had explained it really well in my threads when I was going through the same thing as you. We talk about the WW 'fog' here quite a bit. Some find it offensive, but I generally use it to describe their state of mind as if something has overtaken it temporarily and they are not being themselves.
The thing about this 'fog' is that both the WW and LBS are in it after BD, but in the exact opposite directions. WW externalizes all accountability for her actions and projects everything on to the LBS. The LBS internalizes everything and projects all the faults on to themselves. They have the WW on a pedestal and see the marriage through colored glasses. When the LBS takes time, space, does NC/dark, and GAL, the shine off the marriage comes off and the fog they are in starts to dissipate and they can see the marriage for what it actually was. They realize they were also unhappy for x reasons and that the WW was not a suitable partner for them as well. The LBS fog doesn't just magically lift - you have to put in work and trust the process. You have to focus on yourself.
The WW fog is not something you can directly affect. She has to go through it and come out on her own timeline. She has to feel some loss and her fantasy has to get shattered.
So, what to do about it for the LBS? You should acknowledge how you're feeling right now. But don't wallow in self-pity. Acknowledge you may not be seeing things the way they really were. That you're looking through the lens of pain and hurt and loss of control. That's not going to make it disappear, but if you recognize and name it, then you will be able to engage in positive self-talk to get past it.
But in this stage, GAL, NC/Dark is the name of the game. Trust me, that's the only thing that allowed me to get past this. So, just know that you're not operating in reality right now. Your mind is in survival mode and you want to get back that control desperately.
Take the gift of time and space. I know it doesn't feel like a gift right now, but it really is. The timeline for this is long. The space is crucial so that you can get your head straight. If you're like me, you are great at beating yourself up. Start practicing self-compassion as well. It takes two to make a marriage work and fail. She is also accountable.
