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I am no vet, but I read ohope in that conversation.Her words are nor perfect. Her sentiments neither. I think deep down both of you prefer to stay together. You are right to not want that without the right conditions and commitment from her.

Sandi can hit me with a 2x4 if she disagrees, but maybe your actions/reactions and interactions contributed to her not following the path you wanted. I am not putting the blame on you, but maybe you prevented conditions being ideal/more suited to her putting in the effort..

That being said, all along she has made choices and she is not 100% committed. Maybe no matter what you did/do the timing was/is not right for her.

I urge you to work on getting passed your anger and resentment for your sake. It will poison you and counteract all the good work that you have done.. I understand those feelings and they are legitimate but going forward, even alone you should work through them.

Lastly it must feel good to communicate without filtering your words/thoughts. Maybe your words will filter through her fog and she will really hear you and realise your truth. But do not count on that. She is clinging to her truth, for now. As an outsider I can.see how both of ye could be right in your viewpoint, though for the record that does not justify an A....for me.

Your W plays down the affair. She is still hurt and protecting herself. She is not in s place where she can fully commit right NOW. Maybe neither of you are. Space and time are what both of you need. Don't burn your bridges. Maybe you will choose to never recross that bridge and maybe you will never even pass by that bridge,but just in case be mindful to not burn it!

Best wishes


R 25 years
M 14 years
S11 & S13
Working on it alone since Oct 2014
M in trouble a lot earlier (~2 years)
Feb 2016. 1st R chat in a yr.
Next R chat Aug'17
Still together
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I have no idea what you hoped to accomplish with that exchange. It doesn't show anything about trying to talk sense into anyone. What it shows is that if you start a conversation with a long-winded statement that talks down to the person you are communicating with, they will not be receptive to hearing what you are saying.

Neither of you seems to want a divorce, but at the moment you don't want to stay married enough to tolerate her continued participation in FF, and she doesn't want to stay married enou to quit FF.

Continuing to engage in these kind of exchanges is doing no good. It makes it less likely she would give up FF to stay with you.

Just leave.

Maybe the separation will lead one or both of you to new insights, but at the very least it will stop exchanges like this.


Me: 44
H: 44
Kids: 20, 16, 16, and 10
Together/Married: 22 years
H announced he was emotionally detached and considering D: 4/4/16
H announced he is going to try to stay and reconnect: 5/1/16
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Maybe this was just something you needed to get off your chest. IDK.

But it was not you expressing you wanted to save your M. You told her you have no love for her, only anger. dropping the FF for a man who says he doesn't even love her certainly isn't going to happen.

your conversation was a desperate attempt at trying to get her to admit all her wrong and show major remorse . I had a whole bunch of them. You know what they got me? More hurt, anger, and heartache.

I had to learn to live with never getting the apology or remorse I felt I deserved. Until I learned to love with that, I was anger and bitter. When I let all of that go, I found peace.

I hope you find peace in your heart soon. For yourself. There is no one who can give you that except yourself.

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Also, I've been seeing for years on these boards a recurring theme......

wAS has complaints about M. Too much drinking, no attention , not being present. All very valid complaints lots of the time. It takes a lot to keep a M together..... LBS decides those complaints were valid and makes those changes.

LBS gets upset that those changes aren't immediately accepted with open arms. Because they usually aren't. Then there's the whole " I did what you asked, what's the problem?"

Unfortunately, damage done doesn't tAke a few months to undo. Changes take a long time to be trusted. This process is a rough one. LBS sometimes need to be patient beyond where humanly possible sometimes .

your dialogue had a lot to do with " well, I changed, you didn't see it" you wanted it to be accepted as soon as you were ready to show it.

It just doesn't work that way. Which is why piecing is the hardest part.

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Originally Posted By: roist

Sandi can hit me with a 2x4 if she disagrees, but maybe your actions/reactions and interactions contributed to her not following the path you wanted. I am not putting the blame on you, but maybe you prevented conditions being ideal/more suited to her putting in the effort..

I think you are right in this, I think my inability to detach before we started trying to piece (partially due to how fast piecing seemed to occur), caused me to put extra pressure on her. Not much I can do about that now, but if I was able to do it over, I think I would have gone a lot slower in trying to rebuild and spent more time allowing us to deal with our individual feelings. But with that said, I don’t think anything would have worked without her going NC, I mean she claimed the whole time she didn’t care about him, talk to him or anything, but she went right back to him when we agreed to a Monogamous Separation (or maybe before then, I don’t know)
Originally Posted By: roist

Don't burn your bridges. Maybe you will choose to never recross that bridge and maybe you will never even pass by that bridge,but just in case be mindful to not burn it!

This is good advice, and definitely worth encouraging, thank you.
Originally Posted By: Rose888
I have no idea what you hoped to accomplish with that exchange. It doesn't show anything about trying to talk sense into anyone.
Originally Posted By: Coconut
ME:
My personal belief (not saying I'm right just what I think) is that the emotional connection (or possibly mid life crises) was already happening, he was perusing you and you loved the attention, which is why I noticed a difference in you.. Then when I started showing you attention you felt guilty because you saw that I could change and we could work things out, but you wanted the high you got from him and the firefighting... You didn't want to stop the high, so you pushed me away thinking I wouldn't go anywhere and escalated the affair to increase the high.
And I'm not the only one that saw you change, I believe others asked you about what was going on with you
WW - No one has said anything to me about "Changes" they see in me. They've told you because everyone is trying come up with reasons for why we are going through this.
ME: So your BFF didn't ask you if there was someone at the station because u were acting weird
Or your mom didn't tell you she thought you might be going through a mid life crises
All before anyone knew about the affair

This was me trying to get her to see that she changed since she started the affair; she keeps claiming that the only changes are her getting in great shape and feeling good about herself and doesn’t think that she became a crappy mother or friend. Her Mom and BFF both addressed her changes before anyone knew about the A, and I was trying to get her to recognize that if the 2 closes people in her life saw it, then it was likely that she had (but she didn’t address).
Originally Posted By: Rose888
What it shows is that if you start a conversation with a long-winded statement that talks down to the person you are communicating with, they will not be receptive to hearing what you are saying.

I was tired of her always saying it was a mistake, saw the article, thought it was a perfect way to say what I had tried but couldn’t find the right words, so I shared it. It was not meant to open a conversation, it was just me sharing what I felt was the perfect explanation as to why it was not a mistake, but so much more.

Originally Posted By: Rose888
Neither of you seems to want a divorce, but at the moment you don't want to stay married enough to tolerate her continued participation in FF, and she doesn't want to stay married enou to quit FF.

I went the route of trying to make it work without her going NC, that was a bust and I won’t make that mistake again… NC or bust.

Originally Posted By: Rose888
Continuing to engage in these kind of exchanges is doing no good. It makes it less likely she would give up FF to stay with you.

Agreed

Originally Posted By: Ginger1
Maybe this was just something you needed to get off your chest. IDK.
But it was not you expressing you wanted to save your M. You told her you have no love for her, only anger. dropping the FF for a man who says he doesn't even love her certainly isn't going to happen.

I’m’ past trying to save my M, I am only trying to figure out how to lose the anger. I realize those types of communications don’t help with that.

Originally Posted By: Ginger1
your conversation was a desperate attempt at trying to get her to admit all her wrong and show major remorse . I had a whole bunch of them. You know what they got me? More hurt, anger, and heartache.
I had to learn to live with never getting the apology or remorse I felt I deserved. Until I learned to love with that, I was anger and bitter. When I let all of that go, I found peace.

Wasn’t so much trying to get her to admit it, and definitely didn’t expect to see major remorse, I was just trying to get her to see it… and Yes, I know that I can’t convince her with logic. I will say though, that she does seem to be getting back to her old self with our S and some other things, but her logical processing of what has occurred and how it has affected soooo many people in her life still seems to be lacking. She still wants to believe that what I did had a big part in why we are getting divorced, even though she never seemed, acted or mentioned being sad/lonely/upset about how I was. In fact, I got a facebook memory yesterday that she sent me last August saying that I was the best husband she could ever imagine, I was her best friend and she will love me forever.. (this was 1 ½ years after she apparently started being unhappy). BTW, anyone have any idea how to block facebook memories?
Originally Posted By: Ginger1
I hope you find peace in your heart soon. For yourself. There is no one who can give you that except yourself.

I agree with having to let go of the anger, resentment etc. to find peace, that is what I’m working on now. I’m glad you’ve found your way there.
Originally Posted By: Ginger1
Also, I've been seeing for years on these boards a recurring theme......
wAS has complaints about M. Too much drinking, no attention , not being present. All very valid complaints lots of the time. It takes a lot to keep a M together..... LBS decides those complaints were valid and makes those changes.
LBS gets upset that those changes aren't immediately accepted with open arms. Because they usually aren't. Then there's the whole " I did what you asked, what's the problem?"
Unfortunately, damage done doesn't tAke a few months to undo. Changes take a long time to be trusted. This process is a rough one. LBS sometimes need to be patient beyond where humanly possible sometimes.
your dialogue had a lot to do with " well, I changed, you didn't see it" you wanted it to be accepted as soon as you were ready to show it.

She saw the changes I made immediately, she has told me so, of course with the standard but I didn’t believe they were for real or going to last.
I get that, no problem, gonna take time to prove I’ve changed. BUT, she told me and never changed her story that she started the AFFAIR after I made the changes, so when she turned it around and said that she had the affair because she wasn’t getting any affection from me I had to call her out. We all know how it works, you get the ILYBNILWY speech and immediately go the exact opposite way and push them away with all the attention you want to shower on them, but don’t tell me you weren’t getting the attention when you started the affair.


M - 9 1/2 years
5/5/16 - Bomb drop - 3 week EA
10/31/16 - We sold house
01/10/18 - D Finalized
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btw, I've been doing really well for the last few days, even the day we had that text communication I was doing fine. I find myself looking more and more forward to moving to the country and looking forward to what I imagine my life will be.

also, just wanted to share that although we are still in the same house, we barely see each other, some days I don't see her at all and other days I see her at most 30 mins in a day (generally when one of us is coming or going from the house). But just in case, I have now moved almost all of my stuff, except for furniture that needs to stay for showing the house and clothes that I wear frequently, so I am able to completely move out of the house easily within a few hours if needed.


M - 9 1/2 years
5/5/16 - Bomb drop - 3 week EA
10/31/16 - We sold house
01/10/18 - D Finalized
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Originally Posted By: Coconut


I just want to make sure that this is the path you want to go down before I sign the agreement, by path I mean Divorce. It would take a lot from each of us to make us work, and a long time to get there, but I am willing to do whatever I can to save our marriage and be happy together.



???? I am a little confused when you say you don't want to save the M.

I can imagine she might be a little confused when you say you have no love for her, only anger, yet at the same time you said the above.

Look, I feel for you. It's crappy. You say you don't want her to admit she was wrong, you want her to see what she's done. You want her to feel bad. It's all semantics. you want to get her to see the light, but you do not hold that power. It's all up to her, and from experience, trying to get them to see that makes them blame you more. It's not your job to do.

I know you want to be able to say you did everything you could. But I think you just need to leave well enough alone now and not try to get her to see the light. It causes you anger and frustration. let her go. If she figures it out, she will do it in her own time. And yeah, maybe it will be too late then, but you can't change the process.

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I think I said I'm past trying to save the M... I meant that I'm not actively trying to save my marriage, and I don't sit around trying to figure out how I might be able to. Now if she came to me and said I quit the fire department, I can't believe what I've done to our family and I'm willing to do whatever needs to be done to be happily M to you, then I would do whatever I could/needed to save the M, but I'm past thinking that might ever happen.

What I focus on now is what I need to do in ending the marriage, to prepare myself for post D life..


M - 9 1/2 years
5/5/16 - Bomb drop - 3 week EA
10/31/16 - We sold house
01/10/18 - D Finalized
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Originally Posted By: Coconut
What I focus on now is what I need to do in ending the marriage, to prepare myself for post D life...


Coconut,

I've got about two weeks of married life to go, and after that, I'm hoping for a nice long period of peace and tranquility with my sons. I already feel the stress melting away.

But I still haven't figured out what I want to do with the white columns on my front porch. Faux marble? Fantasy marble? That's driving me nuts for sure.

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Hey Coconut,

I have been following along your thread for sometime, just wasn't in a place to post because of some IRL challenges such as my mother having an heart attack which required surgery and recently my 88-year old grandmother fell that entailed a visit to the ER and stitching her up.

Have been away from my own home for 10 days because of mom and Grandma.

When things get a bit more settled in the next two weeks, I will be back and post a bit more regularly.

My thoughts are still with you.....

((((Coconut))))

How are you today by the way? smile

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