Hello

[714Dad]

let me clarify. rereading my post makes me think i was drunk.

okay, so saturday was my day with the girls. i planned a small dinner with some of her friends and my family that couldn't go to the 'real' party on sunday.

i was specific to call it a dinner and not a party. one of my friends brought a tiny cake for D6 and so we did have a party of sorts. 7 kids counting my D3 and D6. Two kids only showed up at the end.

we had hot dogs and beans and watermelon. i didn't give her any of 'my' presents as i was saving them for the official sunday party.

so yeah. my W called it a party and D6 even told her it was a dinner, not a party. W was still furious and the hate in her eyes was just so hard to see.

She's walking through the house looking at how i have their art up, or how it's clean, or how there's fresh paint on things, and she is all teary. She sees the stars on the ceiling and is just livid. she acts excited with the girls but just glares at me or says, "I hate you."

and if I didn't mention it D3 was very clingy and didn't want me to leave this morning when i dropped her off. she was very upset and wanted to stay with me. it's so hard to do this.

how can somebody get to the point in a low conflict marriage of being so full of resentment and anger that they will rend apart a healthy family to 'follow their career' or 'be independent'?

how can she feel so much dislike for me to do this to our family? a family that she always seemed to want?

two healthy, amazing, beautiful smart children. coming home to dinner being done, laundry done, car maintenance done, house projects worked on, etc. etc.

i used to make us all lunch and meet her at a park with the girls so she could see them and play with them in the middle of the day.

who is this person that i thought i knew that is now so different and so alien?

still so beautiful and smart and incredible to me.

why can't i just hate her and be done with it?

[bravo61]

Honestly it all boils down to selfishness and unmet expectations. I think that's what is so hard for many of us LBS. We better ourselves & some part of us begins to "expect" that to make them come around. & then the bitterness sets in. Just like love bitterness & resentment is a choice. A choice that all WAS cling to to justify their actions.

[714Dad]

I mentioned it previously, but the thing that is so doubly frustrating is how for at least a year if not two she would constantly tell me that i had to choose to be happy, that no one else could do it but me.

Now she is so angry and bitter toward me. At the beginning of June we were talking about camping. Now she hates me. It's just so hard to fathom.

I was really sick in April for almost three weeks. toward the end she was sitting next to me on the floor and i was weakly joking with her trying to cheer her up as she sobbed about not wanting to lose me.

Now I feel like I have whiplash.

I agree that I deep down feel that she should come around. I'm not bitter yet I don't think. I still feel unconditional love for her. I still just want her to be happy. But I am frustrated and really hurt that she went this route at all.

As I said, a low conflict marriage, same philosophy of education and most of life, same religion, agree on ways of raising children, agree mostly politically, good physical chemistry, happy healthy children - and she wants to "focus on my career. ILYBNILWY. I want to be on my own."

i'm a broken record, but i just still can't get over it. incredulous is the only word i have for it.

two children cut away from a parent for half the year. no more teamwork. no more holidays. no more of what life is - being around other people and family and love and warmth.

why did she even marry me if she even entertained this idea?

all rhetorical. just harping. still not even an month and a half in. and seeing her yesterday was just too much.

[PigPen]

Just caught up a bit on your situation 714, that's brutal. A lot of these situations don't make sense, and often times that's the worst part.

Zeus told me early on that I "may" get the truth in two or three years from now. I still don't believe it.

We've got to try to find peace within ourselves despite the stories we're being told, and the horror that we have to live through. It [censored]. It really really [censored].

I'm sorry for what you're going through and feel your pain my friend. Keep taking it one day at a time.

My heart goes out to you.

PP

[714Dad]

And a quick thing i've been wondering.

It seems like my 180s (being calm, validating, being more open and affirming, etc.) seem to make her angry.

i'm not going to stop doing them because i want to be calm and nice to be around.

anyone have experience with this or an idea as to what it might mean?

it's really frustrating and confusing to validate and be yelled at for 'telling me how i feel.' or staying calm and being yelled at for being calm.

just wondering.

[Vanilla]

Yes, I do. In my case it was because my WH wanted control in the sitch so things went his way. Once he sensed he was losing control then he seethed. He sensed I was making my own way, decisions, was growing developing then he spewed which escalated to ranting.

However being invalidating, excitable, etc made things even worse. I was button pushed for a long time, so calm cool collected firm and validating was the best option for me and I felt best with that.

You can measure different strategies by counting the spews and rants. The strategy that minimises or eliminates probably hasn't been invented yet. It is still in design and if it went into production, likely out of date.

Just do the best you can, this is WW issue. Try recording it and keep details in case it's needed.

Continue to detach, your doing just great.

V

[714Dad]

My IC mentioned this idea V.

That because I'm not fighting with her and getting into my corner if you will, she doesn't know what to do other than to get more and more upset and hope that that will bring me out to fight. then she will be justified in her decision to leave.

It's probably increasingly frustrating for her because she feels that's the way the interaction needs to take place and that even now she's having to do all the work in the relationship.

I have hope, but it's so thin and fragile. and when i see her or can't get my mind away from her it's just incapacitating.

a year of these feelings? maybe two? my God. i want the jawbone of an ass and i want to go into some "divorce is totally normal and happy tralalala" convention and go all old testament on them.

[714Dad]

Just had mediation number 2.

My wife wants to go to 60/40 custody in her favor. she says i'm not in a mental state to take care of the girls.

I was really afraid of this.

she has text transcripts in which i complained a lot about how difficult it was and how tiring and how i couldn't do it by myself (meaning all the bills, housework, cars, yardwork, etc.).

God knows what else i said, and rereading them is going to be torture.

so now i'm a lot more worried about this.

[CaliGuy]

714

You IC is pretty much right there with that assesment ... I would also toss in that being angry with you and baiting you into a conflict/fight also helps her out with her guilt. I mean who would leave a good guy? So easier to paint you up as an Ahole right?

As far as Custody .. yeah she will want that in order to benefit financially. Mine pulled that, even wanted a 75/25 till I too countered with the same 75/25 in my favor and suggested I could easily spill the beans on the 'suicide' threats .... (was just a bluff to get her to back WAY off on anything but a 50-50)

That being said ... she will use whatever she has to try and 'win' here ... she is not your friend right now. Those transcripts do not mean as much as you think ... just protect yourself ... get counsel from a L ... you can still have a L in mediation.

Regardless

[714Dad]

this just hit me brutally.

this idea that i was negligent towards the girls or that i would be an unfit parent. it's like the one thing that just destroys me.

my girls never even got a sunburn when i was watching them. we always had snacks at the park. they made new friends and socialized.

but she's saying she came home from work and found me drunk and the girls on the couch. she did come home once and i was drunk (from having been depressed over her) but the girls were at my parent's house. i would have never have done that otherwise. i don't even drink until 5pm.

this implication of me being a bad father, and her sitting there so coldly and looking so at ease, is just unbearable. she's picking up her phone and smiling at something. she wants to be bought out of her half of the house right away, etc.

who is this woman i married? how could me yelling at her (after a few days of being down) cause her to want to cut apart everything we have and everything we've built?

after a year of love and reconciliation. after our relationship finally becoming what it was always supposed to be?