Hi again; I see my post is very long. I find it therapeutic to write out my thoughts so I'm posting to hopefully keep from going insane with stress here :-)
To recap, my original post about my wife quitting antidepressants before BD. I had mentioned I felt that her going on antidepressants years ago saved our marriage because these explosive tantrums stopped after that. Lately she quit antidepressants again because she was tired of being medicated and the side-effects, which might be a contributor to the return of her outbursts.
I firmly believe my wife has unresolved attachment issues. The emotional trauma and abuse she received as a child cause her to occasionally have a crisis if she feels her kids aren't showing her proper respect and attention. If they don't step up enough for Mother's Day (even as adults), my wife blames me. During a FaceTime call, one time my wife's camera wasn't being shown for some reason so the kids didn't think she was still connected, and didn't engage her in the conversation. So she was mad at her whole family for the disrespect. She doesn't really care about keeping my adoration because I've always given it; she told me after BD that "she knew I'd do anything to get her back".
In a nutshell, our relationship was basically peaceful until about 10 days ago, then things went to hell after our three adult children came to town.
Since my last post, we decided to continue on our plan to file for legal separation. The plan was to continue to live and sleep together, to formalize our intent to "take a break" from our normal marriage relationship, and give ourselves the freedom to date other people if we want.
My wife has an extremely close relationship with her sister and told her first about our separation. She was very upset and cried because our marriage had always been a source of inspiration and strength to her. Her sister has always been a good friend to me and has sometimes let my wife know when she thought I was being treated unfairly in some area.
We told our two sons (without our daughter) about our separation and they weren't thrilled of course but took it with grace and maturity (as we expected) and said they actually weren't surprised. They said they had a feeling something was up between us.
A couple days later we told our daughter (late 20's) by herself, and she took it harder than we expected. But she still seemed to be accepting it OK. However my wife made a public announcement about our separation a couple hours later, which was the catalyst for a huge conflict between my wife, our daughter, and myself.
I agreed with (and supported) my wife making the public separation announcement. Our attitude was that it was best to "rip the band-aid off" and get it out there to beat the rumors flowing from the few people that already knew.
However my daughter said she didn't have time to mentally prepare for the onslaught of messages she was receiving from her friends asking about her parents.
My wife says she would have waited to post and even would've taken it down if she knew how much it was bothering our daughter. I believe her on that, but our daughter doesn't believe it. Clearly there was a communication breakdown.
Here's where things really fell apart: We took our daughter out for a going-away lunch before she flew home. I was hoping it would be a nice, pleasant, loving lunch even if the three of us didn't agree on everything.
During lunch, my wife insisted on bringing up to our daughter how her reaction to my wife's announcement bothered her. This terrified me, knowing my wife. My daughter is a lot like her mom in that she's very opinionated and doesn't like to back down; she insists on being heard to her satisfaction.
My daughter expressed her feelings to my wife and I was thinking, "I wish we weren't talking about this now but we need to calmly listen to everyone's viewpoint as adults to hopefully mend relationships", etc.
I didn't actually hear anything disrespectful in my daughter's dialog but my wife disagreed. My wife started becoming angrier and angrier (she has a huge voice), started leaning across the table and shaking her finger at my daughter in a physically aggressive manner. I was afraid she was going to make a public scene and possibly throw something. So I physically leaned across the table between them and said we needed to de-escalate and have this discussion later.
It was at this moment when I decided I was no longer interested in saving my marriage, no matter what.
My wife wouldn't back down and continued. I leaned across the table a second time and insisted we table the discussion for later. But my wife wanted to continue the heated discussion about how our daughter was trying to focus on her own needs instead of her mom's.
Our daughter said, "You've already lost dad, you're about to lose the rest of us kids too if you continue on like this!". My wife took this as the lowest-possible blow when she was feeling down -- as a threat that our daughter was going to try to turn her brothers against their mom and split our family.
I didn't feel that's what our daughter meant. I was thinking our daughter should've left off the part about "You've already lost dad" but in my head I silently agreed with my daughter about driving our other kids away with this kind of anger and insecurity. So I didn't say anything to "defend" my wife against this statement. Our daughter then stormed out of the restaurant.
So now I was alone with my wife, and she was telling me again how nobody lets her be herself. I've never understood this statement because she's always being herself in every area. But I told her I thought that sometimes "being herself" included being emotionally abusive like what just happened with our daughter.
As I expected, my wife was furious with me about not sternly calling out our daughter after the "You've already lost dad" statement, and calling me spineless, wanting an immediate divorce, insisting I was a coward because I'm not standing up to our daughter and "teaching her proper respect", etc. However I felt that telling my wife that she was abusive was an act of courage on my part because I knew I'd catch hell (which I did).
Things eventually calmed down between my wife and I over the next few days and she apologized for all the insults and character assassinations she gave me after the restaurant disaster. However I had to endure continuous complaints about how evil our daughter is for about two days, and how I'm being her "friend" instead of her father.
I don't think our daughter is totally right in her responses to her mom but I'm trying not to destroy my relationship with her in an attempt to appease my estranged wife. I feel my marriage is already over so I need to at least maintain a good relationship with our kids.
I hate being in the middle of those two. They've had a rocky relationship at times but in general have been extremely close, which I thought was awesome.
Right now my daughter and my wife aren't speaking. I spoke to my daughter the day after the restaurant incident and I tried to be somewhat vague about our conversation but at least passing on what's important. My wife kept pressing me for details and criticizing me for what she thought I did or did not say to "teach" our daughter, etc. I gave her some info but still had to endure my wife complaining to me for hours about my lack of fatherly leadership.
My daughter called me a couple days ago to see how I was doing. I will never disparage my wife to our kids (I actually expressed my love for her mom) but the two of us did discuss how my wife's anger and emotional abuse has affected both of us. My daughter said she's still traumatized by how her mom would set the mood at home and sometimes get angry and throw things to make holes in the walls. I don't believe she ever physically abused our kids though. She saved the hitting for me (as I mentioned before but never hard enough to actually injure me). My daughter mentioned she felt her mom has disrespected me since she became "aware" at about age 15.
I didn't tell my wife that my daughter called me because I didn't want to deal with more drama and answer questions. Plus I justified to myself, "can't I just have a private conversation with our daughter without reporting it?" But my wife asked me the day after if I'd heard from her so I honestly said "yes". This made my wife furious with me for not telling her right after it happened. I eventually apologized to her for not telling her immediately because I know my wife cares about our daughter and she would've wanted to know she was doing OK. It might've helped ease my wife's emotional trauma to know our daughter was "emotionally safe".
My wife has an appointment with a counselor next week, which I'm wholeheartedly supportive of and excited about (she's supposed to be excellent). My wife suggested that I could start coming to counseling too, which I agreed to (in fact couples' counseling is the first thing I suggested on BD last month when I found out our marriage was going down in flames). I don't have any hopes of saving our marriage but maybe we can learn to be separated in a civil, peaceful manner.
Another bombshell is that after the restaurant disaster, my wife voluntarily admitted to a recent second affair (but wouldn't give any details about who it was, etc.). She broke down in tears with self-hate and self-deprecating language and said she was terrified to tell me. I actually took it pretty stoically because it wasn't as big of a shock as the first affair many years go. So I hugged her and gave her all the forgiveness I could because I appreciated her telling me and I didn't want to see her beat herself up. I was hopefully giving her the peace she was seeking from her guilt. As I mentioned, my marriage is already over in my mind and we were already planning on dating others at this point.
After telling me about that second affair, she also told me she broke it off. However I do all the financial stuff for our family and frequently use her email account to make sure her medical bills are paid - which is what I was doing this morning. I saw some personal emails arrive from a man's name I didn't recognize. The preview line showed he was offering sympathy about her family troubles. I didn't want to read them but now I'm pretty sure this is the affair guy, and she's leaning on him for emotional support. I can guess it's about my perceived unwillingness to "have her back" against our daughter.
After my wife admitted the affair to me, she also mentioned she couldn't guarantee there wouldn't be another affair if we were to stay together. She said it's just the way she's wired; she has a weakness to suffer from temptation and engage in flirtation. She's always loved attention, especially from other men, and gets it easily. Attention from me hasn't meant that much to her.
I'm honestly much more concerned about her mental health than our relationship because I've already decided not to continue "us". We were married for over 35 years and had so many great times and adventures, and she's the mother of my children. So I still love her and want her at peace, even without me.
