Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Page 10 of 11 1 2 8 9 10 11
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 1,866
Likes: 1
J
JujuB Offline OP
Member
OP Offline
Member
J
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 1,866
Likes: 1
More rambling why questions.

Why did I put so much trust and faith in him ?
Why can't my partners be as loyal and honest as me?
Why do I care so much about cheating?


M: 42
H: 43
Twins age 5
WAH in summer
Joined: Oct 2014
Posts: 5,301
S
Member
Offline
Member
S
Joined: Oct 2014
Posts: 5,301
Hi JujuB, sorry you are having a rough week. Getting more Intel and information can be stressful. When we D'd, I hadn't appreciated the financial information you got and I can remember poring over it and seeing the expensive chocolates XH bought and the trips he took and so on - ugh. I remember just getting to the point where it wasn't helpful to me and I dropped the scrutiny.

Just do enough to understand what your situation financially is and how you can best protect your interests - otherwise try to let it go.

Reading what you post about him. Sometimes people use unhealthy behaviour to cope with life and with themselves. It doesn't make our WAS a bad person, just that they didn't always make great choices. And that's on them of course..

If you spoke to your XH and sought answers, do you think they would be helpful? The stuff XH said to me by way of explanation didn't really help me at all as his narrative was so different to mine. He saw himself as a decent and genuine guy who had made some mistakes but really knew what he wanted now - a new family!

I saw him as a guy who chose to start dating while M and fell into an A with a coworker who was there and willing to become involved with a married man - with all the accompanying lies and deceit. To me decent and genuine is as decent and genuine does. But all of that is on him and that's his life now. Seeing his life and mine as truly separate now has really helped me. And the D finalising was a big step forward (in a positive way too...)

Mostly, we have to find our own closure - we don't get that from our former spouse. But for now, recognise that the D and financial process are causing stress and pain and practice good self care.

Xx


T 13 M 7
Me 48 H 46
SS 15
BD 7.14 PA
D final 5.16 (H filed)

We receive & we lose, and must try to achieve gratitude & embrace with whole hearts whatever of life that remains after the losses - Dubus
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 1,866
Likes: 1
J
JujuB Offline OP
Member
OP Offline
Member
J
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 1,866
Likes: 1
Thank you sotto.

I understand what you're saying
Sorting through the financial stuff is making me realize I was married to a stranger. I never understood, and would argue all these behaviors that I found really, really strange.

We go to court very soon. And I am scared. My lawyer was trying to arrange for ex to have son a bit more. She felt that since I needed more availability to work that it would be a fair option.

But we failed to really diagnose..."hey, why is someone so voluntarily uninvolved in their child's life?"

The high amounts of money taken out in bad neighborhoods (I'm talking 4 digits in a year in just 1 particular sketchy town that is not near where we live)
Really scares me because my so is 6. He's there every other weekend. I always thought he was safe and now I don't know what's happening. And how to handle. And I just found this info and I don't have a lot of time to act or get advice from the experts. .

Is this enough to get drug tests requested?


M: 42
H: 43
Twins age 5
WAH in summer
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 1,866
Likes: 1
J
JujuB Offline OP
Member
OP Offline
Member
J
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 1,866
Likes: 1
And that's just 1 sketchy town. High amounts from other towns as well. I'm sick.

I would be devastated if I was reading about detailed eexpenses involving affairs and yes I would definatly have to put a stop to it. It's the same as looking through Facebook. And I do feel horrible when i see something that makes me think OW as well.

But I think my ex"s ultimate mistress was drugs and alcohol. And I was naive to the behaviors. It was going on for so long. I adapted to these behaviors thinking they were just him. I was always frustrated because things weren't fair. He was absent and neglectful. I just argued and.resented but didn't take action to see out the whys. Which would have gotten me and maybe him help.

Right now, there is no more us. But we are signing something giving him custody that he has not even asked for and I need to reevaluate. I don't know exactly what I'm dealing with in terms of type of drug.

This can't just be swept under a rug any more when my son's safety is concerned. Which it always is with an addict.


M: 42
H: 43
Twins age 5
WAH in summer
Joined: Jun 2014
Posts: 2,708
Z
Member
Offline
Member
Z
Joined: Jun 2014
Posts: 2,708
As you'll recall my XW just made these same accusations of me last month. She couldn't have been further from the truth. Somehow she took some scraps of information and used it to extrapolate out a totally different universe. In fact, here's an excerpt from that email:

while we had an agreement to not do anything while we were trying for kids... maybe (miscarriage) that we lost was due to what you were on at night without telling me for 10 yrs! Seriously, the things I find out now, that shouldn't affect me and you probably laugh about..... they cause so much hurt. I trusted you and never hid anything. Ya we are divorced and 'done' in many aspects now. I still gotta say, I know people you do too, and the things I've heard and believe on top of taxes burning me, you having kids half the time that I lose from raising them during.... I wish you would explain cause it hurts so. I thought you were bipolar. Now looking back it could have been withdrawls, nothing of my fault. I'm feeling so decieved. I never hid anything from you. All I did was try to raise our kids and I wasn't good enough for you ever. Recently learned deceit burns me deep. Wft, really? The deceit I feel is substantial and I'd wish you came clear with me while we were married. Why hide that? It only made things worse. The fact you never told me is just horrible. I trusted you with my life and our kids. If your doing that caused our kids issues or the loss of (miscarriage),... these are the things you leave me with as an ex wife that was always open and honest with you. I can't believe you can hurt me so much now learning what I missed. But you did. Good for u. All I do is try to be the best person I can. A lot of good that does. I'm still in shock but it fits all together so much better. Why would you hide that from your WIFE, after she devoured her life to yoy,

This was total and complete nonsense. If I didn't have it in writing I wouldn't even believe it's possible for someone to have conjured all of this in their mind. And she's blaming me for her having the children half the time when the D was entirely her decision, and attacking me about her finances when I have been paying 100% of my income and living with relatives and going into debt to make the payments even my mediator told me were more generous than she thought was fair to me. Just totally twisted. And her constant diagnosing of me, when the only time I've ever felt crazy is when I was in that relationship and the further I move past it the more steady and solid I feel. And she ends by talking about how honest she was and what a good person she is, probably typing this with an unmarried OM passed out on my kid's couch while they are sleeping. OK, I'm done.

You mentioned a few things about after BD, being seen with a second shirt in his car, etc. I'll take your word for it, what someone does after they drop the bomb isn't really my focus right now. It's this rewriting of your marital history and how you intend to act on that incomplete information in ways that will impact your co-parenting relationship and possibly your child that concerns me.

J, no one knows everything about their spouse. At some point we are all just living with an alien creature wearing a mask of what we want them to be over their face, getting hurt when they don't act consistently with what we wish they were. Now you're flipping it and projecting this monster onto the same man. He is neither the guy you dreamed he was when you married him nor the monster you see today. He is just a guy with his qualities and his problems.

In the end it's your decision how you want to frame your failed marriage and I'll leave you to that as it doesn't impact anyone. I would just be very careful to start lobbing accusations around the courtroom. If there is a grave threat to your child then act on it, but ATM withdrawals from years ago doesn't make me fear for your child's safety. I had to manage when my XW came back from the hospital after attempted suicide and was black out drinking, and my L, DB coach and I all agreed it wouldn't be good to start a custody war with social services in the middle and dividing two families for generations only to take my child away from their mother. We watched the situation, and lo and behold, everything is fine and my kids have a good relationship with both me and their mother. Isn't that what you want?


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
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 1,866
Likes: 1
J
JujuB Offline OP
Member
OP Offline
Member
J
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 1,866
Likes: 1
I have ran the possibility in my mind that I am over reacting. That I am anxious and creating a history that does not exist. That I am using this to make a failed marriage less my fault and more his because it is am easy answer. And I really don't want to do that. The one thing in life i always seek from myself is being in reality and being self aware. And I get frightened at the thought that I might not me.

But where does the line cross between denial and enablement vs letting go? I feel like I was enabling secrecy and financial suspicions for years.

Your wife's accusations were based on what Exactly?
I think it must be awful to be accused of something you did not do and I empathize with you for that. Perhaps she was projecting? From reading in your posts, I quite honestly do not understand her accusations. You seem responsible with the children And you have been unbelievably generous financially. Your actions do not seem to meet what she says. Now I know this is an anonymous forum and we can portray ourselves anyway on here. But from what you write, her accusations seem off base and unjustified. To me, she seems like she is always looking for something to get mad at you about. Whether it be an old miscarriage or not dressing your daughter to her standards. I know that she herself was am addict, and I know that an addicts brain changes.

I am not your wife. You are not like my husband. At least I don't think so.

I do understand how our own experiences make us suspect to others though. I know any divorced man I meet, I will be suspicious of. I will assume he left her the way mine did me. I know i assumed the worst of a really lovely poster on here who was engaged to a divorced man.

My ex would not give me child support. My ex did not want much child custody. I pushed him to take on more. When we moved in our old place, I was getting calls at work to come pick up son from preschool because my ex slept through alarm clocks at 12:00pm. My ex did not wake up till 2 in afternoon and was up all night. He was constantly disappearing to run errands. He would leave work at strange times and now I know he was leaving work to visit the far away sketchy towns to take out money. He was constantly in the bathroom.

During my first miscarriage, my ex screamed at me the whole way in the car to the hospital because I got mad at him for not waking up to watch son cause I wasn't feeling right. He screamed at his mom too because she came over and was trying to yell at him to wake up and get me to the hospital.

My second miscarriage I had to induce and he went to work and got mad at me when I called him and was upset. With that miscarriage I had been diagnosed with cancer and had to go for a surgery with only local surgery..2 days post surgery he woke me up at 7 30am because he needed to sleep and told me it wasn't even generalized anesthesia.

While married, my ex would not let me see his finances. I had no idea even what his exact salary and take home pay was. He would deflect and we would argue when i tried to make sense of it and so I just gave up.

Did you do any of this? I am not your wife getting upset over minor and silly things zues. I am not imagining this stuff.

I am very stable and hard working and rational. I am pretty intelligent. I am and have never had an addiction issue. I am well grounded. I have my flaws and I'm not denying them but I feel like in all my relationships (2 of them ) I have given the benefit of the doubt to my partner. I always doubted myself and my perceptions. And felt that others knew better. That ultimately I was wrong and over anxious. I blamed my ex"s reactions on me. I constantly go over and over in my mind and on here the things he did because They were wrong and I have to see that on paper or i doubt myself.

I don't want to keep doing that because I know something is really really off.

People tried to tell me the same thing with my son when he was having all these behavior issues. I pursued anyway and now he is getting great help and the same people that thought I was exaggerating are now asking me to teach them the tools I have learned to help my son.

My accusations are based on seeing c.c. statements with consistent 200 to 300 dollars per month from various liquor stores. There is a total of 17,000 from just 1 year of marital funds withdrawn from ATM in just 1 remote and bad neighborhood. That does not include other remote and bad neighborhoods. There is unexplained credit card debt that goes along with it.

To me, this is very scary and something to address.

At the very least he was depleting marital assets. Trust me. I would much prefer that be the case.

I don't have the hard core proof like a black out or OD because of the secrecy involved and because he was not around.

There is nothing I would like more then to know that my son is safe with him every other weekend and 2 weeks in the summer, because for me that is a nice break and time for myself.
If there is an issue, it makes things much more difficult. I am not wanting that or looking for it. But I do need to know my son is safe.

I don't know how to do this in a way that will make for positive relations. Nitnit is the goal. And so far I have done nothing yet.


M: 42
H: 43
Twins age 5
WAH in summer
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 1,866
Likes: 1
J
JujuB Offline OP
Member
OP Offline
Member
J
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 1,866
Likes: 1
I just feel like in our relationship and even in initial marital counseling i was written off as being over anxious.

But now I'm discovering that my anxieties were actually my intuitions and why the hell wasn't I taking them seriously? And why did everyone doubt me?

I think it's because of how I come across sometimes? I want so bad to be fair to others and humble myself but it makes others see me as weak or as wrong.

I need to project myself better. Speak with more authority maybe? And I will be taken more seriously. I jate those types of games though.


M: 42
H: 43
Twins age 5
WAH in summer
Joined: Jun 2014
Posts: 2,708
Z
Member
Offline
Member
Z
Joined: Jun 2014
Posts: 2,708
Quote:
Your wife's accusations were based on what Exactly?


Totally out of left field. I took some speed pills once in 2012 during a 72 hour pool gambling challenge match. This was years after my last child was born. Prior to that I hadn't taken anything like that since 2003 before we met. There was a two month period just before I met her that I binged once or twice playing pool all night. But after I met her I didn't do anything like that other than that one incident. So somehow she heard a story about either that match or something that happened in 2003 and constructed a 10 year addiction that was responsible for our miscarriage and the problems in our marriage.

But here's the thing. I don't really care anymore. She's on her road, I'm on mine. I'm moving forward. The only thing I care about is that my children have their mother in their lives. She has her problems but is a very good mom to the kids.

See, there are three main phases of our relationship: Our marriage, Post BD, and today moving forward. They are totally different. What I would say is that she had her problems during our marriage and I had mine. But we loved each other deeply and did our best in our own way which was fraught with shortcomings. It is unfortunate that our marriage was terminated prior to working through our problems. Then when BD hit she went a bit insane. I think it's safe to say that her behavior the last 3 years has been truly bat $hit crazy. But I am focused on moving forward. And the kids are fine so beyond that nothing else matters.

So we can talk about what happened during your marriage, we can talk about what he did post BD, but the most pressing issue is what you choose to do today. Focusing just on what you do today I don't know that lobbing out accusations, hashing up marital problems and suspicions or theories of addictions or mental problems, and questioning his ability to take care of your child is going to be the best play. While it would be nice to get validation, apologies, clarification, and closure from WAH, that isn't going to happen. What's more important is that your son has the opportunity to grow up with both parents in his life and a lack of drama. Again, if you feel there is serious immanent risk for your son spending time with WAH then talk to your lawyer or an IC to get a professional opinion. Just present the facts and see if they are equally concerned and feel there is a reason to take such decisive legal action. If they do, then do what you have to do. But J, removing the father from a son's life is a pretty monumental step to take, the same as I was faced with. The risks would have to be evident to my team of professionals before I would take that course. Outside of this we can debate all day long about the past, but this was my main point.

Now that that's set aside for now, if you want to rehash your marriage you can do that. But I've said it before and I'll say it again. There isn't a person on here that can't take their ex's most horrible moments, create a highlight reel out of them, and build a case that they were a monster. So seeing some shocking footage of your WAH's tirades doesn't shock me to the core. Obviously that was him at his worst during the dark hours of your marriage. Yes, it is truly deceit that he was spending that type of money without your knowledge. But you know J, some of the very few marriages I know that are good have gotten through much, much worse. I know a happily married couple in which the husband was in a public adulterous affair for five years while they were married and she somehow waited it out. He ended it and is back with her, and they have another child now. I know another man who was alcoholic and partied it up during out of town pool tournaments. 10 years of that but a few years ago he cleaned up his act and has been totally recommitted to his marriage and seems to be a model husband. In fact this used to really upset me, I look at what these two did compared to what I did in my marriage and I would get outraged that XW walked on me. But my point is that I believe that almost all marriages go through hardship. Had your WAH not left and you had the opportunity to work through things there is a chance that some of these things would've been blips on the radar in a lifelong marriage. So I'm not sure you have to make them his legacy. In fact, in saying this, both of these marriages were gone past where yours is at one point. I don't know there is anything wrong with continuing to DB and being open to the possibility of a universe in which this isn't the end. And that as you know is all about detachment and letting him go on his journey, and for you to work on your 180s which seem to be about anger and control.

I do agree with what you've said about trusting yourself and being firm in what you know is right. I've written about this a lot on my threads, how I used to abdicate my power because I used to second guess myself so perpetually. But I've learned that compared to what I see when I look at the rest of the world I have healthy beliefs that I feel strongly about, and I have the ability to lead my family with a calm authority. This doesn't mean that I am not open to hearing my choices or outlooks challenged and that I wouldn't need to course correct at times. But I have learned to trust myself and frankly I'm darn proud of how well things are going since I've done so. So I think you can say the same thing. It's ok to trust yourself. You're right that WAH had problems because he was human, you're right that he made some bad choices. You know you did as well. In the end the only irreversible decision was his choice to end the marriage. That I don't agree with. But it's done. So go ahead and sort through this here and there, let it go, trust yourself to lead forward, and that all starts with making the right choices for your son today.

As for your WAH's lack of involvement with son and reluctance to pay support, I am not totally surprised. In the short term I think this is pretty typical given the circumstances. See, he wanted to get away from you. That was it. He just wanted out. Free from your control. He was running. In his mind your son was a way that you could continue to control him through the legal system and if he didn't do what you demanded people with guns would show up to force him to. I'm not suggesting he doesn't have an obligation to provide for your son. My only point is that his reaction to try to get as far away as possible and acting uncooperatively fits the picture of a wild animal running uncontrollably away from something terrifying it. That's why he flew off the handle when you involved the courts for spousal support. Of course he was being unreasonable. Yet he was hurt and terrified beyond reason. It wouldn't surprise me if once things settle down your WAH will realize how much his son means to him and he'll start wanting more time with him and stepping up as a father. He just needs to get far enough away to see you aren't chasing him and tugging at his leash. Which is why I think bringing up the past or criticizing him for his lack of involvement with son now would only keep him running from you. Just let the man be and when he realizes he's not being chased or prodded anymore he might turn into a decent father. That may sting because it doesn't fit a narrative that means everything was his fault or that things are better off without him, but in the end it will mean that your son gets a good father. And I think that's the most important thing right now. Plus, it also means your son will have a great example of someone handling a hard situation with a ton of class. And it will feel really good to look in the mirror and know you have risen above it all. I know, because that's how I feel.

Maybe secretly I'm also rooting for you to let some of this go because it is so rare to see someone on these forums look back years later and say their D was a loss. Somehow it's unanimous that everyone's XH and marriage was bad and they are glad it's dead. Can you think of any posters that while their XH and marriage had problems they wish it hand't have ended? I guess I was hoping you'd have been the first.


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
Joined: Jun 2014
Posts: 2,685
S
Member
Offline
Member
S
Joined: Jun 2014
Posts: 2,685
Originally Posted By: Zues126

Can you think of any posters that while their XH and marriage had problems they wish it hand't have ended? I guess I was hoping you'd have been the first.
Zues, have you forgotten all about me? Yes, I wish my m hadn't ended. I wish we had stayed together and worked our way to a better place. Because it would have been better for my kids, because that's what I promised to do, because I wanted to grow old with the man I married at 25. I've spelled out that before, I'm surprised at your post.

Does that mean I'm not happy now. Nope. I am, in fact, happier than I was married. The last few years anyway. But that doesn't mean I'm glad it ended.



"Don't look back, you aren't going that way"
Joined: Jun 2014
Posts: 2,685
S
Member
Offline
Member
S
Joined: Jun 2014
Posts: 2,685
And by the way, the rest of your post was excellent. wink



"Don't look back, you aren't going that way"
Page 10 of 11 1 2 8 9 10 11

Moderated by  Cadet, DnJ, job, Michele Weiner-Davis 

Link Copied to Clipboard