MLCxH - this MC focuses on communication. I was impressed with him calling out our communication issues. We need to resolve those for our kids sake whether or not we stay married.
Forget about saving your marriage Uni. There is absolutely nothing you can do to save it at this time. They have to want to save it on their own volition and choice. How do you achieve that? Simple. Give her so much space that she has to question her own thoughts and actions over a period of two years seperated. Be consistent. Positive, negative (as little as possible.) Or indifferent. Minimize emotional interactions as much as possible, unless she brings them up. Stand your ground and don't allow yourself to be manipulated, whether intentional or unintentional. Challenge your perceptions and beliefs and hers, if the situstion arises. Step back from yourself and be an observer in all this. Remove your attachment. Make concise logical decisions in what is best for you and kids. Go out and GAL. Try to subdue compulsive thinking. Meditate. The mind is a tool and will go crazy looking for solutions we don't have the answers to until it finds what it wants. Rest it and the thoughts and the clairity and peace will follow. Accept as much of the present as you can handle. Make peace with the whole sich. Make peace with yourself. Let her go, and let the old you go. Avoid denial. It just keeps us stuck longer, think if other ways you can better cope and be more grounded emotionally. Go for a walk. Do anything to interrupt your mind. If your body is not moving, your mind most likely is. Make your improvements a conscious habit for 28 days. Anything else I can think of that will help I will add.
So many responses and my mind is spinning. I appreciate all the 2x4's guys I really do.
Re: the house - if we D, it has to be sold. We can't afford the mortgage if we split income.
I only have 2 points right now:
1. I absolutely agree my W and I need space from each other. IHS will not work. So either I stay in the house or she does, or we do some nesting arrangement. Even if one of us filed for D, I would say we need to separate immediately. For my own emotional well-being.
So the question is who stays in the house, and who leaves. You guys don't need to tell me your advice at this point, I got it
2. My W is incredibly confused. She clearly thinks this is my fault. She also has conflicted feelings. That doesn't mean I have hope we can turn it around, but she is not 100% out the door. She said some odd things that indicate she is incredibly conflicted, and I don't think she said these things "for effect." Or she could be full of s@#$. I have to decide whether or not I think things could turn around and whether I want to go through that process knowing it likely won't happen.
My XW moved out 3 weeks after BD and I helped her financially. It was worth every penny to not live under the same roof with someone that didn't want to be with me. I was not going to do in house separation for 3 months while she got her ducks in a row. I have no regrets and it had no bearing on whether or not she returned to the marriage.
YOU have to do what is best for YOU!
If you moved out of your house tomorrow would you be able to emotionally handle her bringing men into your home?
I understand the emotion, the feeling that you absolutely need to get out of the toxic environment of living with someone who has already checked out on the relationship. It is brutal. However, you are giving your W all the power here by agreeing that IHS won't work. You can't control her. You can't make her leave the house, so you are going to let her stay so that you can escape the emotional burden. But that also means that you are leaving YOUR house, leaving your kids, because SHE doesn't want to be married or is confused, or whatever other BS emotion she is feeling at this moment. You are taking away the natural consequences of her actions and letting her enjoy the fruits of the MR (house, kids) while also walking away from the actual MR. Of course she is going to push for that, and do whatever it takes to push you out so she gets it. It's not just a question of fairness or being in the right, it is going to make your life materially worse to have to move from your home, away from your children.
Don't let your emotions make this decision for you. I did, and I regret it. Take the time to really consider what is best for you and your kids (forget about the MR for now) going forward.
W 34 Me 42 Married 7 years together 8 0 kids 1 beloved dog BD 4/6/2018 I moved out 4/7/2018 I moved back in alone 8/05/2018 I file 3/06/2019 D official 5/7/2019
I confirm today that W is depressed with herself and sich, and is looking on working on that with IC to find activities and purpose while single mom, seperated, and work on self esteem, and is conflicted with herself about the whole thing, according to a IC document I saw left out on table. She doesn't know if I broke her or she doesn't know she's broken, or what could be a combination of both? PTSD, EMOTIONAL ABUSE, BLAME AND GUILT SHIFTING. While it may have some validity, I didn't break her, and its not my job to fix her or her perceptions. But empathize with it. But it is my job to either change my behaviors or not demonstrate the bad ones at all.
I'm trying to say here she's probably second-guessing herself on whether it's her, or whether it's you? They will most likely say that they are only reacting to you which is partly true. You could even say the same thing that you are only reacting to her and the situation. So what do you do? Remove all reactivity and situations that may prompt such for now.
Like LH19 said. She thinks you are fragile, unreliable, independable, and emotionally insecure. PROVE HER WRONG! Like Nails also said. Make a decision to stay in the house.Communicate it calmly and even temoered, and let her figure out the rest for herself. Like AS also said. She knows that if she moves out it's going to put her in a difficult decision in court, as well as her own well being financially. She knows she needs time to stage all of this which is the whole purpose of the 6-month trial separation. She is staging to buy herself more time to get away from you. you are not stopping her and you are not controlling her and you are not manipulating her. She's free to do as she pleases but you are sticking to your guns and staying in the house and the MBR. You are protecting yourself your home your castle and your kids.
You have to get used to not engaging in any dramatic behavior. You have to get used to being comfortable with the silence between you and her. You have to get comfortable with any move she makes on incremental basis away from you and the marriage.
When you stand your ground on these things she's going to try to Gaslight you, make you feel guilty, and manipulate you into giving in to achieve her end goal. They won't realize that that they are doing this, and are being manipulative what they are. They feel like they are owed some kind of suffrage for putting up with you. What they want is to not only get away from you but either keep the house and the children, or push you out if it, or even like in my case, sell it to not only get away from you, but make a gain from it to start a new life. and they try to get you to agree to it on their terms. By all means pay for your kids and take care of them. Ill input more later W just pulled up in driveway.
IHCLACS - This really resonated for me. To be completely honest, sometimes I find your posts to be very edgy and sometimes you sound angry at women in general and it makes me uncomfortable. I'm sorry but at this fragile state I prefer blunt honesty. And please continue to deliver it back to me as well.
But this post resonated so much with my own situation. And like you I empathize with my W even if I don't agree.
My home and castle will need to be sold, unless we R. It is a fact. It is a physical structure. What I care about is that it is my kids' home. Other than that it is largely symbolic.
Ignore the home issue for a second, My W wants time and space. She wants to get back to work. She is a wreck. She admitted some weeks she drank a bottle of wine every night, others she was stress-eating. I noticed ALL of this. She is a mess, and if she says it's the stress of being around me, by all means, I will separate. Living together is not healthy right now. I'm not even saying I think we can ever reconcile. I think the combo as you said of PTSD, EMOTIONAL ABUSE, BLAME and GUILT SHIFTING -- that is a HUGE mountain to climb. I have no control over whether she can get over it. It seems impossible when I look at it. And then she talks about the past and how she wants to get back to that place. How D is the last thing she wants, but she just can't keep living like this. I can only be reliable, dependable, and emotionally stable. Which is good for me anyways.
Standing my ground on the house? It is summer time. My kids are out of school. I work FT. My W moves, I don't see how the kids stay at the house. They need their mom. As awful as this situation is, they need her as primary caretaker. So then they need to move also. They need me too. It's a mess.
Yes I feel manipulated, guilted, etc. I also feel like I can stand my ground in other ways. Come over for dinner with the kids at the house? That's playing family, probably not a good idea. Get a 1BR place and have the kids sleep over periodically? Actually I think creating a 2nd home with rooms for the kids is a better idea, Dad's house, with a set custody-style schedule that we agree upon. I mean, this would basically be the same as a D situation, except my W stays in the house instead of selling and moving somewhere else.
Anyways... I get it. I'm too nice, easy-going, amicable. I still want things to "work out" whether we D, S, or R. I don't care so much about the outcome anymore, but I am still liable to cave to demands.
I haven't been on here in a while, but I have been reading your posts most days watching what is like a mirror image of my situation at home.
3 kids under 8, M almost 13 years, W wants out from emotional abuse, that she told me she wanted to stop 18 months ago - then she started an almost year long A. She confessed the PA, only to discover she was having a concurrent EA. She has never let go of that to 'work' on the MR.
She stopped MC about 2 months ago to BD. I have have been in turmoil ever since.
But what has resonated with me from everyone here: LH, Steve, AS and others is - you're not in a position to negotiate or win your marriage back anymore by conceding or acquiescing to her needs.
If she wants separation, she can figure that out. It's not mean, it's not uncooperative, it's not manipulative. It's your position, it's your boundary. No matter how much guilt or shame you feel from your years of doing things - you know those things now. You can't live in that place anymore. My W wants me to though. She doesn't want to hear changes OR even see them. It doesn't match her narrative. She continues to bring me articles about abuse, patriarch, women's issues.
STAY in the house. If you're not going to file, STAY in the house. It's your house. They're your kids. And quite frankly you potentially could set yourself up to get less in custody if you leave.
Not many (if any) guys have talked about them leaving OR nesting working for them.
She can have her space. She can go out. She can sleep downstairs. She can stay at a friends. That's her choice.
If you're going to wait this out, stand strong in your standard. I am doing myself to maintain hope, it's not working. But I'm not leaving.
My W is a SAHM, I'd feel horrible to do anything that feels like kicking her out financially BUT this is the family agreement we talked about before we even had kids. I'm not going to feel guilty about me bringing home all the money and her not having the opportunity to because we agreed she'd raise the kids at home.
But things are different now. She's declaring independence. But that doesn't mean you have to be a doormat. You can support your family. But you can set your boundaries. Don't finance her fun. Heck they are your boundaries, if she's not going to move toward you with her choices....honestly, what do you have to lose?
I am going back through this entire thread to RE-READ and RE-READ everyone's amazing encouragement and advice because I want to be healthy. I am tired of being a sniveling weakling that my wife can control by throwing me a bone every once in a while saying she is still conflicted. Her actions have said otherwise.
You can both manage to parent the kids, be roomates until: 1. She gives you evidence she really wants to work. 2. You decide you've had enough and file 3. You give yourself small timelines that you want to work toward. (ie by the end of Summer let's see where we are)
You're a great dude U. It absolutely [censored] to be in this position to let this dream die of what we thought would be the absolute love of our lives. I feel all of what you're going through. I'm codependent, I'm manipulative, I'm controlling but I really want to get healthy.
And if you want to make healthy choices, these guys (and gals) up here have given you enough to live on for the next several weeks.
H46 W38 M12 T15 D8,S7,S5
11/12/17 "I don't want to be married like this" A began 7/12/18 Confessed A 10/1/19 EA still happening with 2 4/23/19 "I want a D, but I want to stay until I find a job"
