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Re: doodler - what am I trying to accomplish

That's just it, I actually don't know...maybe it's just that I'm looking for some sort of validation to why all this happened. I'm sure a portion of being here is to share what exactly NOT to do after your W walks out. And I'd say I'm mostly here just to talk to people about it...how they moved on...what they did to make the pain of this go away and at least lessen somewhat.

Just as an FYI, having a new relationship doesn't exactly lessen the pain of losing the old one...it's just a different thing. Part of me also wants to be here to help clear up and learn about the things I did wrong in my M so that I don't screw up another one.

So in other words, I have no clue what my goals for being here are right now. It's likely a lot of things.


ME-37 W-34 T-8 M-4
ILYBNILWY BD: 8-31-2015
EA suspected - 11/1/15
PA confirmed - 1/22/16
W files for D - 2/4/16
D - 8/9/16
Joined: Sep 2016
Posts: 20
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Re: Andrew P - Depression

I'm pretty xW was definitely depressed. Right before this all happened, she actually started looking for another job claiming that "working at a start up is more fun". When we were in counseling, she admitted that the majority of her social life was in response to "not having to deal with herself". But of course when asked about that, she'd bottle up immediately.

The real key for me and her work/social life was that there was definitely a real turning point between it being work...and it being her only point of origin for any activities. She pretty much dropped all interaction with her outside friends and started attending things she really didn't have to. The other big thing for me is purely the age thing. These people are in their early to mid-20's and up until the point when her social life really changed, she was acting for all intents and purposes as the 34 year old she was.

Thanks for the advice about looking in the mirror. I don't like who I am right now, I hate that I'm still replaying this over and over again just to find some sort of answer. And perhaps that's the real reason I'm here...to get some support to GAL and move on from this.


ME-37 W-34 T-8 M-4
ILYBNILWY BD: 8-31-2015
EA suspected - 11/1/15
PA confirmed - 1/22/16
W files for D - 2/4/16
D - 8/9/16
Joined: Sep 2016
Posts: 20
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Re: ForGump - Falling in Love

I don't know. For me it took awhile...after a few months, I guess I just assumed that we'd keep dating and get married. I'm definitely not the romantic type and I definitely just let things flow where they might. I loved her b/c she was so even keeled and positive in literally every situation. Nothing seemed to get her too high, or too low...although I've since learned the opposite was true, she just bottled it all up and staying "even" was her way of coping with adversity.

I "think" she loved me b/c of my propensity to "call it how it is", that I literally would "do anything for her"...and probably for my strong convictions in what I believed in.

What's so weird for me was that she's absolutely NOT intense on the surface at ALL. Turns out she was incredibly intense underneath the whole time, but just held it in. Now that I look back on this, her Dad's nervous breakdown didn't seem to upset or affect her at all...if anything she seemed kind of annoyed by the whole process. Her grandmother died a couple of months ago too...and in the months leading up, it just seemed like both the xW and her mom wanted it to be over, rather than dealing w/ her sickness. Still weirds me out.


ME-37 W-34 T-8 M-4
ILYBNILWY BD: 8-31-2015
EA suspected - 11/1/15
PA confirmed - 1/22/16
W files for D - 2/4/16
D - 8/9/16
Joined: Jul 2016
Posts: 1,387
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cskone--

Not sure what to say about your W. Sounds like she exerted a lot of self-control, maybe too much, over the years, and then the dam broke.

About your willingness to do anything -- I was like that too. That can lead to co-dependency type of mindset. I think it's important to find yourself during this crisis. Who are you. What are your values and principles. What do you want.

Be a great man -- someone worthy of your W to return to, should she choose to, or another woman to be drawn to.


Me: 50, MLC/WW 45
Young kids
Nov 2015: BD1
Apr 2016: BD2
Jan 2017: W filed
Feb 2017: D final
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Re: ForGump

There's a whole other thing that I somehow forgot. She dated women exclusively from the age of 20-25 and was in relationships with them since early HS. I've never quite figured out if any of that plays any sort of role, but it seems like it might (?).


ME-37 W-34 T-8 M-4
ILYBNILWY BD: 8-31-2015
EA suspected - 11/1/15
PA confirmed - 1/22/16
W files for D - 2/4/16
D - 8/9/16
Joined: Sep 2016
Posts: 20
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So,

Still new here but wanted to share my experiences going through the collaborative divorce process.

The xW and I separated about a year ago, but attempted to work on things...I got extremely frustrated with the process (she was possibly going through MLC and didn't know about DB'ing) and suggested that we go see a lawyer together after a particularly nasty fight last Dec. The good (?) thing was her company offered insurance for legal affairs and she signed up for it and we made an appointment.

I should say that although I didn't want this under any circumstances, I was caving to her thinking that if I did what she wanted, it would "help". Well, I'm here to tell you that the past 8 months of my life have been an absolute living hell and the majority of that was probably due to the fact that we didn't get separate attorneys.

During this whole process I found out the following due to the fact that we had to share all our financial stuff at time of S:
-she was at the very least having an EA with a 22 year old before BD (found parking lot receipts through our bank statements)
-confirmed she was having a PA
-found out she was literally spending $1k's of dollars on clothes and future trips (with OM) before BD (again through bank statements)
-that she was lying to me about the amount of stock options she was being given (talking in the $100k range)
-that she was lying to me about the amount of money she was making at the time of S

In the process of all this b/c I'm incredibly task oriented and wanted her to make the final decision:
-I divided and valued all our assets
-Provided any and all precedence I could find in our state about the harder subjects (house, retirement, company stock)
-Started refinancing the house
-Got the quit deed for the house put together
-Got the dog signed over

This all sounds so obviously idiotic now. I didn't want to get divorced, so why in the world did do all this stuff? I think mostly b/c at the time it was literally the only connection that I had left with her. I didn't know that I needed to detach, give her space to live her life and figure out her MLC, and GAL. All the work left me absolutely obsessed getting at least the perfunctory stuff resolved.

All we did was fight about everything. In the beginning she wouldn't even respond (which likely should have been a sign for me to back off), and all it did was make me even more upset that she was ignoring all of this. The more I pushed, the more she resented me...the more she resented me, the angrier I got that she was ignoring me...and on and on. Finally, I think all of this just pushed her over the edge and completely out of my life.

I guess what I'm really getting at is, if you are new to all of this, just finding these boards...it will incredibly hard to utilize BD if you go the collaboration route. If I had any sense whatsoever and I could do this all over again, I just would have let her do all the work and we likely wouldn't be divorced yet, wouldn't have gone through long periods of absolutely hating each other, and there may have at least been the chance that we could have found some happy moments to build upon. I could have and absolutely should have got my own attorney and let them deal with everything...would have saved me an amazing amount of heartache and would have started to allow me to GAL.

I'm sure I'm leaving all sorts of nuances out of this, but it's frankly hard to remember...and even harder to think about the so many places I went wrong


ME-37 W-34 T-8 M-4
ILYBNILWY BD: 8-31-2015
EA suspected - 11/1/15
PA confirmed - 1/22/16
W files for D - 2/4/16
D - 8/9/16
#2707132 09/28/16 05:16 PM
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Again I'm new here, but wanted to share my experiences with meds that I got prescribed after the BD when I lost 20 lbs, couldn't sleep, couldn't focus...couldn't live.

It took me a few weeks after the BD to finally pull myself together and go to a doctor at the urging of the therapist I started seeing after the BD. He almost immediately prescribed me zoloft as an antidepressant (for longer term anxiety that I always seem to be dealing with), and Klonopin for the intense panic attacks I was getting after the W moved out.

I should say that every part of the following was absolutely my fault for not truly understanding the drugs I was taking...I just wanted to feel anything different. The combination of the two drugs actually did wonders for me throughout the first couple of months after the BD. In fact, therapy with wife was going well, we were at least sort of talking regularly and seeing each other a couple of times a week. This went to the point of the W actually saying she thought we were making progress in a therapy session.

Fast forward a few weeks and the W really starts making some questionable decisions and starts really acting more like she was MLC. Switching on and off between saving the M and trashing me in counseling appointments. Within a two week span, she spent $8000 on a 3 week trip to africa the following march, told me that the only reason she was still in therapy was bc I was her "fall back plan" (as if she had a plan to begin with), and made plans for a 2 week trip with a bunch of 22 year old male co workers to Iceland the following January (I was decidedly NOT invited on these trips regardless of where our future was going)...and I found out she had herpes since before we were married (she outright lied to me for years about this telling me several times she never had an STD. Oh, and I "discovered" that rather than "fooling around with women for a couple years in her 20's" was actually exclusively dating women before she "decided" she wasn't a lesbian (to be clear, I have no problems with her choice in partners...just that she lied so profusely about it).

So I backed far FAR away and started drinking...a lot. This is where the problems started. Although I was giving her a bunch of space and she kept trying to contact me to test the temperature to apologize, I'd had enough after the past three months hell she put me through. Well, as I found out, you tend to develop a tolerance to klonopin relatively quickly and although it was a life saver for the previous couple of months, I had to supplement it with alcohol to stave off the panic attacks. This is a recipe for disaster as you end up building up tolerances at an even greater rate when combined. Keep in mind, I wasn't even taking more than what my doctor had prescribed for the klonopin.

As I wanted to start going dim on the W, I also wanted to start GAL (as I now know it's called). I also wanted to kick the klonopin and zoloft as I was tired of depending on drugs to feel half way decent. Even bigger mistake. I found out later the only effective way to do this, even if you haven't been on klonopin long is to taper VERY slowly off for sometimes months. Worst hell I've ever been through...and the irony the only way to feel better is to drink more.

So GAL started to fail, and I started talking to the W again. But now instead of the changed history person I had become to her at BD, I'd also become a huge drinker...right in phase where I couldn't afford to be. I won't lie, I think it's a major reason that we didn't end up trying to work on things for longer as it made me look like even worse of a human being to her at that point. As an FYI, I'm no longer taking anti-anxiety drugs anymore, and back to a somewhat reasonable drinking schedule.

Anyway, thanks for listening and if this helps anyone, wonderful. I just wanted to drop those two cents in for those that are in the same despair that I was in the first couple of months after the BD. Be VERY careful about medicating yourself...I'll never know how much it hurt my sitch, but it in now way helped.


ME-37 W-34 T-8 M-4
ILYBNILWY BD: 8-31-2015
EA suspected - 11/1/15
PA confirmed - 1/22/16
W files for D - 2/4/16
D - 8/9/16
Joined: Nov 2009
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cskone

Please stick to one thread until 100 posts.

You can change the title of a thread or a post if you desire
like this one.
However it is so much easier for others to give you advice if you stick to one thread.
It is also easier to re-read your story later on.

I have merged your threads together into the main thread for now.

Thanks for your cooperation.


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Quote:
That's just it, I actually don't know...maybe it's just that I'm looking for some sort of validation to why all this happened. I'm sure a portion of being here is to share what exactly NOT to do after your W walks out. And I'd say I'm mostly here just to talk to people about it...how they moved on...what they did to make the pain of this go away and at least lessen somewhat.


Values are like traffic laws. Instead of stop signs, dotted lines indicating lane borders, and speed limits, we have rules we behave by to preserve our society. "Do what you feel like" doesn't work very well. Can you imagine driving a car and running a red light because you didn't 'feel' like stopping? Well, so goes the relationship.

Currently you aren't observing many of the values that I personally hold dearly. You seem to excuse things because you 'want to change how you feel' or 'don't know how else you'd get through', including:
-Drinking and medicating.
-Dating while married and continuing while emotionally unprepared
-Dating someone that herself participated in the assault on a M

So you want to know why you were in a 'relationship crash'? It's because both of you followed the life road map of doing what you felt like. Feelings aren't a good compass. Granted some of the above wasn't during your M, but it was this 'do what I feel like' mentality that you carry that was. And same is true for XW, clearly she is in 'do what she feels like' mode. M is too tough to survive without sacrifice and commitment from both parties.

All it usually takes is one person in 'follow the feeling' mode to destroy a marriage, but at least if one person has strength, character, and can model and demonstrate some leadership, well, it gives the other person the time and opportunity to see what they're losing and follow that person's lead. I often tell new posters act with the character you wish they had, you can't expect them to do something you can't yourself. Many times by leading the way and transcending day to day feelings and impulses we can show enough improvements and strength to be the lighthouse that our WAS returns to. If not, we get to sleep soundly at night, free of any guilt, able to meet life head on without medicating, at peace knowing we did everything we could to save our M, and prepared for a healthy relationship in the future that is equipped to survive the test of time should that day arise.

I understand how difficult it is to lose your marriage. Trust me. I get it. If you need to lay in bed for a week and cry you won't hurt my feelings. But ultimately you choose what you do from here. With no goals and no values it just seems like you're going to drift around doing whatever is easiest or feels best at the moment, all the while scratching your head as to why it isn't working. How can that work? Really?

So hopefully this answers why your M was in a crash, two drivers not following any traffic signs. Knowing that do you want to start now, or do you just write off the possibility of a long term relationship and accept your life will be a series of crashes because you aren't feeling so hot and aren't up for following pesky values today?

Hang in csk.


Me:38 XW:38
T:11 years M:8 years
Kids: S14, D11, D7
BD/Move out day: 6/17/14, D final Dec 15
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Re: Cadet

Sorry about that, should have seen that somewhere. Will stick to this post.


ME-37 W-34 T-8 M-4
ILYBNILWY BD: 8-31-2015
EA suspected - 11/1/15
PA confirmed - 1/22/16
W files for D - 2/4/16
D - 8/9/16
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