Gotta run and do a lab, but I'll be back in a bit to answer your posts. People have told me I wear my heart on my sleeve, and you seem to understand me so well, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you figured me out. More later.
"Recollect me darlin, raise me to your lips, two undernourished egos, four rotating hips"
BINGO!! EXACTLY as I told you. This is NOT to toot my horn, but now we’ve got a handle on her!! Do you see? She puts up this front of not caring, distances and goes into emotional shutdown, but inside she is devastated by what you told her. The idealized woman is the other woman you speak of. She opened up a small crack, allowing you to see inside for a split second.
She is very hurt, but will not admit it or deal with it. I think your best bet is to profusely apologize, repeatedly and sincerely. Do not rationalize what you did, accept and acknowledge it EXACTLY as she sees it. Anything less will be denial to her. But do not grovel. She will not show it but she really needs support and validation. She wants someone to come and hold her and let her know everything will be alright.
She has not had the honesty from you she needs to restore her trust. I think you will have to level with her on how you feel and what you want. But you will also need to let her know how her avoidance has affected you (I know, you’ve told her this a 1000 times). Find an example she can relate to because right now she does not empathize with your feelings. Is there an example with the kids you could use? She is completely in tune with their emotions right now.
The problem I have with these people (my wife included) is though they may be connected and feel attached to you, they are too scared to show it. This means she was probably more attached to you than you realize. Your revelation to her was like a knife, a betrayal. But how would you know? This is very tough and I too live with it every day.
She will come around, but you must be patient and let her take her time. Though she will not talk to you, she is listening to every syllable. And while she pushes you away, she will be even madder if you do not keep approaching her to let her push you away. Think of this as her way of venting.
Just be aware, once she starts to open up, you’re really going to hear it. It could come out like a flood. Just take it and acknowledge it. She needs some sense of vengeance to process her anger. Do you see now why there is no way she could have sex with you, or even consider it. In fact, your asking any mad her madder since you seemed even more selfish after hurting her so massively.
For you, though, do not let your sense of guilt overwhelm you. She is just as dysfunctional and had a role to play in all of this. It is a learning experience for her as well as you.
"am willing to bet that you are still struggling with contact with OW, maybe even talked to her recently." You read me like a book. It really is impossible for me to break off all contact, as we are in a work environment together. I was deliberately vague about how it ended. Let me explain.
Things were going along "merrily", but I had been getting a weird vibe from her for about a week. Suddenly, she wrote me an email basically telling me that she didn't want to talk anymore, that I was bad for her. I was absolutely devastated and wrote back several emails asking for an explanation ... none came. I was about to send a very bad email (in hindsight) expressing ALL of my deepest secrets and feelings to her, when a mutual friend contacted me. She didn't tell me straight out, but from the tone of her email to me, I figured out that the OW's husband had been reading OW's email and confronted her. He made her write the "Dear John" email to me, and made her promise not to say anything more or tell me that he knew about us. Well, since then, the mutual friend has been giving me updates and has actually been a good sounding board for some of my feelings (she went through an EA/PA in the past). Apparently, OW and husband have been trying to patch things, and have been somewhat successful, for which I am happy, believe it or not. One of the big issues of guilt I had was the possibility that I might have ruined her marriage.
I know what everyone is going to say, drop all conversation about OW with mutual friend, and maybe even back off mutual friend. But I just can't right now, now while things are so bad with W, and I still have so many problems with my self-esteem. That small link, even though it is not direct contact feels like a lifeline to me. One other thing I held back was that I was suicidal for a few days after OW sent me the "Dear John" email. Never did anything, but came awful close. You must know the thoughts that were going through my head. Here was my once chance at happiness, at feeling alive, and it only lasted two months. I saw a bleak future ahead of myself. You know the one thought that really stopped me from ending it, that my kids wouldn't remember me.
Go ahead everyone. Fire away. Tell me how stupid I am. I think I'm strong enough to take it ... now anyway.
"Recollect me darlin, raise me to your lips, two undernourished egos, four rotating hips"
"Wanted to bang my head against a wall." Ahhh, so your forehead has a funny slope to it just like mine, and probably like everyone else's here. We can call ourselves the relationship neanderthals (sp?).
"made him feel bad. No sh*t sherlock " My feelings exactly. You've got to get past the bad before you get to the good.
"You need to share these feelings with your W too. She will not change until she UNDERSTANDS where you are coming from." Boy is that tough, but maybe you are right. Do you think it would be better to bring these feelings out in front of a third party (the C)?
"I feel so much stronger and more confident about myself, don't you?" I some ways yes, and in other ways no. The bleak possible future ahead of me with no sex and little or no affection makes me feel weak at times.
"I think she assumes you are just going to go back to being "normal" Globule and life goes on" I can assure you that is not going to happen. I couldn't do it if I wanted to. I think I have made that clear to her but I'll try again.
"Hope you can relate to most of this. I feel better just writing it to you" I do and I feel the same way. Very glad to have met you.
"Recollect me darlin, raise me to your lips, two undernourished egos, four rotating hips"
You know what, it is so simple it is staring me in the face. That list I just wrote you I need to give to my wife. Maybe reword it a bit to say this is what I want from you instead of saying this is what OW gave to me.
As far as the small steps, I guess that is something we could work out.
There is definitely something she will get out of this. If she wants to go places, I'm there. If she wants to do things with her life, I will support her. If she needs help, I will give it. I will be a good father to our children, will support her financially, and will love her with all my heart.
No, she is the antithesis of athletic. Her body looks good, but she doesn't work out or anything other than walk and eat right. She HATES competition, which is one of the sore points between us as I LOVE it. She doesn't even like to play cards, which is one of the few fun get-together things people do around here.
She does love nature and understanding things. She used to love to listen to me talk about my field of expertise, but has switched completely into mommy mode so we don't talk about stuff like that anymore.
She pretty much loves to raise the kids, and not much else right now. I know you are probably thinking that that is what I should focus on too, but I have a hard time just focusing on one thing. I guess I'm a little bit ADD.
Hey thanks for the post. Got me really thinking.
"Recollect me darlin, raise me to your lips, two undernourished egos, four rotating hips"
I think cobra might have figured what the crux of the issue is in a later post. I'm going to explore that possibility with the W over the next few days and see how it turns out. And you can be sure it is going to be painful.
"Recollect me darlin, raise me to your lips, two undernourished egos, four rotating hips"
glob, I didn't have time to read all of the posts in detail, but I did read about your so-called catastrophe the other night. NOT a catastrophe. Don't have time to go into detail, but remember, if you get any kind of emotional reaction out of her, that's good. Exchanging feelings is good. You CANNOT ruin this marriage with one conversation. YOU and your feelings are not dangerous to her. Revealing yourself will not hurt her.
Regarding the OW... I think I said something like this to LFL a while back-- GET THIS: the feelings that you have/had about yourself with the OW, all of those feelings, qualities, etc, ARE IN YOU with or without the OW. You allowed them to come out in her presence because she was welcoming, but she didn't PUT those things in you. They are part of who you are-- the fun, the sexiness, the playfulness, the imagination. Those are yours and no one, not even your W, can take them away from you or out of you. Do you understand that? Now that you know you can be this man, you can BE him now, whether or not there ever is anyone like the OW again, or whether there are a succession of them in your life. It's like a switch that has been turned on in you and it cannot be turned off unless YOU make the conscious decision to turn it off.
Yes, mourn the loss and the impossibility of you and OW being together (and EVERYONE becomes a husband or a wife after you marry them! Believe me!), but do not use your grief as an excuse to fold up the happy sexy globule and put him in a box in a drawer.
Can it really be this simple? I mean simple as in what it is, not how to deal with it. She doesn't feel like I have apologized enough? If that is all it is, and that is all it takes, then I'm there. Question for you, how do you apologize profusely without groveling? Where is the line?
I will level with her on how I feel and what I want. I think trying to find ways to get through to her using examples is good. Sometimes direct statements maybe too abstract.
I am prepared for her to let me have it. I welcome it. I have always felt that once she lets whatever is bothering her out, then and only then can she start to let go of it.
Maybe this was the first crack in the wall. We'll see. Thanks for your thoughts.
"Recollect me darlin, raise me to your lips, two undernourished egos, four rotating hips"
This all seems clear to me in that your wife acts a lot like mind, except she isn’t so aggressive and volatile. But emotionally she is about 9 years old. My middle daughter, 12, seems to be a lot like her mother. When she is upset, she acts exactly the same way, venting and fuming around the house. But she has learned that when she is mad, she needs to reach out for the compassion she needs. She will sit in my wife’s lap, all the while spitting out her anger until she finally settles down.
My wife taught her to do this, since D was so much like her. Wife knew exactly what D wanted and needed. The funny thing is while W knows she needs this too, her ego is way too large to admit it. So she keeps up the walls, fumes and withdraws. My advice is based on the assumption that your wife is not nearly as obstinate as mine (I can hardly imagine anyone more so).
She will not open up anytime soon though. You will need to keep at it, without pressuring her and without getting to emotional or crying. My wife and daughter need to extract their pound of flesh before they are satisfied, so if they can see the other person is hurting and really sorry, then they feel vindicated. Just keep telling yourself you are dealing with a really hurt child, which you are.
Globule That pained me to read but I would have bet my life on some sort of connection still being played out with OW. We are VERY similar in our personalities it seems so it only made sense that you would react somewhat similarly as I did to breaking off with OM. I think it also makes it harder on you since she is the one that initiated the break off. I don't think I discussed this related to my situation but OM basically told me he could not give me more than what we had (amazing sex) and a few dinners and movies now and then. I wanted more than that but we both knew we did not really have the potential to make it more emotional/intimate than it was (beyond sexual of course). You had that great EC that I craved (still crave) and I'm a little envious of that but than again you are probably envious of the amazing sexual connection we had, so I guess we're even What does this mutual friend say about the whole thing? Is she encouraging this connection? Who's friend is she more, yours or OW? Hmm... I know you want the "lifeline" to OW but you are just dragging out the inevitable. Then again, I know we are both gluttons for punishment so who am I to talk. OM and I were sending each other photos and stuff until the bitter end. It's hard to break away. But it is so much better when you get to the other side. You just need to trust me on this. It broke my heart to hear you talk of suicide. The pain can be unbearable but there are SO MANY other options than that. If you need to get a divorce, separate, whatever, in the end, those kids will still have you as their father. Use the kids as a source of strength to get through this right now. You will!!The OW was NOT your one chance at happiness If you cannot find it with W, you will find it with someone else. You may need to give up on the M but NEVER give up on yourself. I can tell you are a special person. I don't even "really" know you but I can sense it already. I'm glad I found you too!
If you cannot find it with W, you will find it with someone else. You may need to give up on the M but NEVER give up on yourself. I can tell you are a special person. I don't even "really" know you but I can sense it already. I'm glad I found you too!