Affair discovered 3

[STH17]

The only reason I can think of is for income verification. The documents show her old address, not where she's trying to enroll son. I gave W her mail and W2, and told her I don't have a physical copy of the tax return since I e-filed and she can get one herself from IRS online because I didn't want to email sensitive info to her. No arguing today. No mention of her library books last night or today. I won't bring it up, and if she asks again I still plan on telling her I'm not doing things like that for her anymore.

[STH17]

ugh. A week ago I told W she would have to take care of her student loan payment from now on. I've been watching the joint checking account it usually gets paid from, and noticed that over the weekend she transferred the last of our savings account into the checking account, but was still about $10 short for the student loan payment. Today the student loan payment was taken out of the joint checking account, and overdrafted the account. What really surprised me though was that an overdraft protection was automatically applied that came out of MY credit card. I have my own card with that bank, and we have a joint card that W is the owner of which I have asked her to remove me from. I'll have to talk to W about it.

Hmm I just took another look, and see that just a day ago my cousin cashed a check I wrote him for his wedding two months ago. The overdraft still would have occurred regardless of this check being cashed, but now the amount of the overdraft that is "my responsibility" is a little muddied. The fact remains that W did not put enough money in the account to cover her student loan payment. Now that the accounts are empty, if W continues to overdraft them, I will close them.

I need to be careful with this situation because a typical behavior from me is to have expectations about how I want W to do something, not communicate that fully to her, then get upset when she does something different than I would have or the way I wanted her to do it. So I need to not tell her "why didn't you do this or that", but just address the facts that I told her she was responsible for her student loan payment, and now the checking account is overdrawn because she did not make arrangements for that. How is she going to keep that from happening again? And if she is not going to keep it from happening again, I will, by closing the accounts.

[SteveLW]

Good 180 here STH. Keep it up, eventually she will realize that not having you there is going to hurt.

[neffer]

Hi STH. How are you doing?

[STH17]

Hm, a month since I updated here.
Shortly after last post, W finished closing the bank accounts. So our financial separation (nothing legal or official) is pretty much complete aside from my name still being on the jointly held credit card she is primary owner of, and me paying our monthly health insurance premium. We've settled into a routine for exchanging son each weekend, without really talking a lot about it or the future.

W has son enrolled in a 4K public school near her parents' house, and I was going to object to that because it would prevent me from having son overnight Sunday nights, but last week W told me he was placed in the afternoon class so the only change to the schedule we've fallen into is that I would get son later on Fridays. That is not so bad because it allows me to work more hours on Fridays on my master's project. I suppose the alternative still could be for me to arrange child care for son on my own, but the arrangement my W has made isn't looking so bad anymore.

I have been texting W every evening I am without son to ask to talk to son. We don't talk to each other unless it's about scheduling pickups and dropoffs. We're pretty much done having any kind of relationship.

I've continued meeting with the running group, and am starting to go to public outdoor workouts that meet a couple days a week before work. Exercise has been great for me, and meeting new people in the groups has been good too. with.

I met a guy a week ago who is in the running group, and went to his house for dinner. He asked if I had a wife and kids, and I told him I had a son and I had a wife who moved out. His reply was "oh yeah, that happened to me too with my second wife, she said 'I've got a place and I'm moving out in a week', so I said 'Ok, I'll go downstairs and tell the kids.'"
Then the guy asked if I had a girlfriend yet. Interesting to me that he followed up with that question so quickly. I just said no, we're still married. He brought it up again the next time I saw him though, like he wants to get me dating someone. I still don't think it's right for me to do that while still being married.

[NicoleR]

Hi STH, it's good to hear your updates. It would always be nice if there was better news but it's good to know some of the logistics are working out and you're making new friends. I agree it's questionable as to whether dating while still married is the right thing to do. I personally think making friendship connections with people of the opposite gender that could lead to future dating possibilities is fine. I haven't found anyone like that for myself but perhaps you will. When do you think you or your wife will take the next step towards divorce?

[STH17]

For a while about a month ago I kept expecting divorce papers in the mailbox every time I checked the mail. I used to dread it, now I almost get excited hoping to find them there. Don't know if that even comes in the mail or what, but that's what pops into my head every time. I don't know if W is/has worked on moving that forward at all since she moved out. Might be up to me in the end, or she'll blindside me again as continues to happen every so often, most recently with son's school. I dropped son off at her parent's house last weekend, and noticed that all her boxes are covering the frontroom. It looked to me like the stuff had been there since she moved in with her parents, but I don't know that for sure.

Today W texted me some info about son's school, which he is starting on Monday. She said she'd "like it if I dropped him off Monday and picked him up Friday" from school. And she has a new job starting tomorrow "for the morning shifts". Said she can give me more information about that. Which would be the first time in months she's given me any information about what she's doing, besides when I asked her if she had a job a week after she moved out and I was starting to cut off support. Enough about her. If I am to do the drop-offs, that will take more than 6 hours out of my week, just spent driving. I want to reply "I'd like you to drive S up to my house and take the rest of your stuff back with you" since she has left a room full of her stuff at our house still too, and hasn't said a word about it since I told her I didn't want her dropping by and taking a few things at a time.

She left me, and now we don't talk. And I'm two steps behind on everything pertaining to son, divorce, job, life...

Going to school tonight to work on my master's project. It's been neglected for a long time as I've been doing a lot more GAL stuff. For the dating decision, I still am thinking heavily about what W would think about it, and whether I'd be violating my own marriage commitment. Filing for D still seems like breaking my marriage commitment. I know W already did break it, so maybe I'm just stubbornly holding on to something that isn't there. That's the dilemma all LBS are faced with though isn't it? WAS says it's over, but the LBS doesn't believe it. Until the LBS just gets tired of waiting? Which is what led the WAS to say it's over in the first place, they were tired of waiting for change. I'm just starting to wonder what's the point of resisting divorce if there's nothing I can do to stop it. If it's inevitable, the sooner the better right? I guess that's what I'm feeling now, but still would rather W do the filing herself. I told her she would have to file by herself months ago, and that's about when we stopped any communication about anything. Well, that's when she had a breakdown, got meds and intensive therapy, then moved out.

[STH17]

Last week butted heads with W over who would be taking on the burden of driving son back and forth interstate now that son has started 4K. I dropped off son on his first day (Oct. 1) and W came along in my car to show me where to go for the dropoff. I have told her I can drop off son on Mondays at school if she drops him off at my house Friday afternoon/evening. She pushed back on that, saying she isn't going to drive through rush hour traffic anymore to get son to me. She told me I could drive all the way to pick up son.

Since I thought it clear W was not going to give me what I wanted, I asked my mom for help with the driving. I can't take 6 to 8 hours out of my week every week to do all that driving myself. My mom agreed to drive son to me twice a month on Fridays. I think I can do the Friday drive once a month and spend a weekend at my parents' with son. I have two priorities, first is spending as much time with son as I can, which to me means not giving up Friday nights or Monday mornings, and second is getting time to work on my master's project.

My IC advised me to tell W that having time with son is important to me, and focus on that in negotiating rather than me rigidly setting down times I expect to have son delivered to me. I was all ready to discuss with W last Friday immediately after my IC appt, but W texted saying she didn't feel comfortable negotiating with me on the phone, and she would send me a proposal in a few days. That was 5 days ago and no mention of it since. We both are typically bad at following through on those kinds of commitments, and I doubt W even saw it as a real commitment to send me anything. So I think it falls upon me to make the next move still. I committed to my men's group to send W an email tonight to get the ball rolling, but now I'm writing this post instead after not knowing what to say in my email to W.

Recommendations welcome. I have an idea of what I think I'd settle for, which is for W to drive son to me one Friday a month, with me taking him to school every Monday and splitting up the other Friday pickups between my mom and myself. I don't want to lead negotiations with that and have to settle for less, which is why I was waiting for W's proposal, but I could be waiting for something that never comes. We haven't talked about this weekend yet, but I made plans to babysit for my sister so I'd likely drive down to get son this week.

[STH17]

Got a call while at work but couldn't answer because I was in a meeting. No voicemail, but I looked up the number and saw it was from an employee assistance program near W. Don't know anything about it or why I would be getting a call from them. W must have given them my number. Lots of stories in my head about why. Last week as I was setting up a payment for my credit card, I noticed W started using our joint card again, for what looks like clothes, jewelry, skincare, hobbies, all typical stuff for her but which she hasn't put on that card for the last few months. I also saw that she made a payment to a collections agency. I think that's for a medical bill, as I had to pay to the same people a month ago for an overdue medical bill of my own (just a couple copays I thought I had paid but apparently not). I don't know if W has a huge bill she's slowly paying off (from the hospitalization) or if that one payment settled it for her. She didn't ask me about it.

I still haven't written to W about scheduling pickup/dropoff. I think I'll just ask her when I can expect a proposal from her, and state that I have plans this weekend that allow me to pick up son near her. I worry that asking when I can expect a proposal will be received by her as me being pushy, judgmental, and angry. I think I am those things, because I am frustrated that I have not yet received what she said she would send me, and I want to plan my weeks ahead.

[lost8]

Haven't read all your sitch, but when I found out about EA/PA I dumped all joint accounts. I said I am not financing any of your new lifestyle. If that is possible get out of all of those arrangements