My story. Sorry it’s a long read... please let me know if it is for this forum.
My W and I met online in 2009. I was 38 and she was 27. We took to each other right away as we shared same interests and goals. We both wanted kids and knew that from the start. To me, she was someone I especially connected with because once I got to know her better I recognized that she was, way more mature than her youth would suggest, and a fighter (literally. When we met she was training for a championship boxing fight which she won.) Initially, though, we broke up because she pursued me hard, and my mind flagged that, but then the attraction was impossible to bear. When we reunited we became inseparable and things were great for a while. Fast forward, three miscarriages, a successful pregnancy, a couple of university degrees, career blowing up into an all consuming monster, and 6 years later I started to realize we were in trouble. I will fully acknowledge that I bear a part of the responsibility for what happened. I was clueless, and frankly pretty inexperienced, this being longest relationship of my life. It doesn’t help that I’m a relentless problem-solver and just super motivated when challenged. I’m finding out now that these are great to have, depending on how they are applied in relationship repair, and if you don’t understand how these can damage things further, well, I stepped on every mine in that field. However, my heart always went out to her because she was someone worth fighting for.
Anyway, we were both stressed and fighting a lot. After reading many books on relationships, especially everything by John Gottman, I realize that we went through every typical phase of relationship break-up. We were just awfully dysfunctional. There was no violence or name-calling, but we couldn’t connect to that place we had in the beginning. Now, my issues were that I thought I could push my way through and solve any problem in life. Ok, she wants more help with the kid. Done. She wants me to do more stuff around the house. No problem. However, I started to notice that more and more of these things were offloaded onto me, the more she seemed hurt and distant. There was just no reaching a bar that kept creeping up further and further up away from me. At some point during this I worked myself into a co-dependency where I started to sacrifice more and more in order to try and re-establish contact with my now way-ward wife. One Christmas she got drunk, and after I went to bed her and my (very charismatic) brother stayed up to chat. They were drinking a lot that night, and at some point she made a move on him. My brother politely turned her down, and chalked it off to drunkenness so he didn’t tell me. I only found out a year later, after she told me, probably in hope I would end our relationship (more on this sort of behavior later). I wrote it off as drunkenness as well, and after we talked about it she apologized and we got on with living a family life. That’s when she said the “I love you but not in love with you”. In spite of this we decided to try and work things out.
Now here’s something to understand about my W. She’s a people pleaser, and ironically for the path she chose in life a pathological avoider of confrontation. My attempts at coaxing her to open up were always like teeth-pulling sessions. By the time she would say anything a lot of time and a lot of seething has already passed. The resentment just kept building for both of us.
Then in 2015 she was offered a job in a small town 200 kilometers from the city we lived in. In her field full-time positions are rare (she’s a college professor), so it was a no brainer that we go. We started to talk more and open up about our issues so it seemed that a change of scenery might be just the thing we need. I managed to talk my company into letting me work remotely so on two salaries our life was made. It helped that we moved to a cheaper area where we could actually afford a house. Then, she became pregnant again. This time I resolved to be more present with support as that was one of her complaints during the first pregnancy, and things seemed to be ok. Then the baby came, and a full F9 tornado descended onto our lives. I realize now that she had a massive post-partum episode where she started to bad mouth me to our mutual friends, being angry or depressed all the time. We both knew of the post-partum being like that, but it was as if she was a different person. That was the point of the first bomb-drop. She asked to separate. Being stressed out, and completely overwhelmed while trying to see to the needs of a second time-mother, I didn’t react well to this. By then I was fully enthralled in my codependency and didn’t know night from day. Then as a few months went by and things seem to stabilize, we seemed to reconcile. How wrong was I By then I was exhausted and burnt out. I ended up losing my job, hich was ok because I figured I could get something local after I took a break. But then, my own depression started and things got worse and worse. The whole time my W is pretending everything is ok. I learned later that’s a typical stage of what we were going through. Unfortunately she was extremely good at it. So while things started to relax for me, we started to wind our way out of the bleakness... so I thought.
Here is where it takes a bizarre turn. Things are ok for a while, and one day, while walking through a neighborhood we liked we chanced on a house that was for sale. It was a beautiful house, and unique and seemed right for us. We talked about it and decided things were going well enough ok to buy it. So we did.
Here I am again thinking things are ok. Nope. Soon after the purchase we start fighting again, but this time the stone-walling on her side is dialed up to 11. It was impossible to have a rational conversation with her as she would get flooded quickly and no argument would change her narrative. Enter her request for separation #2, but this time she’s adamant. Something went off in my brain and my fear response went off the scale. I’m a pretty strong and collected guy. I’ve been to places in the world where people were trying to kill me and I haven’t been scared as much as the night she said she wanted out. I did the usual round of all the wrong things to do; the pleading, threatening, describing the irrationality of her stance. It just made things worse. She would not be moved. Then I started to realize she’s on her phone texting a lot with someone. So of-course I snoop and find out shes having an EA with a guy from her PHD class. I lose my mind, but to my credit I just then found the DB web site and started to absorb and apply a lot of the techniques described there. I take off for a few weeks to be with my sister and her new baby. Then my W calls me. She says that she thought about things, she misses me, and would like us to keep trying. I come back into town just in time for her to have a nervous breakdown. She can’t work and is completely incapacitated. I try to help, and am thinking this might be the catharsis that might make her seek help for her own issues (more on this later). She finally agrees to go to get IC, we both do actually. Things get better. Then a year later, we’re alone in the car, driving to the next town, and I broach the subject of her being distant since her breakdown. Out comes “I don’t feel anything for you”, except up to that point everything seemed great, and just a few days before we were watching out kids playing and laughing at how we’re probably going to be grand-parents together some day. The 180 is startling.
This was a few weeks ago. I guess I finally wanted to reach-out here because I’m so numbed at this point that I don’t know what to do. On one hand there are times when we have a wonderful time, but then something in her recoils and drama enters. I am successfully detaching, and I still care a great deal for the mother of my kids, but it is becoming harder to see myself being a part of her life. This loss of sensitivity terrifies me because it was always such a strong part of who I am. By now I deserve my own psych degree as I have consumed a library-full of relationship and behavioral science books so understand well codependency, avoidant and anxious attachment types, and everything in between. I am also becoming an expert on ADHD which she acknowledges to have (her IC agrees with this as well). It seems like it’s time for me to let go of the relationship and allow her to face her issues on he own, however the kids and our new house keep me anchored anchored in this situation. She’s not helping. She hasn’t mentioned divorce, only that she doesn’t know where she stands with us and needs to separate to figure things out. I’m willing to give her space, and said so, but I’m so exhausted fighting this that I just can’t seem to do it anymore. And so I’m reaching out to the community here to see if anyone has any perspective on this, or has gone through something similar before I make the decision to go?
