Stay strong Nicole. Have you seen your lasts posts are made from a healthier place than those from some days ago? Just keep that attitude girl, keep strong and possitive.
Hoping the best for your D and you.
WW H(me): 53 W: 48 T: 27 M: 22 S: 18 Piecing since 03/2016 Saw the light in the storm
Nicole, the strength you would need to stop worrying about how WAH is $crewing up his own life and to just concentrate on your own should be immense. Do not count on him in any way, emotionally or financially. I know you are strong mentally, I see that in your posts but it is also very apparent you still care for him a lot. You are still worried he may get into harms way if he treads on this path. Remember hon his problems are not yours anymore. He has fired you from that role. I wouldnt worry about the genes your D got from him, she is a blank canvas with an untainted mind, your upbringing will make her a strong independent woman. Just keep her out of your Hs unbalanced ways when you think he is out of control. -Arshi
Arsh, I do care about my husband and how he's screwing up his life but I have to admit I'm also concerned about how his instability affects us. No matter how I do the math, I can't cover all the bills even with a full-time job. We live in one of the most expensive areas in the country and it's been five years since I've worked full-time so my salary and job level have stayed somewhat stagnant. There's also a big risk that I will miss too many days of work - if we get sick like we've been and I don't have enough sick days then I'll have to pay someone $150 or more to stay home with my sick daughter if I can even find someone. I need to downgrade everything in my life to the mere basics to survive and even that isn't enough. It just feels very unfair. I also don't think that's right that I have to be totally on my own financially. My husband has a responsibility to contribute. If he won't do it informally then it's immediately back to getting divorced once he's working again because I could end up bankrupt if everything collapses. All these years I've had a top credit score and no debt and now within the past year everything is crumbling from underneath.
My friend who is closest to my situation and who is also a physician believes my husband will find a new job quickly. He also says I should be tough with my husband and tell him in the meantime either he contributes financially or he moves here to care for our daughter while I work full-time. That makes sense, although I doubt I could convince my husband to care for our daughter.
I do care about my husband and I've invested 12 years of my life into him and this marriage so I wish he would get treatment for whatever is wrong to fix his life. I know there's nothing I can do about that and it's hard because we're still married so our financial decisions and mistakes still affect each other. At this particular moment when my husband is unemployed and I'm only a part-time consultant it's not the best time to get divorced either because we can't even afford the mediator expenses. We just have to get through this somehow.
My husband is now here in our area staying with his family for the next five days. We haven't seen him yet. I again feel upset that he's lounging around with his family when he could be here helping with our daughter. Hopefully he's busy applying for jobs. He's been acting nice but I've been too nice in giving him all this time and space, removing all the pressure, and letting him do whatever he wants instead of finding leverage to get him to care for his own child.
We'll see how it goes when he visits. I do believe DB is right in suggesting you give a spouse time and space and it has helped in our case, but I guess the thing about staying in this limbo period is at some point the wayward spouse almost takes advantage of the time and space and starts to think this is a perfectly fine scenario. We don't have to get divorced anymore, but there's no need to work on the marriage either. I'd still like to wait up to another year before filing for divorce if my husband doesn't do it first, just in case he does decide to turn his life around and for me to be stronger and more stable. It'd be wonderful if my husband chooses to start going to counseling, gets on medication, and wants to reconcile and we slowly see where it takes us. The chances of that appear to be very slim though, so more than likely this "up to one year" will just be more of the same thing.
I understand your financial difficulties Nicole, cant be easy with childcare and medical expenses. What your friend suggested makes sense, have him either continue contributing or take care of your child while you are at work. If he does not find a job in a few months I would do that. He can stay with his family and you can drop off your D or he could baby sit while you are away but make him useful in someway. Dont think of filing for D now, limbo [censored] but this is not a good time. Let things play out, I strongly believe in some way we are all fulfilling our destinies, our WAHs included. At least we are on the right side standing up for MR, not the dark side of the WAS.- Arshi
Arsh, you've gained a lot of wisdom in a short time about marriage and divorce!
All, my husband has been in town these past three days. He's staying at his family's house as usual. The day before he arrived he asked if he could stay at our place for a night but then he never did.
The next day (Friday) he came to visit our daughter for two hours. He said he's working hard to find a new job. He asked about some of our mutual friends for the first time since last summer. When he left on Friday he said he wanted to stay here with us on Saturday night. He also wanted to take our daughter to see his family on Saturday. Our daughter was really happy. I have non-enthusiastic but positive reactions to his plans ("sure, yeah").
On Saturday I said I'd drop off our daughter at my husband's family's house since there was somewhere I wanted to go near there. I drove her there and she wanted me to come in and my husband said to come in. I went in. They've moved since we last saw them and now they're in a big house. I wrote recently about how they don't live under sanitary conditions but everything was clean and sparkling when I came inside. It turns out they have an Ethiopian maid living in their basement now who cooks and cleans for them.
My in-laws seemed happy to see us and my father-in-law said they prepared a special vegetarian dish for me. I ate and our daughter wanted my husband to take her to Target. I was going to leave then but my in-laws looked lonely and I felt I should stay and sit with them. Our communications are limited (language barrier) but we just talked about normal things and nothing about the separation. Then my husband's youngest brother came home and he was friendly and told me about his progress with his career.
When my daughter got back she seemed tired so we left soon after that. I was planning to leave her with my husband the whole day but she stuck to me and seemed uncomfortable. My husband said he'd be coming to our area to meet his best friend for dinner but didn't say anything about staying with us. He called while I was driving to thank me for some specialty food items I gave my in-laws and to ask how the drive was going. Then we didn't hear from him the rest of the night.
Today my husband called almost at noon and asked when he should stop by. He came a short while ago and took our daughter to a playground. She has a party in two hours so I told him to bring her back for that.
I don't know. It's still so hard to grasp what's happening. My husband's family doesn't seem upset with me. They were very nice. It's hard to understand though how they think it's ok for their son to stay with them and visit our daughter just briefly. In their culture this is unusual.
It's also hard to understand why my husband talks about staying overnight and then we don't hear from him at all, or he visits for a short time and has no problem spending most of the time with his friends and family.
I still can't tell if we're headed closer towards divorce or reconciliation. I don't know how long this period of uncertainty will last. My husband said he's trying to find a job in this area. If he does I assume he'll live with his family or get his own place. So I guess this is it? Our life, if it continues as is, appears to be staying married but separated until one of us files for divorce. For me it's still better than divorce for the time being, but still difficult. I miss my husband so when I see him it brings back a lot of memories. I was laying on our old bed working on my laptop on Friday and my husband came and laid down next to me and said he wanted to have a rest and I didn't have to move. I had to move though or else I'd lose all my composure and start to cry in front of our daughter.
It seems on this forum there's a lot of knowledge of wayward wives but not so much about wayward husbands. The therapist I'd been seeing wasn't terribly helpful. I wish to go back to the one I saw in NYC so I may try to see him when I go there later this month. I feel like I need guidance to understand what's happening now. Am I missing something? Is there something I should do differently? Is reconciliation still a possibility or are we just delaying divorce until a more convenient time? I'll continue to live with the uncertainty but I know within some reasonable time period (six months? one year?) one of us will need to talk about the relationship and what to do next.
Do you think your in-laws were more pleasant and happy to see you as part of cultural decorum and politeness? I know that it is something part of my culture and I know it's kinda the same in other parts of Middle East. It's at least good you were able to be there and not feel very uncomfortable.
About where you're going - I dunno. But, what I suspect is happening is that he's in a jam right now and is trying to lean on you for whatever support or time he needs. Maybe he's doing the bare minimum so that his parents and friends don't get on his case about being an absent father. Him saying one thing and doing another seems to be a common pattern with WW/WH, so that's kinda par for the course. You just can't rely on him and anything he says he will do.
This doesn't look like recon to me. Recon would be deliberate, more focused, communicative, and some planning of next steps. This just looks like he's waffling all over the place.
I wouldn't let him stay over at your place. You've made great progress moving forward with your life and don't let him derail things. Him staying over night means nothing, it's just crumbs and it's about himself.
I also want to challenge you on staying at your in-laws. Was it really them being lonely, or you wanting to stay there until your D got back and take her home? Are you creating space for him to get away with being a temporary parent? If you had left, what would've happened? He would've had to figure out the rest of the day and take care of D.
You're not responsible for his relationship with D, but are you also letting him get off the hook being a parent when he's in town?
Nicole, I dont know about gaining a lot of wisdom but as LBS all of us become resigned to our sitches at one point in time and try finding power through our beliefs. I have felt it very often that the site is abundant with WWs and WAWs but not enough guidance for how to deal with WAH/WH. May be someone can guide to specific posts by other users. I have been reading a lot on the MLC threads, it seems very applicable to my own and your sitch. Of course DB techniques and uncertainty of the outcome remains the same. Your inlaws turning a blind eye towards their sons actions is not ok, but you know what they are siding with their own child. My MIL saw me go thru hell and back but as soon as her son opened up and fed his story she sided with him and I couldnt believe how anybody who had any humanity could do this. But then as a mother of 2 young children I understood, she did this as a mother, in some sense a mother is the most selfish being when it comes to her own children and any good mother would take her own childs side. Your MIL might have done the same and then turned the entire Hs family to her view point. This is how it typically works with all families. I would keep my distance with them, if there is anything there you would only get a misinterpretation of your actions and words reaching your WAH thru them, you do not want that. Unless they reach out and want to help you just be with them as you were before.
I'm not sure about my in-laws. I tried to be polite as well. In recent months I thought they probably think I'm a terrible person because my husband must have said a lot of bad things, kind of like your concerns recently, but things seemed normal so I don't know what he said.
That's interesting to hear saying one thing and doing another is a pattern with wayward spouses. Why is that? My husband has never been a great planner but he was reliable in the past. Now it's like he could care less. I guess these people just live in-the-moment?
Yeah we're not reconciling currently because my husband hasn't shown any interest in me. It's more just like a gradual warming that seems to be reinforced more each time we interact. Today we managed to make eye contact when we spoke which at least for me wasn't possible in the past five or six months.
I don't want to bore everyone with another re-cap of our day but it went well and felt very natural for the time we were together. After my husband left he called a while later and said something that was funny and I joked back and we were both laughing. That definitely hasn't happened in way more than a year.
When my husband wanted to reconcile the first time it was very dramatic and unexpected. Currently I just can't tell if he's being nicer because I don't bother him anymore now that I moved away and stopped calling him or if it's because he's mildly sorry and regretful for what he's done. I just can't tell. I just wish I was smart or intuitive enough to read the signs better. My feeling is that my husband is sorry and wants to take small steps towards potentially reconciling but he doesn't want to give me hope in case he changes his mind. Simultaneously I'm not doing anything to indicate I'd be interested in reconciling so we're both in-the-dark as to the other's intentions.
The main reason why I keep writing similar / duplicate type posts, which I'll try to stop doing now because it looks like nothing will change soon, is because it's really hard to live with uncertainty for a long time. A few weeks or a few months is manageable but it looks like in my case I'll probably be doing this for many more months like this unless I file for divorce. I don't want to file but it's hard wondering where this is headed and not being able to get an answer.
I still think Thanksgiving will be the determining date. If my husband shows no emotion that day then I'll be quite sure nothing can save us. This is an extremely important day for my husband due to shopping discounts and turkey, both of which he loves. There's no other day of the year when he's happier. Even this past November he sent an "I'm so sorry for everything" text when our situation was pretty terrible. So I'll wait to see what happens unless he suddenly files for divorce before that which is always possible.
The stay overnight request doesn't appear to be anything related to me or reconciliation. It seems to be more about logistics - my husband staying here because it's easier than driving an hour each way and we live near the airport so easier to stay here when he arrives. He didn't stay, but if he did he'd be welcome to stay in the guest room and help himself to anything. I wouldn't try to socialize, cook for him, or do any of our old normal stuff. Perhaps I should simply say no, he can't stay, but our daughter would be so happy and excited to see him in the morning and she's really happy whenever we're together as a family. I don't know.
Regarding your challenge, I'm not really sure. I think I have trouble leaving my daughter in a situation where I don't have confidence in the people who will care for her. I think I hesitated to hand her over for the whole day when I saw her feeling uncomfortable and being kind of ignored while everyone watched the World Cup game.
At the moment when she and my husband left I was planning to leave as well to go to my destination, but I looked at my in-laws sitting there alone and I felt it would be kind of rude to just leave after not seeing them for so long. Plus they had made me a special recipe so I stayed, but I probably should have left and told my husband I'll expect our daughter back at night and then just let everyone figure it out. I'll have to try it sometime and see how it goes.
For the first 1.5 years of our daughter's life, before my husband left the first time, I'd beg him to take care of her. I couldn't understand why he couldn't be a normal father. I had to go out-of-town one day on a business trip and I told him he would have her for three hours after the babysitter left. When I got back that evening he was totally flipping out and said he couldn't ever do that again and we need a live-in nanny. So then we got an Au Pair and from then on he was off the hook. I should be tough and just hand her off and leave when he visits but I care about her wellbeing and I don't trust my husband so I don't know how to do it. I guess I just have to be strong and accept there will probably be mistakes and tears and frustration and hope for the best.
One other update is that I'm going to try to increase my consulting job hours and delay working full-time for now because it appears I'll lose more money by having a nanny plus pre-school than what I'll make.
I apologize to anyone reading that my posts are so long. It's one of my faults - not being able to be concise. My husband says it, one of my bosses said it, and I try when talking to catch myself if I go on too long to avoid boring the other person. I'll try really hard to make the next post brief!
Nicole, your posts are fine, this is after all the only place where we vent out, and you know what if a WAH says something, then it is absolutely wrong so go on writing. Have you read up the MLC forum posts, especially the homework and stickies there, I do not remember how old your H is but I could apply a lot of what i read there to your sitch and the consensus is MLC could last 3 to 7 years. You could possibly figure out what stage he may be in right now, although i felt in my sitch if WAH is in MLC a lot of these stages are overlapping for him or maybe I still need to understand it better. Try this too thestagesandlessonsofmidlife.org, i could not find the threads here but was able to find it online.
Thanks Arsh I'll check that site and will read more in MLC section of this forum. My husband's psychologist did say he's having a mid-life crisis. It's been nearly three years since it started and even five years since my husband made the first reference to missing out on his youth. When I've read about MLC's there's usually an affair involved. The hard part is that it doesn't appear MLC husbands always come back to their wives at the end. It looks like sometimes they morph into a whole different person and stay that way forever. So there's not much reassurance although the knowledge of what's happening can be helpful and perhaps some do wake up and return. I'll read more to find out more.
