DnJ... Sad to say but it didn’t feel good... it felt GREAT!!!
Okay... in all seriousness, I’m not too worried that this has set us back. If my H is clear on anything, it is that he deserves anything and everything that I throw at him and, considering the things I could have said, he still got off pretty easily. As AS wrote in his post about stages, I do feel like maybe I am coming out of the LBS fog a bit. Seeing things more accurately. Things haven’t happened yet but they will in the next few months. It is not dire, it is just all so unnecessary...it did not have to happen and it would not have happened if my H had tried to live up to even half of his promises. But he chose this... all of it... and he didn’t have enough respect for me or our family to warn me in any way. He just took what he could get and only made his escape when he thought he could reasonably get away with it. He has deluded himself into thinking that this was for me... that he break my heart when we are living closer to my family and friends so I would be “okay”.
His mom came up to talk to me a little while ago. I told her about my rant. She empathized with me and said she had many of the same feelings with his dad. Said that my H keeps telling her “sorry” as well and it isn’t enough for her either and she is still angry too. I told her that once he really crunches the numbers, I don’t think he is going to end up buying a place and that he will probably just rent and blow through the money I gave him. She said, “yeah...and then wait for me to die so he can buy a place then.” Isn’t that a nice thought to have about your only child? I hope she lives to be 100!!! I have an aunt who is 102 so it is definitely possible and she is pretty healthy for an 80 year old. I don’t know what I would do if something happened to her in the next couple of years. She has been my rock and has kept me sane... not just since my H physically left but since he emotionally left which was, in fact, years ago.
Thank you for your wonderful take on all of this. You pointed out that I was quick to recover and you were right. Even now I am smiling as I write this. I am okay and I know I will be okay. (((HUGS)))
Gosh... when my brain gets going... maybe the fog is lifting a bit more. I was just thinking back on my marriage and I realized that in 11, almost 12 years of marriage, I can think of one occasion when my H invited me out with him and a friend and one occasion where we went to his staff Christmas party. That is twice in 12 years of marriage! Is that not strange? I remember that we used to do poker night with some friends from my work but they lived quite far away and it got to be onerous once we all started having kids. I didn’t really have too many friends because I had moved there to be with my H. But he had grown up there. He had lots of friends and I remember he would usually go out about once or twice a month to do something with somebody. The only friends I ever really met were the ones that came to visit him at our home (mostly childhood friends) or ones that we accidentally bumped into. Wow...really having a moment here. More of the fog lifting I think. I keep thinking about all the people I know who have good marriages and the one thing I keep coming back to is that they have a good partnership and a friendship. They like hanging out together. They do things with other couples...go out, take vacations, etc... The more I think about this, the more I realize that my H and I did almost none of that. He stopped liking my company soon after we had kids. Needed his alone time and space and I gave him all of that. When we were together, he seemed irritable, stressed and pressured...always in a hurry. The more I remember, the more I think that I have been deluding myself about the person that I married and the marriage that I had. It is really painful to think about this stuff. I put up with so much crap. I was essentially ignored for years. Honestly...I should be the WAS.
And you need to live in reality. Real life, you are the lighthouse DjV! I started reading your last posts with tears and now I have an evil smile...I’m keeping it! You can’t rescue H girl, he must do it if he figures out his road...
Keep walking girl, keep shining!
(((DjV)))
WW H(me): 53 W: 48 T: 27 M: 22 S: 18 Piecing since 03/2016 Saw the light in the storm
Well, DV6 it must be the week for it. Something FS said on her post resonated with me and I felt a huge amount of fog lift and now you.
"Honestly, I should be the WAS"
I realise I was the WAS in every way but geographically. I checked out of the marriage some time ago. For 20 plus years we bumbled along busy with kids. It was them that connected us. When they grew I looked outside my marriage for connections; colleagues friends etc etc because nothing he offered interested me anymore. We'd been a good team; I wanted to raise a family and be supermom; he wanted to be adored, worshipped and respected as the great provider. I didn't want that anymore. I wanted to be successful in something other than being a Mum. He wanted things to carry on as they were. So, I checked out and did my own thing and we co existed. He'd always done his own thing and I didn't care because I had my boys. I don't offer what he wants anymore and vice versa.
Why o Why did he have too cause so much hurt and go off and have an affair and ruin so many other relationships. It is a sign of his character.
So, I wonder if once your kids have grown and you'd still been in your marriage, you would have also checked out like I did. I just think that this has happened earlier in your R then it did for me.
Would I have a R with my H if I met him for the 1st time today. Probably not, we are very different people and want very different things.
All I can say is that if this is also true for you and your H then what a shame that they are so flipping cowardly that when they realised their feeling, they couldn't do this decently and instead had to lie, manipulate and hurt people.
DV - The darkest times for me (apart from when he was living here) was when my H started taking the kids overnight. I felt exactly the same way as you. Like you and your H, I had gotten used to him not being around (different reasons obviously) but the absence of the children, damn that was hard to take. A second kick in the teeth. The void was huge ... I would rattle around this house like a lost soul trying to find a purpose. And the mind tunnels. Were they having more fun without me?, what were they doing? HOW could they be having fun without me? My H was so thoughtless, he would send me photos from their days out (look, here's us out to dinner and here's one of us skating) The first night he sent me a photo of the three of them with face masks on. When I went to pick them up for the first time he had made them pancakes and had fresh fruit on the side. He had braided their hair. All I could think was when he lived here he spent the night in his chair in front of the TV and it was me entertaining the children. It was me who got up half an hour early so that I could have their breakfast ready and he had never, in the 12 years we had had children, done either of their hair.
But he wasn't being thoughtless. He was trying to be thoughtful by sending me the photos. He wasn't suddenly pretending to be a dad. He was actually trying to be a dad.
Sometimes DV, we can't control what is happening. But we CAN control how we perceive it. Try and think of this from a different point of view. Don't think about what you are missing out on ... think about what you and your children are gaining. You are gaining time on your own. Use it to find you. Do a cooking course, train for a marathon, join a group you would never have joined before. Your children are (hopefully) getting their father back and this can only be a good thing. When you have the children you will be more present (not running around getting the housework done, or the laundry or running errands) and you can spend that time with them not just in their presence but actually with them even if it's just sitting down watching a DVD.
You have managed to crawl your way out of the 'why doesn't he love me tunnel'. Don't get stuck in the 'I'm losing my children' tunnel. You will not lose them. They love you. That we can all see.
Neffer - I am happy I made you smile. Not sure about the EVIL smile though...lol.
Yorkie - Really thinking a lot about the questions you asked me. In a sense, I was checked out of our marriage but not because I didn’t find him interesting or want to spend time with him. I checked out because I had to. I think I have written before about where most of my anger towards my H comes from. He left me years ago...first emotionally and then physically with all of his “nightly treatments”. I missed him terribly. Those years were awful. I was really just on auto pilot. I had no social life at all. On the odd occasion I would get invited out by my kids’ friends’ moms but that was about it. That probably happened once or twice a year. I had a long commute so I probably got about three hours a night with my kids. We were living pay cheque to pay cheque and had to take on an international student (met some great kids) to make ends meet so that was an extra responsibility. On weekends, I would get caught up with household chores. When my H was home, he would either take the kids somewhere to give me a “break” or he would be working on one of his hobbies. He rarely helped out with the house and if he did, it was because me or his mom asked him to. This usually made him quite irritable and resentful though so after awhile we stopped asking and just did it ourselves.
When we moved, I thought it would be a great new beginning for us. We had a new home so very little work needed to be done. We could afford to pay someone to clean our bathrooms and mop our floors so household chores were minimized. No more students or living pay cheque to pay cheque. Life was good. Only my husband was still checked out. In hindsight, I should have tried to do something about it but I naively thought it would just get better with time. Clearly it did not. My H had one foot out the door and was just biding his time until he felt he had sufficient justification to leave. The person I loved and the person who loved me no longer exists. It has taken me awhile to accept that... I think I am about 80% there. The other 20% will come in time. Finalizing this separation agreement will help with that immensely, I think.
Would I have an R if I met my H for the first time? Honestly... I probably would. The things that attracted me to him in the first place are still there. When he wasn’t resentful and broody, he was a lot of fun to be around. He has a good sense of humour and is crazy talented at a lot of things. He’s reasonably attractive and he’s pretty smart and easy to talk to. The parts of his personality that made him a crap husband are not readily apparent. One would have to be in a long term relationship with him to figure those out.
Thank you FS. The one thing I know my H is doing is trying to be a good dad. Like you, I had all of those thoughts too. When we were together, he checked out on them too so I am glad for them that they have him back. The angry thoughts about “why couldn’t he have been like that when we were together” have faded significantly and I am adjusting to the new normal. GAL plans and activities are in the works and I intend to make 2019 a good year. I’m becoming more aware of the “tunnels” and am happy to say that I don’t go down them very often anymore and when I do, it is only for a very short distance. I am looking forward to the day when the tunnels no longer exist.
I know I am not losing my kids and we have lots of good times ahead of us. I am just sad for them that they don’t get to have the experience of growing up in a happy two-parent home the way I did. I really wanted that for them. But I know that I have the opportunity to teach them that life doesn’t always go the way we want it to and you can still be happy and rise above. You can forgive and treat people with kindness - even when they haven’t necessarily treated you that way in return. And I can teach them that happiness and life satisfaction is something you find within you and not something you get from other people. Those are important and valuable lessons that not everyone learns - particularly at such a young age. So life has given me some lemons and now I just have to make lemonade.
