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STH - stay positive- this too will pass. Good Luck!


M51 w50
T-20Yrs M-16Yrs
S15- mad at W for not trying and giving up
1 Awesum dog
BD 10/31/17
separate rooms 02/08/18
wife moved out 05/17/18

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And she's outta here! That didn't take long. now I feel like I can finally get this house in shape. Will need to sell it soon anyway. I have a job interview next week in our home state.

When her family came her dad had my mom on his phone for me to talk to. Her parents and mine think this must be so hard on me. They don't know i am pretty much happy to have the space myself at this point. I did all my crying about her leaving me months ago. Tried to be a better husband, fumbled the reconnection, and then W started an affair. I need a break from her as much as she does from me.


Me:30 W:31
S:4
M:7 T:12
PA: 5/6/18 - ?
W moved out 7/18
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Feeding the GOOD WOLF is a concept that helped save me and my M. I started feeding myself with only positive things. If I turned on the news and it was negative I turned the channel. If I was listening to the radio and a negative song came on I found a uplifting and positive song. I listened to a lot of gospel.

I start going to church. I found a church that made me feel good to attend the people were very inviting and offered me a lot of opportunities to do things in the church I took them up on their offer. (While was at the church my W thought I was with someone else. On 3 nights out the week.) I would get dressed up nice and put on some smell good, say bye and say I will see you later ( I also asked if she had anything going on, I didnt want to be a A hole). I never told her where I was going, but I was always was pleasant with my interactions with her. Always feeding the positive, optimistic side of of life.

I have thrived and lived off of pessimism, so training myself to have an optimistic outlook during such a low point in my life was hard as hell. But I had to do it for myslef and boys. I was tired of living in the the misery.

I started and ended everyday reflecting on the good things about that day.

At the start it felt kind of fake, but after a while it became my mantra. I was living with a positive attitude. I would smile at every person I could, even my WW (its hards not to smile at someone that's smiling at you). When I went to public places and was in the check out lines, I would read the name tags of every person I interacted with, and when they finished I thanked them for their service.

I told everyone bye, hi, good morning, afternoon, evening and day, even my WW. I refused to leave my M and my W having the last memories of being an angry and a negative person.

I still never talk about the M, R, or said ILY. I stuck to Sandi Rules, and I detached with love the way AS preaches.

I start going about my life doing things I always wanted to do. I start meeting new people, they were uplifting. Like, one day I did a meetup.com hike. And while on the hike, I started talking to the guy who made the meet up. Come to find out he was a pastor at one of the biggest churches in my city. We ended up talking for a while at the end of the hike and he gave me comfort and great advice.

I started to open myself to the world and I stop looking at all the wrongs with my life and startes thanking GOD for all the good.(what a transformation for a man like me.)

I listened to videos on YouTube about optimistic and positive outlooks.

All these changes, a compilation of changes, I also 180ed a lot of my old bad habits, made my W curious and she wanted to see if they were for real, and they were, I stop making changes for her and did them for myself.

It took time and patients.


M:37 W:37
T:11 M:10
S17, S13, S10, S4
BD:06/28/17
OM confirmed 07/20/17
Recon the M 10/29/17
Working hard:2gether

Onward and forward

This process is not a sprint it's a marathon! Patience, Patience, Patience.
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M:37 W:37
T:11 M:10
S17, S13, S10, S4
BD:06/28/17
OM confirmed 07/20/17
Recon the M 10/29/17
Working hard:2gether

Onward and forward

This process is not a sprint it's a marathon! Patience, Patience, Patience.
Joined: Aug 2017
Posts: 1,132
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M:37 W:37
T:11 M:10
S17, S13, S10, S4
BD:06/28/17
OM confirmed 07/20/17
Recon the M 10/29/17
Working hard:2gether

Onward and forward

This process is not a sprint it's a marathon! Patience, Patience, Patience.
Joined: Aug 2017
Posts: 1,132
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Posts: 1,132


M:37 W:37
T:11 M:10
S17, S13, S10, S4
BD:06/28/17
OM confirmed 07/20/17
Recon the M 10/29/17
Working hard:2gether

Onward and forward

This process is not a sprint it's a marathon! Patience, Patience, Patience.
Joined: Aug 2017
Posts: 1,132
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I tried to added the parable to you thread but No bueno. If you search it on Google it will pop up.


M:37 W:37
T:11 M:10
S17, S13, S10, S4
BD:06/28/17
OM confirmed 07/20/17
Recon the M 10/29/17
Working hard:2gether

Onward and forward

This process is not a sprint it's a marathon! Patience, Patience, Patience.
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Inspirational post, Joe.


It is not about what you feel should work in your M. It is about doing the work that gets the right results. Do what works!
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Thanks joejoe1, I found a short version of the parable. Something I think I do is to feed neither the good wolf nor the bad, just waiting for something to happen in my life instead. GAL activities are good for feeding the good wolf for sure.

When W left on Saturday, the only thing that really surprised me and hurt a little was finding that she left behind her house keys. She still has a garage door opener, but we had never talked about whether she would come back or not.

Today W came to the house to pick up son for the week. She wanted to talk, and asked if we could talk outside so our son wouldn't interrupt. That shows her respecting my boundary of not talking about us in front of son, which I appreciated. She wanted to tell me that if I removed her from our car insurance and closed our joint accounts, it would "reflect poorly on me in court". She could be right, but it felt like scare tactics to me. Bothers me because both things were things that she had agreed to herself in the past. I asked if she would sign something to show she agreed to be removed from the policy, but she refused, saying she was still an owner of the car. I didn't think that mattered since she wasn't going to be driving it anymore (also her choice). I also asked her when she was going to start paying for her student loans. She started to choke up a little then and began telling me how I was leaving her with nothing and she didn't have a job and couldn't afford rent. She did acknowledge that she spent money to make herself feel better, and she acknowledged some of her own behavior problems like explosive anger and negative thought patterns. She says she only learned this month that she had depression. None of this was news to me, I'd known it for years. I would have thought she did too. I don't think I heard an apology towards me for anything though.

She thought me being fine with her leaving was a sign I didn't care about her, and wanted to know why I didn't tell my mom she was leaving. I just told W she left me months ago, and I felt insulted that nobody thought I could take care of myself, that her dad thought I needed him to call my mommy for me. I know her parents were just showing concern for me, and I do appreciate that, but I'm a big boy. W just thought I was being an "island" isolating myself and keeping my feelings bottled up. Oh well, I get to feel how I feel and tell those feelings to who I want to tell.

We talked for at least an hour. Too long I know. But I'm in the "I've got nothing to lose" mentality now, and I saw it as an opportunity to check in with W and where she's at with her own processing of our relationship. I'd say it's improved marginally, but she's still set on divorce. She said she wants to start over with our relationship, as acquaintances, so that we can be friends and be good parents for our son. My first thought was "not so fast, you're not getting off the hook that easy!". I asked her what being friends meant to her. I don't remember what she said, but she asked me and I started to get emotional, saying she hasn't been treating me like a friend. I said a friend is someone you can talk to, who you can trust to be there for you to help when you need it. She said she always felt I treated my friends better than her. Thinking on that I believe that could be because my friends treated me better than she did too. Meh. I know W and I both treated each other poorly. I'm happy to try to do better, but I'd like to see some effort from her at building a relationship now.

So when she asked if we could start over and be friends, and not rehash the past anymore, I thought for a while. I don't think the past has been adequately or accurately resolved between us, and I don't feel comfortable sweeping it under the rug and just moving along like it never happened. That's exactly the kind of thing that led me to emotionally abuse my wife. And the biggest obstacle for me is W's affair. So I told her, "If you want to be friends we have to address the fact that I worked hard to try to repair our relationship, and you chose to have an affair instead. We need to talk about that." She looked down, and the first thing she said was "our relationship has been broken since the beginning". No admission, no denial, similar to before. Then she started to instead tell me how I had not included her in the relationship repair work or my own self-growth or something. This time I knew it wouldn't do any good to argue, but I know that is not true. Even if I did fail in some critical ways during that recovery, it was only because I had not yet progressed far enough in my own journey, just as she had not progressed far enough in her own to join me. I don't understand how she can now claim I didn't involve her enough in something she clearly wanted no part of at the time.


Me:30 W:31
S:4
M:7 T:12
PA: 5/6/18 - ?
W moved out 7/18
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Because she is lying to you and herself to appease her guilt.

I just told another poster this same thing: these talks are counter-productive. You shouldn't let her suck you into them. You have NO chance of getting the truth out of her. You have NO chance of getting admissions of guilt from her. You can't believe anything she says. So what value do these conversations have? None. They are valueless. Cheeseless tunnels.

Oh sure, your attachment gets appeased for a while as you get "her attention". But that just proves that you have a lot of work to do to truly detach.

Next time she asks to talk you should say "unless it is about S4 then I am not interested in discussing anything with you". She knows you don't want D, so telling her that has no value. She knows you know the history of R, as does she, so discussing that has no value. When and if she wants to R she will not wait to tell you, she will just come out and say "I am sorry, I made a mistake, and I want to R!"

Quote:
and I saw it as an opportunity to check in with W and where she's at with her own processing of our relationship. I'd say it's improved marginally, but she's still set on divorce.


No there is no improvement. What you say was a WAW, that has moved out, trying to get out of you what she wants? What does she want you ask? You gave yourself the answer:

Quote:
he wanted to tell me that if I removed her from our car insurance and closed our joint accounts, it would "reflect poorly on me in court".


She wants insurance and she wants access to your money. Period. This is why WAWs stay in limbo for as long as possible without filing for D. As long as they have access to the benefits of the MR, why would they change anything.

So let's take score:

- She is living on her own and now can do anything she wants to do. (Remember, Ws don't need to move out for any other reasons than to sleep with someone else or someones else.)

- She has car insurance until you remove her.

- She has access to your money until you remove her from the joint account.

- She apparently can come and go as she chooses (and you are ok with that as shown by being hurt by her leaving her keys). Take her garage door opener away. She needs to see what it means to "move out".

- She has you on the hook to discuss anything she wants with you anytime she wants.

She is eating so much cake it isn't funny.

Time to remove her cake.


M(53), W(54),D(19)
M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017
Ring and Piecing since March 2018
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