Just getting started piecing it back

[grasshopper]

Yes, 2x4...maybe even a 4x4!

I called wife after work last night to return her call from the night before. That was probably a mistake. It seems this game she is playing is no matter what I do it is wrong.

Yes it is. Stop playing along.

She said she didn't want to talk to me then and I said ok talk to you later. This made her even madder.

No, in the future don't keep a constant plan to "talk later". If she calls and you can answer, do it. If you need to talk to her for some reason, some REAL reason, call her but this way you seem to ALWAYS end conversations with her by planning the next one needs to stop. It sounds needy.

She would not let me hang up and started telling me that I am never there when she wants to open up to me. (Talking about the 1 call I did not take the night before.)

Yep. You just have to understand this. She will TRY to blame you for everything and your behavior plays into this. She knows she can bait you. You fall for it every time. Stop falling for it.

W: You suck. I hate that you are never available when I need you.
Y: Sorry you feel that way, I really am. I try to be there for you but there are times when I can't.

Leave it at that. Notice you didn't apologize nor did you carry on defending yourself.

A couple hours later she called me again and was still very rude with me. I asked her what the problem was and she said she was in a pissy mood and was not happy with life right now.

Don't ask what her "problem" is. Be more compassionate and also more intelligent about this. You KNOW she's looking for a fight, and right about now so are you. You also know that she's feeling down. SO, instead of confronting her on her "issues", why not say "You sound upset right now and seem to be taking it out on me. I want to be there for you but I don't really like how you're talking to me. If you want to talk without being rude, I am here for you, but for now, I need to go."

I asked what she could do to make things better for herself and she replied with "I don't know". (I get alot of these.)

Thats because YOU can't make things better for her, only she can do that. You CAN make things better overall by being more of a "rock" and not reacting so emotionally to these daily events.

After about the second time about 5 years in the marriage, I closed all joint accounts and she got new cards just in her name. I bailed her out on these twice in the last 8 years. (big debt)

I am REALLY curious about this whole passage, and I have to wonder if it doesn't shed light on a whole lot that may be wrong with your M. You said YOU closed out the joint accounts and SHE got cards in just her name. YOU bailed HER out twice in 8 years.

Forgive me if I am somehow wrong, but when you're married, there should be a WHOLE lot more "us" and a whole lot less her/me when it comes to finances. You understand that while married, you basically are one person in terms of debt, etc. This whole idea of you bailing her out makes no sense to me and if you approached it this way with her, I can understand how she may have felt disconnected and looked down on. Sure, she may have overspent but your financial situation, whether it's her spending or yours is BOTH your problems and anything that gets done to bail you BOTH out...well, you get my point.

It seems like at least in this one area, you treated your W like a child. Her possibly acting like one is another story but it sounds to me like you never accepted her as an equal when it came to making financial decisions and that may have caused a lot of resentment in her. I know it did in my W and it took years for me to figure this out (long before the A and all this crap).

I suppose I am being pretty judgmental and reading a lot into this, but it seems like from this one issue, that there may be a sense from your W that you don't respect her.

I know I had to learn that just because I thought something should be done a certain way, i.e. the bills, etc, that is wasn't necessarily the "right" way to do something. When I stopped getting upset, and got down off my high-horse and just talked to my W about such things, it made it a lot better.

Just understand that being right and being married don't always go hand in hand because most often, being right is only a matter of perspective.

She told me that she didn't know if she could make it through b-day party and Christmas without me and the rest of life for that matter and she was mad about this.

This is good for sure. Don't play it up or react to it much. Express empathy and compassion but don't sieze onto this.

I asked if she wanted to trade places with me and she said "no I won't leave my kids. I said well if you just want me to pay for things for the next few weeks, I can't afford to because as she well knows, I am paying for all of the bills at her house, all of my bills, fixing up a junk old house and giving her 100 week in support over and above all of the other stuff I am paying. (this is all court order). She said she didn't want me to pay for things, she just wanted to tell me what was on her mind. I talked with her and listened to her concerns and kept my mouth shut on trying to give her solutions and she just seemed to get mad more and more as we talked.

Ok, first off, ease off on the "Mr. Fixit" stuff. Have you read Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus? If not, take two days off work and read it immediately! If so, then you know that women HATE this reaction we men tend to have towards them when they express their feelings/problems to us. For us men, we express problems because we want help in solving them. Women are helped simply by the act of expressing (or most of them are anyway).

I know you went on to say you listened, etc. That's good. Did you also validate her?

W: My life sucks. Our marriage sucks. I hate everything and everyone.

Reaction #1 (bad BTW)
Y: Your life doesn't suck. You have me and D and we love you. You don't hate EVERYONE, you just hate the situation and that can get better if we work on it!

Reaction #2 (Validating/Good)
Y: Yea, I can see why you would feel that way. Things can get pretty rough when you are in a situation like this. I hope you feel better soon.

In the first response, while expressing concern and trying to help, you also invalidated her feelings. You told her she was wrong to feel the way she does. She's NEVER wrong to FEEL the way she does and she usually doesn't want you to fix her when she feels down. She may want to lean on you but when, instead of just standing still and allowing her to put her weight on you, you build an elaborate leaning post, designed to allow her to lean whenever she feels like it and be comfortable...you get the picture.

SO, I wonder why, if you were truly listening and validating, she kept getting upset. Maybe she was just upset and it had nothing to do with you. That was another thing that was REALLY hard for me to get. I had to learn that not everything she was upset about had something to do with me, or how I reacted to what she said. Sometimes, oddly enough, there were OTHER things in her life that upset her. Go figure.

She seemed very rude to me and I told her so. She didn't make any apologies for being rude, she just said she was tired and ready to go to sleep.

Next time, instead of saying "Honey, you're being rude" and then just going on with the conversation, how about saying "Honey, I feel like you're being rude and I don't really want to talk when you're insisting on talking to me that way. Call me back if you want to be more polite."

There's no point in simply saying she's being rude if you're not going to do anything about it. It seems like her rudeness is a boundary for you that you may want to enforce, especially if you have done nothing to warrent it.

NOW, you have to be careful that what you perceive as rude is not just her expressing herself and that it truly is directed AT you. Also, sometimes there can be a give and take on this kind of thing and you don't want to come off as holier-than-thou if you have been rude (or she perceives you as having been) in the convo too.

Ok, here comes the 2x4 part, as you well know.

I said I would let her go and we would talk later. She agreed and we hung up.

WTF? What time was this? She said she was going to bed, right? Why did you suggest you would talk to her later? I don't get this. Maybe it's just a habit, like saying ILY, but it's annoying me, and I'm not even your W. Stop this.

I thought of something I had been meaning to ask her about 20 min. later and I tried to call back and she was on the phone.

Bull$hit x1000. You wanted to talk to her. Period. Whatever you wanted to ask her could have waited till the morning. You know it, I know it and she knows it. You either wanted to talk to her OR, as I suspect is the case, you wanted to see if she was really going to sleep. Geezus.

This made me nuts because she said she was going to sleep and here she was on the phone.

Guy, get it through your thick f--king head that she doesn't have to report to you what she does. She doesn't have to answer to you. She is a human being with her own ability to think and make decisions, not all of which require your approval. If she wants to talk to her sister, GF, or OM, or God forbid, someone calls HER to talk, what's she supposed to do, think "Well, I sure would like to talk to xxxxx right now but I told Jersting that I was going to sleep so I better do that right now before he gets upset."

WTH? You are not her master, nor are you her father, and even as her H, this idea that she didn't do EXACTLY as she said and she should be punished by you is a little, no, a LOT over the line. YOU ARE SEPERATED. That means she gets to do what she wants for now. Get that. Accept that. YOU are choosing to work towards a better R with her, and she is maybe doing the same thing but she will NOT probably conform to your ideal about how that should be done.

DROP ALL EXPECTATIONS NOW!!!!!

I thought I had control over her in these sitchs, but apparently I don't yet.

You really WANT control over her and it pisses you off that you don't have that. You really need to get a handle on this. You don't have to control yourself every time this kind of thing comes up if you just get it into your head that you don't control HER. Let go for God's sake. Don't give up, just let go.

I waited a few minutes, called back and she was still on phone. Waited about 10 minutes and called back she was still on phone, left message that I just didn't know what to say and thought it was wrong of her to be this way with me.

You're blowing it man. Being what "way" with you? Not answering the phone? Talking to another human being on the phone? Look man, not everything is about you. I know that's what hurts the most, but you have to understand that, and then embrace it as YOUR philosophy. Not everything is about HER. Once you understand this, it may start getting better.
Stop this childish behavior NOW! Let her be her own woman.

15 minutes later I called back and she had shut off her phone.

At what point do you not get that she doesn't want to talk to you? My God, can't you just leave it alone? Why do you HAVE to keep pushing? Go to bed, go for a jog, play a video game, do SOMETHING other than obsess over this woman for 5 minutes. You're going to poison any chance you may have at making this work, you really are.

GIVE THE WOMAN SOME SPACE TO BREATHE!!!!!

I called the home phone just brewing at this time and asked why she had been that way and she said she just didn't want to talk to me.

W: I just didn't want to talk to you...
Y: OH, that's a relief because I thought for sure you were on the phone with OM and intentionally blowing me off. I thought you not answering the phone meant you hated me and didn't ever want to talk to me again. I'm glad it wasn't that. Goodnight honey...

Guess it didn't go that way.

WTH? "I guess you just don't care for me at all"????? WTH is
THAT? I know you were upset, but this little comment says a lot about how much each little interaction with her affects you. You got THAT from her simply not answering her phone? Wow. So what does it mean when she has an affair. If not answering the phone means she doesn't care for you at all...wow...the affair must mean she wants you dead.

Seriously, you HAVE TO EASE UP my friend or you will have a heart attack. She just didn't answer the phone. Period. Let it go. Please. For both your sakes.

Her reply..."your way off on that one." I said you probably don't want me to come over and talk and she replied no not tonight.

She's right and why the hell would you ask that? What would YOU want to go over and talk to her. Do you have ANYTHING else to do but pursue her? You seem to be totally obsessed. You CANNOT be this way if you want to have a chance at getting her back. You have to let her come to you a bit and this ain't getting it done, not by a long shot!

I said ok sleep well, talk to you later and we hung up.

FREAKING STOP WITH THE TALK TO YOU LATER STUFF. There may come a day when you WON'T talk to her later. Learn to sign off somehow without saying that.

I don't know why I said all of this, I guess just to let every one know some of the details of what is happening with me.

Because either you are a masochist or you are serious about getting help. You HAVE to post the bad with the good in order to get any real help at all...and then learn to stand tall and take those 2x4s when they come your way.

GH