talking into a vacuum I know...but take a look back at all your communication. You write in terms of emotions yours, what you think is hers, you talk about your hurt and anger, she talks logistics.
You're trying to provoke a reaction from her. She's learned not to get drawn into these convos with you and so you keep trying to again make her do something: apologise? admit she was wrong? pay you for the house, the credit card bills, the rings, the filing fee.
here some hard truths NO EMAIL YOU SEND HER WILL MAKE HER DO THOSE THINGS.
Hi Heartbroke, thanks for the kind words. Pending my atty's chat with DA to see if the charges can be dismissed/expunged prior to the original date set by the court of 12/5 so I can be "freed" to seek other employment opportunities as I desire.
Mr.Bond thanks for your feedback. I am still working on my anger in the face of this nonsense. I was never angry prior to intertwining my life with this woman. My main anger point at this point is that despite all her wrongdoing, she won't admit or atone for it in any way. I am still working on this but am obviously flailing in this at present. She premeditated and consciously robbed me blind which is a very hard pill to swallow.
verabefierce--I was filing because I want this over/closed ASAP. Based on her financial raping of me through this exercise, the RIGHT thing to do would be for her to pay any fees related to Divorce point that she has continued pushing toward. It is obvious that right and wrong carries very little weight in these matters.
labug--The only reason I bring up the rings is that in our last conversation she gave her verbal word that she would return them. I see this in all the nonsense I've been put through over the last year as the least she could do. I have no legal basis for the rings as in the separation agreement that I should not have signed (she played my emotions to her advantage in November long before I found this site) and coerced me into signing an agreement that absolved her from all financial responsibility as well as protecting her affair partner from future potential alienation of affection action by me. Again this is a "right and wrong" point.
Brit -- Thank you, as you can see I started talking logistics, then she started down the road of sweeping the financial aspects of her behavior under the rug. She has yet to own up to any of these matters when they are quite cut and dried:
1) Fact--she started a match.com account and was talking to OM over a month before we physically separated. 2) Fact--she backdated the separation agreement specifically to cover her affair and to protect her and her affair partner. I singed on the initial agreement she put forward with this date before I knew anything about the OM. 3) Fact--AFTER her defined separation date she consciously ran up THOUSANDS of dollars on my credit AFTER she had opened her match.com account some other way via prepaid debit card or some other account I assume.
YES I WANT HER TO APOLOGIZE AND ADMIT SHE WAS WRONG. Why? Because it's the RIGHT thing to do. I owned up and atoned for my behavior, WHY CAN'T SHE?
I see your point that no email I send nor anything I do is going to make her do these things. Why? Because she is not the woman that I though she was. She has no conscious. Everything about her was sham, it is quite obvious now. She manipulated me in every way possible up the point she realized I hit my breaking point and wanted nothing further to do with her. Ultimately what I've wanted her to do is the right thing, which is unfortunately beyond her comprehension.
labug -- Thanks again, although I must disagree anything about her has been level-headed. Level headed would to be say, "Gee H, you know what, looking back I really shouldn't have burdened you with my childrens medical bills, school supplies, my personal items including charges on my weekend with OM while I was having an affair you knew nothing about. The RIGHT thing to do would have been to stop charging anything to your credit after I opened my match.com account. Here is a check for $xxx.xx to repay what I stole from you after the backdated separation agreement I defined so myself and my affair partner would be legally protected. And since I'm a philandering adulteress I will also return the engagement and wedding rings that you gave me as a symbol of your lifelong commitment to me, since I obviously didn't hold up to my part of the bargain."
I am continuing counseling, and know I am still harboring anger and resentment. I am still angry because I have been robbed. I guess I am asking a lot as if any bank robber got away their heist it is highly unlikely they would admit to it in writing. Perhaps she is thinking I am going to try to hold her legally accountable in some way, but I can't because she was on the accounts at the time because I was not yet aware of her affair...
W always told me ACTIONS speak louder than WORDS. My actions toward her and my stepkids were always proper and positive. My WORDS on a handful of occasions were verbally abusive toward her and I have done everything in my power to atone for that to no avail. In life there is right and wrong, I owned up to my wrongdoing and did everything to make it right. Any decent human being in her position SHOULD do the same. Unfortunately it has taken this long for me to realize that she isn't a decent human being, she is a person who is happy to use and take advantage of other people to get ahead in life. For this longest time I have tried to convince myself that this wasn't the case, but it is what is.
I'm still waiting to receive the agreement she is putting forward. I am hoping signing that and getting it executed ASAP will help me get some type of closure to this entire ordeal. You run into a lot of questionable people in life, and unfortunately I made the decision to marry one of them, and I have no one to blame for that but myself. The main thing that angers me at this point is my own stupidity. I ignored so many red flags and chose to continue engaging with this woman anyway. She is truly a master of her craft, and I am sure the same thing will happen to her affair partner/seemingly current host. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree right/Like mother like daughter? Her mother has been married 7 times...
Thanks again for everyones feedback and good luck in your respective sitch's! If anyone is thinking about getting married DON'T THINK TWICE, THINK FIVE TIMES! :-)
me 38 W 30 T 3 M in 05/2010 Separated 08/2011 Stephchildren (all hers) SS17, SS12, SD8 I filed 8/27, she countered I filed response 9/5 Anxiously waiting on the judge!
I think MWD asks the question, "Do you want to be right or do you want to be married?" You're pretty clear about where your preference lies.
Best of luck to you. I can't help thinking that all that anger isn't so good for your blood pressure, though. Sooner or later it's going to come back to bite you.
Broken - I am shocked to read the vehemency of your anger, after all this time in your sitch.
We are all angry,on some level, but we are all working towards NOT being consumed by it.
It is too easy to be consumed by this - and the power that you have given this woman - YOU have given it to her - she has not taken it from you. You have given her the power to make you feel the way you do.
I wanted to post to you and say that i was married once before and my ex walked away with another woman. I was so angry and so hurt and so betrayed - and I didn't even know it.
But do you know what happened? I carried that into my next relationship - and didn't even know it. During this last year after my BD, I have just now begun to see what the real effects of not forgiving and letting go really are. Staying with the negative emotions, actually GUARANTEES that your future relationships will not work.
You are so focused on how your w's relationship with OM is doomed to fail. Actually - the truth is that she may go on to have a successful r with him , and you will be the one who fails because of all the anger and resentment that you are still holding.
When you hold on to this - you are taking the easy way out - you are riding on the wave of anger, so that you don't have to face the real issues that you need to deal with in order to move forward in a positive way. You need to deal with your hurt, your pain, your agony - and anger is a GREAT way not to do that.
It's okay to be angry - but behind the anger is a lot of emotion that we feel helpless in the face of. it's too much to face - too painful - but when we do face it - we find that it makes us stronger.
In all of your post - I did not feel one tiny bit of compassion for anyone - including yourself.
You are human - and so is your wife - and everyone makes terrible mistakes. but if there is no forgiveness, everyone suffers including you.
This is the place to come and vent your anger, of course - but if you only come here to spew then you are not helping yourself at all and not taking advantage of what this board can truly teach you.
How do you see your life after this is all over as you mention? Do you think that once all the papers are signed and you get what you want and the D is through, that magically you will feel better?
Do you really think that if your w says sorry and atones in the way YOU think is the correct way, that magically all your pain and agony will simply disappear.
Sadly - you will still carry it - and it will eat you up for years and jade all the parts of your life that instead could be joyous and shining.
To truly take care of yourself - you have to be kind to yourself - and being kind to yourself is to work on and rid yourself of these incredibly heavy emotions that you are carrying within you.
Understand, that it is only your ego standing in the way of your healing - and that's the struggle for all of us. Our egos make us suffer, and in order to avoid the suffering we let our egos take over and parade around on our high horses angry as hell.
You're angry as hell - and it's time to do something about it - for your own sake. Use that enrgy you have to get to a positive place, rather than staying in this negative one which does you no good.
I think that you are so angry that you may not even be able to hear our words to you. I really hope that is not the case and that some of what people say to you here will strike a chord within you
Your real progress in life is dependent on YOU - not on what your wife is doing, and I hope that you can separate yourself enough from her, in order to move forward
I know you are in pain - as we all are - so know that our words come from a place where we know how scary and difficult it is to truly face ourselves. We are here to fully support you in your growth, be assured of that
How about some goal setting to help you get to where you are going? (hint hint)
It would surely help to turn your focus towards things that would be good for you, don't you think?
Hope to see you on the goals thread soon
take care zig
me 46 H 38 M10yrs T 11 S10 BD ow 8/11 h filed 9/25/12
"if i could define enlightenment briefly, i would say it is the quiet acceptance of what is"
You are both right. I need to get my anger and resentment under control. It has been cyclical for me, and the final dotting of the I's and realizing the ridiculously bad choices and investment that I made in this relationship made all my anger come to a head this week. I am happy to say I am on a positive vibe for now though since she actually did follow through with the papers and I have executed them so the final thing that needs to happen is for the judge to sign which I will be extremely happy about!
I sent W the following email with my response as an attachment, not contesting anything:
---------------------------------------------------------------- Here is my response to the divorce petition:
I have sent the original asking that it be filed to the X County Clerk of Superior Court XXX Address
I'm going to leave the rest of this up to your conscious and what you think is right to do because none of it is worth fighting over. You verbally stated within the last month that you would give me the rings back if I made this easy and you had no legal fees. I held up to my end of the bargain.
I'll also leave it up to you to consider the charges that you chose to continue to run up on my credit prior to my finding out about your behavior. Do you think it is fair that I burden your expenses that you charged to me prior to finding out what you were doing behind my back? The only reason you had access to my accounts during that time period was because you were hiding your elicit behavior, and you know this. I have legal grounds to pursue you for this but have given up those rights based on the attached document. How to deal with this is also up to your conscious to process.
We spent some good times together over the holidays. In May you came to me for support when your Sister was on her death bed and I proved my unconditional love for you and your family then as I have over the past year. I have done nothing but positive things for you and the children in the face of the way you have treated me. I had to take possession of the car for liability reasons based on your choices in how you chose to treat me financially in the past year. Your children have college savings accounts because of me. I made mistakes and tried to atone for those to no avail, and you know in your heart everything that I have done for you since the day that I met you. It is truly sad that it comes down to this.
So as I have done for our entire relationship, attached is what you wanted and I hope it makes you happy. For the last time I ask you to please keep your word and do the right thing W. ----------------------------------------------------------------
Given the fact that she cannot be trusted and her word is worth nothing, I am certain that she won't keep her word and give the rings back. In all likelihood this is the last communication I will have her. There is nothing more to think about or process. When push came to shove she is more of a con artist than a wife, I let my emotions override my logical brain over the past year and it has cost me dearly.
I think back to the day that I uncovered her affair. I saved and locally cached all evidence of it which would have been indisputable in court. Instead of bringing this up with her of confronting the OM in any way I should have just held onto this data and authored a FAIR separation agreement to my wife and got that executed, then dropped an alienation of affection lawsuit on the OM. Oh how things would be different if that were the case and hindsight were 20/20... That would have avoided all of the financial hits I took which are the fuel for my resentment and anger.
I know I need to get the anger and negative feelings out of my system. Now that this is finally OVER I feel it is going to be much easier to do this. I think this may be different for men and women. Now that this is truly over and I know that dealing with this woman in any way going forward is a bad idea, I can finally move one. Don't know why it took me so long to draw this conclusion or a legal paperwork exercise to get here, but now that everything is signed I feel much better than I have in some time.
So Zig, my goal in short is to put this situation out of my mind. Life has been great and moving forward otherwise. Basically the interactions that I had with her are what always set me off, and there shouldn't be any more of those. I anxiously await the divorce decree with the judges signature on it hopefully sooner than later.
Still need to work on forgiveness but for all practical purposes she is dead to me. The woman I fell in love with is no more and in all likelihood never existed. She worked me over to improve her standing in life. She got full custody of her kids, got out of bankruptcy, and got 22k of bodywork that enabled her affair with a more lucrative financial host all because of my actions, then left holding the bag for all the bills. Well played I guess... lol
Lesson learned and life goes on, be extremely careful who you trust. It is becoming readily apparent she is never going to own up to her behavior much less apologize or try to make it right. StubbornDyke and Zig you are right the anger only hurts me and I am going to work on squashing it. I know I will cringe every month when I pay my bills until I clean up this mess, but hey it's only money right, that doesn't make anybody happy, with the exception of my STBX apparently...
Thank you both so much for your time and feedback StubbornDyke and Zig I greatly appreciate it! Good luck to you and everyone in your respective sitch's!
me 38 W 30 T 3 M in 05/2010 Separated 08/2011 Stephchildren (all hers) SS17, SS12, SD8 I filed 8/27, she countered I filed response 9/5 Anxiously waiting on the judge!
doing a quick drive by to say you re write history. She didn't come to you during the sister in the hospital issues. She told you in a factual/logistical way and you kept trying to impose yourself into the situation. You wanted nothing more to be there for her and she didn't want you to be. Makes me wonder how much else you rewrote in your mind.
I really hope you work through all this....but it doesn't seem like you want to.
and this is disgusting for a few reasons that you won't understand:
Quote:
got 22k of bodywork that enabled her affair with a more lucrative financial host all because of my actions,
Sorry, broken - you cannot thank me for something that you didn't take from me or from anyone else, as far as i can see.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you are really really hurting and sort of blind right now to where you are in your mind
hurt and fear do terrible terrible things to people - well, our WAS's are shining examples of that.
but i did want to mention something that really sticks out for me here - your going on and on about unconditional love - you really mention it a lot, and i do wonder if you have any idea what it means to love unconditionally.
I really do hope that what you write here is just "letting out your frustrations" because if that's any indication of the way you might be interacting with the people in your life - then you do have some work to do on yourself.
i could barely read your post, there was so much negativity in there. as for the letter to your wife - it might do you more good to send it to yourself. if you want her to do certain things - like "do the right thing" - then maybe you can expect the same from yourself first.
doing the right thing for you would probably mean calming down and being nicer all around -
i have found that whenever i am ready to point the finger at my h, guess what - i'm doing something similar on some level.
i really do wish you luck, broken - the luck that maybe by chance you will wake up to where you really are - and be able to heal and nurture the person who is really there underneath all that pain
zig
me 46 H 38 M10yrs T 11 S10 BD ow 8/11 h filed 9/25/12
"if i could define enlightenment briefly, i would say it is the quiet acceptance of what is"
to help you get to where you are going?