Suddenly, a small ray of hope

[built4speed]

It's not my job anymore to point out W's personality faults. That will be the new guy's job. I'm done with it. And I don't want to get D14 in the middle of it, she's upset enough already.

The first atty meeting is today. I have been dreading this day for over two years. I've always felt that if we got into the legal system, the game is over. The D will now take on a life of it's own, as the attys push it forward, out of our hands. I guess W finally gets what she wants: her family legacy of broken families continues. I will be the first person in my ancestry to be D.

I have done everything she asked: attended counseling, did all the honey-do projects, changed behaviors she didn't like, got higher ratings at work, acquired new job certifications. I stopped asking for things from her. I let her initiate when we got lucky (which meant basically we didn't). I haven't complained once about it. This was her biggest issue.

The results: she says I am not trustworthy (while trusting me with everything - money, kids, taxes, car repairs, vacation planning, virtually everything, except the emotional health of our marrige; that one she shot in the head - it takes two to work on it and she refused to do anything at all for it). She says I am not good enough to be her husband, while relying on me for virtually everything - financial, emotional, help with her family issues, job hunting issues: she asks my advice on everything, even today. But I'm not good enough to sleep with. She says that virtually everything she knows about parenting, she learned from me, but I'm not good enough to keep around as a parent.

She has had the country club life. Travel tennis teams, working out whenever she wanted (which was a lot - she's in great shape, has run six marathons), vacation travel to Mexico, Europe, Hawaii. A big house with a big yard. Three kids in high honors, and attending a gifted academy. New cars. Full time attention from me. I have friends in shock saying they can't understand this at all, that we were their standard for how a marriage should be done. She calls me the best father ever, bar none. I attend every kids sporting event that doesn't conflict with another one. I supported W in her running efforts, her half Ironman race, childbirth, family crises, all of it. I was there for her. And, of course, there were issues, but nothing that we couldn't work out: no cheating, no abuse, no criminal behavior, none of it. After seeing what some of the people on this board have been though and gotten back together, it's embarrassing to me that we couldn't get there. That I picked someone without the where-with-all to stick to her vows when it got a little tough.

At some point you realize: it's not me. It's echos of her mother, of her flavor of mental illness, of her lack of ability to forgive, of her neverending assumption I'm trying to screw her over, her lack of any attempt to ever try to meet my needs. One reason we were a good match: I asked for very little from her as a spouse, I'm pretty self-reliant. Which was good, because from an emotional point of view, she hadn't much to give. The one time I needed her desperately, when I got laid off, her only response was to look me dead in the eye and with the coldest possible sneer say, "Get a job." The one thing I did ask her for was sex (she was my wife, for heaven's sake), and that turned out to be a debacle. It got to the point she needed to be drunk before she'd agree, and then that blew up when she once drank so much she didn't remember and accused me of taking advantage of her - after she had said yes. That cemented in her mind that she couldn't trust me, when what it really meant was she couldn't trust herself. That was the begining of the end of us.

I have given her a life she could only dream about as she was growing up (and it was easy for me because it was my dream - I've been living my dream) and her response has not been gratitude, but contempt. I hope I can be a bit more discerning when I select my next spouse.