Picking Up the Pieces After WAW Goes Again

[smilie]

So here it is then. The big D. I am actually sitting here balling, you know, like a man with a backbone? yeah right, more like a bloomin' whimp!

I have just received a draft divorce petition from my lawyer for approval. This is breaking my heart in so many ways. I never thought that this day would ever come and that I wouldn't even be able to get the chance to heal a relationship issue, let alone know there was one to heal.

I don't know what to do. It has to be approved to file to court tomorrow as it needs to be filed at the same time as the emergency interim Spousal Maintenance (Alimony) claim. I am also submitting a claim for her to pay costs. She has already indicated that she wouldn't pay them, is trying to put herself in a position financially where she doesn't (can't afford to) pay maintenance.

So she's living up life in her flashy cars with all this money to spare because she's just made her outgoings up, while at the same time driving me as far in the ground as she possibly can. WTF did I ever do to her? If this is the price for loving somebody unconditionally, then I really don't know what to say. Why does she just want to absolutely ruin anything positive that I saw in her? Why is she trying to make me hate her, change my feelings and scrub over all of those years we've had together? Especially when there hasn't been any big issues - apart from this bloody health condition.

It feels like it's all my fault. I couldn't support her the way she expected and she just looked at someone else who had a more affluent lifestyle and was self-sufficient (like I used to be when I met her) and she said to herself "I want that", and so she did. Magically she is transported to a nice house and driving new big cars - a true rags to riches fairy-tale.

I now get it when people say that it's like a switch has been flipped. Not only has the "Abandon Relationship" relationship switch been flipped, but also the secondary switch marked "Destroy".

I wish I never had this vertigo thing, it's horrible and I've always said that I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy - and I wouldn't as it's that bad. I wish it hadn't/didn't ruin my life the way it had. I do still believe though, that it was the stress of her leaving the first time that brought this on a few years later, but I wonder if there is some permanent damage that has been done to my brain.

So here I am at that crossroads and I have to make a choice - to do, or not to do, that is the question.

The answer is just as muddled and gives me no clear choice - I must, but I really don't want to. And that one statement takes away one path and takes away choice. I suppose I must keep to my words that I told her just before she left, "I'll give you what you want". She told me what she wanted, so I must keep up my end of the bargain I suppose, after all, I am and always have been, a man of my word.

I just want to say to her: "Punish me if I have wronged you, punish me if I have hurt you, punish me if I have been unfaithful or untrue. But why punish me like this, just for loving you?"

I will never in my lifetime, ever get that answer :-(

There is a sadness so deep and so real in my heart right now that I'm sure I am scarred and will be for the rest of my life. Perhaps this is part of detachment, perhaps this is part of moving on.

There are so many people here and elsewhere, that have had to endure all this and I respect every single one of them. This is the hardest thing I will ever do - pull the plug on my wife and pull the plug on my marriage that I was never given an opportunity to mend.

This one thing I am sure, will break me ... completely.