Wow, that sounded like a really helpful meeting! I would put H and I in between Level 1 and 2. I am sorry you are so tired, hope you get some good rest.
I just set up an appointment for Monday... with a L -- it's via a referral from my EAP, under which the first 30-minute session is no charge. I have no intention of pursuing any action at this time. I just need to know what my legal standing is in this separation and what might eventually lead into a D.
If W knew, she'd immediately think the worse. I really don't want to do this, or to have to do this. But even my MC has said it is a good idea in my case. W's behavior is very threatening right now (the continual insistence on the SA, the threats to my right to see my kids, the actions in bad faith regarding the MC, etc.), and while I really hope this might just be a passing phase, I have to think about protecting myself -- for (oddly enough) both our sakes and that of our children.
This is yet another event in my life that I never would have thought would ever have come to pass.
Last evening, I stopped by the house to pick up some important mail sent there by the bank (I know I gave them the new address; grrrrr) on my way to my Bible Studies class. W was not there yet, but MIL was there with my 2 S's. I visited with the boys for a little while and then proceeded to leave for the church. S6 complained sadly about me having to leave while S2 started crying out loud, saying "No, no, Daddy."
This has been happening a lot, the boys getting upset at my leaving the house again. And it really tears at me every time. Oh, I manage to put on an upbeat, cheerful attitude and tell them I will see them real soon. I say my goodbyes and good nights with as much peace and calm as I can muster. But inside I am dieing, as usual, trying to keep up this facade, supposedly for the sake of our S's, but more for W so she feels less guilt.
The MIL is there the whole time I'm trying to ease myself out of the premises saying banal crap like, "Oh, he'll be just fine two minutes after you're gone." referring to S2. "He does this all the time. S2 doesn't like to see anyone leave; he does it for everyone." MIL has used words to this effect for several visits now.
It struck me that these are words very similar to what W has been using of late. It is painfully obvious they've been coaching one another (I'm not sure which of them is the ring leader in this) on how to downplay these emotional outcrys from my S's.
God help me, I am really beginning to downright despise my MIL. And as this progresses, I am feeling less and less positively for W too. But then, that's probably their objective.
Maybe those negative feelings will help you detach?
It sounds like MIL and W are reading the same code book, the "your kid isn't upset about his parents, he is just a normal kid". UGH!! I can see why you are feeling so negative towards them, that's for sure.
I know all about the dying inside, happy outside thing. It kills me too, but we do it for them.
ahhhh MIL, thank goodness I don't have to deal with mine.. my H doesn't speak to his mother.. she' s a very lost soul..
Anyways, Family has a way of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. I understand completley why you are feeling this way.. don't worry, its understandable. I just hope that your W comes to her senses and doesn't let her mother get in the middle.
take care..
TAL
me: 37 H: 44 Married for 18 years this june S7 S3 porn issues, and much more... since 7/06
Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.
Thanks for the support and encouragement, LWB and TAL.
My MIL is a three-time champion WAW-MLC, and I think she now sees it as her current mission in life to "help" her daughter (my W) make it into the 2008 Divorce Olympics.
Seriously, I really feel sorry for MIL's 2cnd H -- the poor man literally died of a broken heart just two years later after she ran off with H #3 (okay, so I hear he took up drinking again and that was the contributing factor, but he was way too young to go when he did (late 50's)).
To see my W now, after what she said years ago when she and I were dating, just baffles me. W had made me promise her that I would never let her become like her mother. I fear I have really failed her in that.
Oh geesh, that's all your W needs in her corner, someone to 'feed' her selfishness. No wonder you harbor bitterness towards MIL. Poor H #2. WOW. She's a maneater.
I really used to pity my MIL (still do). Granted, a lot of the misery she's had in her life is because of her own poor choices in life, H #3 turned out to be pretty abusive, which no one should have to suffer. But I resent her attempts to pass on her arrogant lack of judgement and toxic tendencies to my W.
I wrote another letter to W (one I have no intention of giving her, but wrote it as a form of catharsis.) I need to post some of these here for journaling purposes. Here's today's letter:
Quote:
W,
I am writing this letter after more reflection on the problems in our marriage. It has now been almost 3 months since we separated, and while it was not by my choice, it has given me a lot of free time to read, talk to others and to think very heavily about our situation.
I want you to know that I feel I am now on the right path in life, or at the very least that I recognize that is a far better path than the one we were on up until you "dropped the bomb" on me in June. I am trying to examine what happened to us and to truly learn from my mistakes. (And they were grave mistakes indeed.) I am working to fix those flaws in me that allowed this to happen. I have made fundamental changes to the way I approach life now, such that I will be more in touch with my inner self more and in so doing avoid the severe depression that has cost me/us so much. I have reordered the priorities of my life to what is spiritually sound and healthy. I now place my relationship with God above everything and then my family.
This is still a journey, and I have not fully found the person I am meant to be. But I feel confident that with God's help I will continue to grow.
You continue to take credit for this change in me. You continue to attribute my awakening to your actions to end our marriage, and by extension to your leaving me for someone else. Forgive me for saying this, but that is utter B-S. Your actions certainly helped to precipitate my coming out of my depressive fog, but I resent the fact that you are trying to justify your infidelity as something that might have "helped" me come to my senses. Thanks, but no thanks. I don't need such "help".
Furthermore, you want to take credit for something that I beleive belongs entirely to God. God is the one who woke me up, not you. Your actions and your sins are your own. God did not want you to break your vows and to cast your husband aside for another man. But because he has given us free will, he did not stop you. What He did do was to use your transgressions to help splash cold water on me. It is just like what God did with the sin of David and Bathsheba; despite their sinful act for which God was extremely upset with David, God brought forth Solomon as something good from that union. (Of course the story goes on to say that the seeds from that sin still took root and David ended up continually paying for it, especially with his son Absalom.)
So I thank God for using your unwise choices as a means to wake me up from that which was killing my soul.
You know what though? There's more. You compounded the problem in running away from yourself and your marriage by allowing yourself to get emotionally involved with another man. You see, if we are to take your word that you had intended to leave me anyway, then you would have at least been on your own voyage of self-discovery. You would have continued to find out who you are and who you are becoming. Thus the time apart from me in our separation would have truly benefitted you and helped promote your personal growth. Even if it meant you were to grow and become someone to whom marriage to me was still over, I could more easily accept that.
But the minute you entered into a new relationship, you froze your growing process. You stopped looking at yourself to see what needed to be fixed and improved upon. You stopped looking at your own contribution to the destruction of our marriage and thus stopped trying to learn from it. No, now you have someone else to tell you everything you want to hear. Someone to say you are perfect and wonderful just as you are this very moment, frozen in the middle of your development. So now you see no reason to change, to grow, to learn. No, on the contrary, someone else validates you just as you are: incomplete.
So, as it turns out, our separation has had no positive benefit for you ...other than getting me out of your hair so you can continue to have your affair. And you no longer recognize your half of the responsibility in the failure of our marriage -- in your eyes, it's all my problem now. While I would gladly take all of the blame for this if it would truly help you, I know it would not, in fact it would only harm you more.
That is why, until you can truly accept and own your failings, you are doomed to make the same mistakes over and over.
Our old marriage is over. Our old relationship is gone. We will never get that back. But given how it devolved, and how much pain we caused each other at its end, it is just as well. I don't want to go back. At the most, I would want the two of us to start over. To pick up where we were before our old marriage and start afresh with a new relationship together. To promise to continue to grow along parallel tracks, in respect and love for each other.
But while you are frozen in amber by this relationship with this other person, I feel that you have lost your momentum and the drive to move forward, and I am leaving you behind. All I see is stagnation for you, pulled over on the shoulder of this road of life. All I see is repetition of old habits, old mistakes, including mistakes by you that echo those made by others in your family. That's the view I see in my rear view mirror. And I am so very sorry for you.
I continue to pray for you every day, often several times a day. I pray to God that you now wake from your own fog.
