What should I be doing now (Time to Move on?)

[Tread]

Coconut,

That's the right attitude to have. My W is stubborn as hell. But several times throughout the week will tell me how good that I am looking. Says that she can tell that I am doing better by going out more without her. And that weight loss, shaving the beard into a goatee and even cutting my hair like back in the early days of our MR has shaved about six years in the looks department.

And if your W isn't impressed, then someone else will be. But just take care of yourself. Because no one else will treat you the way you should be treated like yourself.

[Coconut]

I'm just going to put this right here.. this is a text from WW to H after almost 1 year of in house separation post BD.. Folks, you can't nice them out of it..


Try, just for one second, to see it from my perspective. For years and years I begged you to help me with things and you wouldn't and now that it's too late you want to be Mr. Helpful and expect me not to be resentful. For years we didn't speak, at home or by text, and now you start sending me a million texts with jokes and smileys like everything is fine and we're friends. It's infuriating. It feels from my side like such a fake act. Like you're trying to pretend to be nice to me so you can say "See, none of this is my fault". That's how it feels and that's why the more you do it the more it makes me angry. You can't continue to act like everything is fine and expect me not to feel angry?

[AnotherStander]

Hi Coconut, after seeing your helpful posts in other threads I decided to read back in your sitch a bit. It sounds like you're doing really well! I commend you for not jumping into a new R too quickly even though the opportunity has been there. You'll know when you're ready and jumping in too soon can do more harm than good as I discovered myself.

I can relate to the difficulty you mentioned in coming here when your own sitch is still so fresh, I recently came back after being away for years and even after that much time I was surprised at how reading through other sitches really brought back a lot of the pain I went through. It reminds me of how much pain I was in, and also makes me realize how much pain the people here are in. Neither is a pleasant prospect! But if we can help others as others helped us then it's worth the discomfort.

But coming back has caused me to reflect, and that's ok cause it doesn't hurt like it used to... And I've realized I'm a failure. Other than GAL and being more sociable, I've stopped doing the things that I want to, no, that I need to do to be a better man.

I'm a Crossfitter. Sometimes it is brutally hard, and often we're called upon to do things that we simply can't. More than once I've heard someone say "I can't do that, it's impossible for me". There's one coach in particular that always jumps in and says "no, say you can't do that AT THIS TIME!" It may seem like a minor difference, but one statement has no hope while the other does. One implies the situation is fixed, the other that it will change. You are NOT a failure. If you're failing to do something AT THIS TIME then change it! Your life is not static, it's dynamic!

Today, I'm going to start living for me again, and stop letting the fact that I live alone be a reason to not look my best and overlook things that I would do if someone else was watching.

Great! But it's actually OK to be a little complacent now and then, I was flat out exhausted this weekend and I could have spent the entire weekend on projects but instead I slept in late (which I usually don't do) and spent a lazy day yesterday playing a co-op video game with my son. GAL'ing doesn't mean you have to go a million miles an hour ALL the time

[BluWave]

C-nut, I agree that inhouse sep is rarely a good idea. I have been thinking about seperation recently and it would not happen under the same roof. I can't. Wouldn't. Won't. There is something to be said about experiencing the reality of being "separated" to know what life would be like after D.

I am glad you are doing well. I wish you the best. If you are not ready to face her or the D process, then perhaps wait. Would it really make a difference in your day to day life?

Ble

[GiannaS]

I agree

[AnotherStander]

C-nut, I agree that inhouse sep is rarely a good idea. I have been thinking about seperation recently and it would not happen under the same roof. I can't. Wouldn't. Won't.

Yeah that rarely works out. I had a talk with W and told her something along the lines of "I would like for you to stay here and work on the M, but I understand that that is not what you want and if you choose to leave I am not going to stand in your way. I support your decision whatever it is." Basically I was "opening the cage door", but I was also putting her on notice that I was not leaving! A few days later she asked to talk, and said "why do I have to be the one to leave"? In an incredible display of composure (LOL!) I calmly said "I am not the one that wants to leave the marriage, and I am not going to leave my home and my family either (at the time all 3 kids were still at home). If you choose to leave then I am not going to interfere with that, but if you would rather stay and work on the marriage then I am willing." Basically I did not give her any other options, it was either "stay and work on the M" or "leave". She said she understood, and pretty soon after she did indeed start her plans to leave. She was gone a few months later, which broke my heart all over again (despite saying that, I really did want her to stay). In retrospect it was for the best, those first few months were possibly the worst of my life but I worked through my grief and rebuilt. The in-house separation sitches I've read always seem to be stuck in a miserable limbo, so I do agree with you that if S is inevitable, it really needs to be a true S and not a symbolic one.

[AnotherStander]

Try, just for one second, to see it from my perspective. For years and years I begged you to help me with things and you wouldn't

Yeah, Michele talks about this in her books but to an H this just looks like nagging. The W thinks she's asking for help, but she's doing it in a way that looks like a personal attack to the H. The H's response is to shut down and block her out. So she tries even harder (IE, yells louder) which just makes him shut down that much more. Eventually she gives up and plans her escape. The H sees the newfound peace as a GOOD sign, things must be better since she stopped complaining! So BD comes as a really rude surprise.

and now that it's too late you want to be Mr. Helpful and expect me not to be resentful. For years we didn't speak, at home or by text, and now you start sending me a million texts with jokes and smileys like everything is fine and we're friends. It's infuriating. It feels from my side like such a fake act.

Right, once BD happens we realize that wow, she really is serious this time! I better do something! And what we do is 100% genuine, we really do want to work hard to save the M and would have before had we known they were serious and not just nagging us. But to them it's "too little too late".

You can't continue to act like everything is fine and expect me not to feel angry?

This is why DB'ing pushes for NC. Because there is literally nothing the LBS can say that won't get a negative spin from the WAS. Say something mean and she thinks "yup, he's still so bitter and angry, I need to leave." Say something nice and she thinks "he's being so fake, just trying tricks to get me back." Silence on the other hand, makes her think "what is he doing? Why did he suddenly go silent? It should make me happy that he's leaving me alone, but why doesn't it?"

[Coconut]

I am glad you are doing well. I wish you the best. If you are not ready to face her or the D process, then perhaps wait. Would it really make a difference in your day to day life?

Ble

Thanks Blu, I really am doing well, and the best part, is that I'm finding a new drive to do even better. I've been doing a lot of soul searching.

As for the D, no it wouldn't change my life at all, and I'm not pushing it, I put the papers down and i'll look at them again sometime in the future.

Another thing I didn't mention when I posted about filing, is that I questioned if I was doing it to get a reaction out of her; I didn't like that I even had to wonder. So it will wait for now.

Yesterday, when I was talking to my Son, he apologized for calling me so late, he said he was with his biological father and didn't want to call me from there. Out of curiosity, I asked if now that he has his license (got it a week ago) he was driving up there (it's 45 min away)... He said no, He's getting a divorce and is staying at a hotel, so he just came and picked me up.

that took me aback, and after hanging up I started really thinking about my sons side of the family.

His Bio-Father had an A on his mother (gf) when she was pregnant with him, they got back together and a year later were going to get married, the day before the wedding she called it off.

He grew up with me and his mother (from 6 yrs old until almost 17), his mother had an A, then he watched us separate (and I think he knows she had an affair).

His Bio-Father married the lady he had the A with (he doesn't know that) about 3 years ago and is now getting divorced.

Both sets of Grandparents divorced and remarried. (my W's and his bio-fathers)

on my side of the family, my Mom is the only one that has ever divorced, she was abused by my biological father and left him when I was 3. She married my father when I was 6.

No one else on my side of the family has ever divorced, I'm including 3 cousins that married by 19 (all around 20 years ago), my younger sister who's been married 15 years, and a few uncles and cousins that I know of but live out of state.

We've always included names when discussing his grandparents because he has 3 grandmas, 3 grandpas and 4 step grandparents, but I never really thought about the fact that he's never really had a lifetime commitment in his life. I wonder if that will affect his understanding of what a M is / should be.

[Coconut]

Regarding limerence, I'm going to share a few stories I am very familiar with showing vastly different outcomes.

1. I just shared this one in the above post but my brother's W had an affair and left him. He didn't pursue, he was a good DB'er but came about it naturally. 8 years later he's still single and she's still living with OM.

2. A neighbor of mine's W left him suddenly and unexpectedly. She too had an affair although I've never been sure whether it was a PA or EA. She went out and got a tattoo that said "finally I'm free" in Latin with a butterfly, LOL! She was one of my W's enablers when W left me. 6 months later she was right back with her H and they've been together ever since (about 5 years since that happened).

3. My W had an EA that after our separation turned PA. Their limerence ran it's course in about a year and they quit dating although they still remain casual friends. She has never attempted a reconciliation, she's content to live alone and date now and then.

4. My W's best friend left her H around the same time W left me. She wasn't in an A at the time, she was just fed up with him. She did the typical WAS stuff- new clothes, lost a lot of weight, improved her hair and makeup. After they separated she started dating. She settled on a particular guy and 5 years later is still with him and is now divorced. She never tried to reconcile with her XH.

5. My mom left my dad when I was a young teen, she had gone back to work to help out the family and got caught up in new relationships and possibilities. She had an A, and eventually left. I'm not sure how much time went by, I think it was about 6 months but the A fizzled and she tried briefly to get back with my dad, but she decided she couldn't do it and started another R, then another, then another. The last one stuck and she's been with him ever since, about 40 years now.

Which of these patterns will your W follow? YOU DON'T KNOW, that's the whole point. She could be exactly like any one of these scenarios, or maybe something different than all of these. It's impossible to say.

Copied this post from AnotherStander on another thread.

For no other reason than to say that as I read through these, I realized that I would not be able to add my own sitch to his list. I simply have no idea what the WW did after I was done with the M.

I really don't have any idea what happened with WW and AP, I don't know if WW has dated anyone else (would it still be considered an A since we're mutually agreed separation?). Heck, I don't even know if she lives with anyone else (I've never asked my son and he has never said). Until I read AnotherStanders post, I never really gave it any thought.

I don't think we have had a relationship talk since late July 2016 (when I found out she was still texting/talking to OM) and I enforced my boundary. Most texts since then have only been about selling house, son and taxes. Except for about a 1 month period of disappointment in my life, when I would lay into her by texting the meanest, cruelest things I could think of to say (Thanksgiving, my sons / wifes /& my b-day and xmas are all within 1 month of each other and I was crushed during that timeframe).

My mom saw that hate in me and stepped in to help me move past it, "Your only allowing her to control you by harboring so much hate" she said.. I immediately stopped texting, I think that was in mid Jan. Only texts since then were 1 or 2 texts at a time, maybe once a month, and only about son and taxes.

[Coconut]

So I'd love him back healthy and having dealt with his struggles with women (which came from his dysfunction mother, who seems to be a narcissist and made him into her emotional partner)

cadence, I would love to get your thoughts on this as one of my biggest issues in my M was that my W did this with my son, or at least I believed it to be so, and would love to understand it further. But to not take over your thread, discuss it on my thread. i'll put some information on my particular scenario in my sitch soon.

I started noticing it from little things, like when I wanted to go out to eat, I would ask her if she wanted to go to X restaurant, she would she doesn’t care, then ask S if he wanted to go and he would say no, she’d ask him where he wanted to go then say let’s go there. It wasn’t long before I started to realize that it wasn’t just every now and then, it was almost every time I would suggest going out, unless son did want to go there.

Then there were times we would be out doing things with family, and for whatever reason split up into different groups, and W would go wherever S went. There were times that I would tell her that I would like her to come with me and sometimes she would, but there would be attitude that came along too.

If out at a movie with W and S, she would generally sit in the middle and she would consistently lean towards him and make comments about the movie, and when I would make one to her she would just lean to son and say it to him.

I know these are little things, but I’m having a hard time explaining how/why I began to feel that my wife was more emotionally connected to my S than to me. There were several times that I sat her down and explained to her that I felt she was putting love for son ahead of me and that it was very frustrating to me… That I loved son too, but I didn’t think she should focus on him to the point it was to my detriment. And these conversations were during good times of our M, I didn’t feel neglected in our M as a whole, but I felt it when doing things with son (like his desires were more important than mine, or even hers).

Towards the end of our M (when things got complacent in M), I actually said to her that I guess I just have to wait until son goes away to college to get my W back, because by that time I just couldn’t compete with him for her attention… Nothing against my son, he wasn't competing with me, most of the time he wouldn’t even like all the attention she would give him, but I feel like she had used him as her emotional partner.

Is turning children into emotional partners a thing? Is there a name for it, or any resources that you would know of that I could read into it? I realize my examples are weak and not so unnormal, but I DO know that I felt like my W was emotionally attached to my S and not me.. and not sure if it's pertinent, but I strongly believe she's Narcissistic, she turns everything about her, even my sons diabetes.