Read through your situation and a lot of your support posts to others. I was also in a SSM the past 15 years or so. I to resented my wife for this. I tried to discuss it with her early on but she did not want to talk about it. I actually considered leaving her at one time but my sons were much younger then and I decided to rough it out while trying to remedy the situation.
I eventually just gave up. I still respected my wife as a person and mother but the resentment caused me to become negative and cynical. I sometimes did not want to do things with her because I was so bitter about the SSM. Needless to say she left after we dropped our youngest son off at college a year ago.
I haven’t ever told her how I feel the SSM was the root of all our problems and can’t now since I’m BDing and basically NC. I realize she is a WAS but she has also shown a lot of strange MLC behaviors. If you get a chance can you check out my thread in the MLC forum as I think you may be able to offer me additional advice from you perspective and how you addressed the SSM with your W.
Thanks,
Tax
Taz, thanks. I will try to get over to MLC. I am on a special project at work right now and working long hard hours, so I haven't been spending at much time on the forum as usual. Just don't have the energy to be on a device much after 10-11 hours for work! But I will try.
I think in general, based on what you are describing, you are doing the right thing with NC. Whether she is in a MLC, whether she is aware of the SSM being an issue for you, or not really doesn't matter. I never addressed the SSM with my W. It came up in MC, and she was aware that she wasn't interested in sex for a long time. But you have to realize that LBSs often confuse underlying issues/causes with symptoms.
For instance, your SSM likely was the result of Nice Guy Syndrome issues you dealt with. For instance, you do some nice things for your W, expecting she will be in the mood later for sex. That night, or the next, you initiate, she isn't feeling it, and you get denied. So you get hurt, you pout, you have the opportunity over the next few days to do more nice things for her, but you withhold doing them because you are "resentful" of the turn down. After years of this dynamic, caused by your NGS, your W, as result of the SSM begins to exhibit MLC behaviors, when really she is just tired of being with a man that has hidden agendas, that loves having sex more than he loves his W, and decides it is time to start moving on and looking for something new.
You look back and want a cause because then you can "fix" things! If only she would have addressed the SSM, which was clearly all her fault (sarcasm). Or maybe if you could just get her past her MLC (which if it is a true MLC could last for the rest of her life!!) then all your problems could be solved.
The issue with all of this is thinking YOU can FIX her. Whether it is the SSM or the MLC, you cannot fix her. Only she can fix her. There is NOTHING...NOTHING you can do to fix her. Or your sitch. What you can do is look inwardly. How do you become the best Taz you can be? So that if your W does ever come back, or if you end up D'd and move on with someone new, you will not repeat your mistakes that contributed to your long-term SSM, and W's eventual MLC where she decided YOU were the problem and decided to leave.
Here is the thing. Maybe the above is similar to what happen. Or maybe her MLC had nothig to do with you, and even if you were the perfect H and never behaved poorly at anytime, (highly unlikely) she may have woke up one day and thought to herself "This is not what I wanted for my life. I wanted to be a world traveller, or live on the ocean or been a famous ballet-dancer, and this marriage is the reason I've always been held back!" So another mistake that LBSs often make is that their spouse's MLC is somehow related to them, and the truth is that the MLC was sleeping giant, a ticking time-bomb, and there was nothing, and is nothing, the LBS could have done, or can do to stop it.
So realize that your W's MLC may or may not have anything to do with how you were as husband. It may or may not been caused by the SSM. The SSM may not have been the cause of your marital issues, it may have been a symptom of other underlying issues with you or the marriage. And the big take away is that there is nothing you can do to fix all of this.
So it comes back to what you SHOULD be doing. Remain NC. Focus on yourself. Focus on GAL, focus on your own self-improvements. Work on, through IC and other learnings, to become detached. Which to me means a lot of things but mainly it means to learn how to be happy ON YOUR OWN. Because her is the thing, and this was one of the biggest learnings I took out of my journey: until you can be happy on your own, you cannot be happy as part of a couple. It is impossible.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
