Feels like failure again

[Bunches]

So the hospital work situation does worry me. I've had to put that one behind me because its not something I can monitor or sort. Shes a hospital worker and one of the two previous affairs was a doctor at a previous hospital. I know its easy for her to form bonds there and spend time talking with those people who 'get her' or understand how she feels easier than I do. But what can I do about that?

I'd like to spend more time with my son but there's a distance challenge. They live 3 hours away from us. I moved here with him years ago and when I met W and we got married that worked. Since then Ex W has done a lot to work on her life and even has had the chance to stop working and be a full time parent. I was always against changing custody arrangements even a little but with all the baggage here and me always working made it an obvious choice that I was being selfish with my son. I was at work most of the time he was home with everyone else and he wasn't getting enough attention and I knew something had to change. Then the house fire and it was an immediate problem. You can't just push a low functioning autistic child into a hotel room for an undefined amount of time and expect them to deal. Especially heading into last summer with no daycare options where we live (country zone). The only responsible thing I felt I could do was let him stay with his mom and I knew it would end up shifting the balance in her favor to keep him. Its not a great scenario and I hate it but I don't think I made the wrong choices for him here.

House has been fixed luckily but they had said it could be up to a year and a half, happily it only took 10 months.

To the question of giving her space.... I'd say yes and probably too much. With the house there was a lot of stress last year in bills, planning, insurance issues, builder coordination, both of us working full time and managing kids back and forth. And somewhere I supported her in going back to school. Shes always talked about wanting to further her education so we got her into online courses. This added pressure and time sink has not helped anything though. We've been too busy to do much of anything together for many month and we knew it was going to be one of those seasons. As we got back into the house though I've had nothing but issues at work causing me to be working 6 days a week a lot of weeks recently. Which barely seems to matter because she's only ever sleeping when home between school and work.


I signed up for marriage counseling, yes. I know this is a no unless brought up by the other. The last time we had to recover from an affair I stepped back and wanted her to pursue fixing this and being the one to make arrangements showing some effort. She did it but later made many comments about me not being the man who led us into working on things or putting any effort into making arrangements. I've considered this a 180 this time around but maybe I'm wrong. I'm not talking about it and she seems to be interested to go. Shes asked me multiple times about arrangements and onboarding information.

I agree with taking a trip for myself. I'm trying to set up some possible ideas. There are some things I've wanted to try which could be a real challenge for me. I need some time to research my options but it could be fun.

I wouldn't say I'm doing things for her. I'm still doing things around the house but I have kids. That only makes sense doesn't it? She continues to offer pickup up things for me still and tends to prep dinner for the family and leaves things in the fridge for healthy diet. It's like passive consideration.

As to your honest question about what I'm hoping for... that one hit home. I was thinking so hard about this and it feels like I bring so much to this marriage and I don't know what she brings anymore. I don't feel like that entitles me to just wash my hands of all of it and the 5 other kids that I very much consider a huge part of my life but I'm unsure what to hope for here.