Hello everyone, I have not been on the boards in about 6 months. I was active on here this time last year up until the summer. I have a dilema on my hands that I need help with.
To start, my W and I seperated in November 2007, our story is like many others here, she built up anger toward me during our 14 years of marriage and one day she had enough, we seperated and I fought like crazy to save the marriage up until time of mediation and then I gave up. We have two beautiful boys, 11 and 7. I moved back to my hometown which is about an hour from wife and kids. I completely cut off communication with her except when it involved the boys but that was not that often. I moved on with my life and got involved in another relationship. That has been 4 months now, W and I were divorced last month as I filed the day after Christmas.
During our seperation, W had so much hate and resentment toward me that she would not listen to my pleading. Her walls were high and there was no breaking them down, I tried my best and finally gave up and moved along.
I got involved in church and found the lord. I prayed that someday she would do the same.
About two weeks ago she called me crying on the phone for she was having trouble with the bank and refinancing the house. This was the first time any emotion was shown in over a year. She recently started going to church about 3 weeks ago. I get another call on Sunday this past week talking about my son and baseball for the upcoming year. She proceeds to tell me that in church the day before the sermon was about people who give up on relationships, about how in today's society it is so easy to go and file for a divorce instead of fighting for what is right. "This same sermon was preached to us at my church the week before." She states that during this sermon, she was moved to go and buy the movie "Fireproof" and she wanted me to watch it. States it was our lives reincarnated. A friend of mine had asked her when this movie was in theaters if she would go and watch it before she proceeded down the path of D, she refused at the time but felt moved on Saturday to go and buy it. She talked to me about the movie, at the end of the conversation, I made the statement to her that it doesn't seem that the movie would have an affect on her like my friend thought it would, her reply was, "you don't know what effect it had on me."
This brings us to today, I watched the movie myself, it is very good by the way and I recommend it to anyone dealing with D. I felt I needed to call her and go see her today. I drove to her house and we talked for some time. It was an emotional conversation. She explained how I had hurt her and she had so much resentment toward me in the past year going through the D and she was determined she was not going to bring her walls down to ever be hurt again. She proceeded to say that in the past 2 months that her life has been living he!! and by this time she thought things would be easier but in fact they were getting harder. She states she now realizes that the two of us were at fault in the marriage and I was not the only one to blame. To make a long story short, she tells me she doesn't know where this will lead that only God had the answers and she couldn't tell me what I needed to hear.
This is the first time in 14 months that she has shown any emotion to our seperation and D.
I am in a relationship now with someone else who I do care for and I am between a rock and a hard place. There is nothing more in life that I would want more than to save my family but at the same time W still doesn't know what she is wanting. I obviously do not want to continue in the relationship I am in now if I have a chance of salvaging my family and at the same time, I hate to lose someone I have grown close to if this doesn't play out.
Does this story sound familiar with anyone else on the boards, what did you do, how did it play out? I am very confused right now and needing some direction. I will be praying about it. I am looking for any feedback you may have. What should be my next step? I am lost on what I should do at this point.
Feel free to ask any questions as I know this is very basic on what is happening right now and to keep the topic short, I left out a lot of things to keep from boring anyone.
BTW, W is not in a relationship nor has she been in one during this whole process.
Hey ping, sorry that things went the way they did for you. I was wondering what had come of you.
It really sounds to me like maybe you might have proceeded through the divorce as a way of trying to get past the hurt yourself and just wanted out of the pain. Completely understandable, we all have our limits.
So a couple of questions that would be great if you could answer before we go any more in depth on things here.
1. What does the woman you are seeing think of all this?
2. Is the woman that you are seeing now aware of how you feel about your family and what you would do if given the opportunity to heal it?
3. (Please don't answer this one with the off the cuff "yes or no" answer, give it some thought and tell us how you feel.) Do you want to give your marriage a second chance and is it worth sacrificing your current relationship for a period of time to see what will happen?
I think if you answer these questions we will be able to give you a bit better advice/suggestions to help you along your journey. You know my friend, WAS can have changes of heart and no one dictates the time frame that it takes for them to get there. I know people on here who have had them come around 3-4 years after the initial bomb. Sometimes when they do you it is to late, sometimes it isn't. The big question is what do you want?
I hear a man who WANTS to believe that it's not too late.
I hear a man who does not want to hurt the new woman in his life, but who knows that there are still feelings inside of him for his ex-wife that are stronger than his feelings for the new woman.
I agree with Ian that talking this out with the new woman in your life is potentially a good thing. If she's a quality person, if she knows your previous situation and how you felt about what happened in it and why, she might give you an honest opinion of what she thinks you should do.
What do YOU want Ping?
Remember that when the crap was hitting the fan, you didn't have much say in what was going to happen.
Well, you DO now.
So what do YOU want?
Blessings,
Bill
"Don't tell me the sky is the limit when there are footprints on the moon."
Thanks Mike, Ian, Bill and Amy. To answer Ian's questions.
1. The woman I am seeing right now does not know of the new developments, she does know that W called 2 weeks ago emotional on the phone. She is unaware of the past few days developments.
2. The woman I am seeing now does know that the reason I am no longer with my W is because W didn't want me anymore. She knows that I wanted to save my M and I did all I could do to salvage it. The OW is very skeptical of my W coming back to me as she feels in her heart that it would hit her sooner or later and she would possibly regret her decisions.
3. This is the hardest question of all, there is nothing more I want in life than to have my family back. W will not give me any indications on what she is feeling about working on us other than she has been moved by the movie and church. Her walls were higher than I could have ever imagined and she told me those walls are coming down as she now realizes that it took two of us to end our marriage, it was not only my fault although I do take most of the blame. She has recieved many bible versus in the past two weeks just showing up at her work, she doesn't want to just jump in to any feelings right yet. She actually had a verse left on her chair this morning when she arrived at work. She told me she found a pendant in her work parking lot last week that stated "Believe in him", she turned this in at the front desk and told the receptionist she had found it. The next day when she was leaving the receptionist called her over and said this pendant is yours, W stated "no, I found it and turned it in so the rightful owner would claim it." the receptionist told her "the rightful owner told her to give it to whomever found it as they found it for a reason." W is uncertain of what these signs are that are being thrown her way right now and she doesn't want to jump the gun.
The OW situation is very fragile, she is actually going through a D right now in which will be finalized at the first of March. Her husband cheated on her so she has her own guards up, her number one guard is another man leaving her.
I know I have to make a decision on this, it is not fair to OW if I am going to persue to salvage my family. I also know that OW will probably not have anything to do with me if I make that decision as she will feel violated by another man in her life.
W did tell me tonight that these feelings started hitting her about 2 months ago and she didn't know how to talk to me.
I did file for D to end the pain and move along with my life. I am in so much of a better place today then I was going through all of this. I can look at this situation so much clearer now then what I was able to do going through the whole seperation. I want to be cautious in the direction I go. I know that if W and I are to save our marriage, it will be a long process, there will need to be trust built back up on both sides. We would need counseling to help us through it. W and I are both scared.
One other thing I just thought of I need to add. We never attended church as a family during our M. S7 has all kinds of knowledge about God and W and I have no idea where this knowledge has come from. W was telling a friend of hers at work about how he is so knowledgeable and she didn't understand how. W's friend told her "you just don't get it do you, don't you realize God was using your S7 to tell ya'll that you needed to find God, he was using S7 to try and help us but we didn't see it."
In my eyes, W and I have been giving many signs recently on the path we need to travel, problem remains that W is extremely cautious in recieving them.
As I see it. Your current lady (CL) seems to be a decent woman who is also in the 'letting go' part of the divorce.
So, if her husband were to come to her with a similar situation, what would she do? She probably doesn't know, and that's ok.
The thing is, as others before me have said, what do YOU want?
I mean, really, your current lady gives you a feeling of worth, of value. However, is that all you need? Or, do you need a feeling of family? Of commitment?
Yet, the struggle is this: Can you trust XW to give that commitment, or is she just using you because, let's face it, you've always rescued her.
DO NOT put any faith in anything I said about 'using you' because I just don't know. Just use the 48 hour rule and think about it, ok? Only you know the truth. We're just cheerleaders on the sidelines.
The next day when she was leaving the receptionist called her over and said this pendant is yours, W stated "no, I found it and turned it in so the rightful owner would claim it." the receptionist told her "the rightful owner told her to give it to whomever found it as they found it for a reason."
I got a chill when I read that...
Originally Posted By: ping1
In my eyes, W and I have been giving many signs recently on the path we need to travel, problem remains that W is extremely cautious in recieving them.
This, in my mind, is very telling. But this is still a time for much caution. I want to hear the true Sages of this place weigh in on this, but I do believe in Divine Intervention and Providence. You are doing what is correct, and what is proper in the eyes of the Lord right now, you are considering this.
If nothing else, I'm gonna say a prayer for you and your X wife before I go to sleep. Sounds to me as if I am not the only one who is/has been doing this. For those on this board so inclined, I'd ask them to do the same.
Love is a decision. In this case you have to make a choice of who to love. If you choose to love your wife, then you have to completely let OW go. End of story. You make your choice just like you jump out of an airplane with a parachute. You can't go halfway out the door.
Hypothetically, let's say you choose your wife. Then what? Where's the parachute? Where's the guaranteed soft landing? There are no guarantees. Not with either of your choices. But you and your wife could learn to understand yourselves and each other much better by going to a Retrouvaille weekend. The website is http://www.helpourmarriage.org and it will give you the dates, locations and contact information to sign up for a weekend. The weekend will give you both a full weekend of learning about each other,of opening up your hearts and telling each other what you feel. And you will be taught how to listen with your heart to the other person. They will give you the most important tool for a healthy marriage -- communication.
But they will ask something of you. They will ask you both to come with an open mind and a willing heart. And they will ask if there are any third parties involved. So if you go, you have to go without another party waiting in the wings. You go with an ability to commit. They will help both of you break down the walls that separate you. Love, trust, commitment, forgiveness, they are all choices. If you both choose your marriage, and keep choosing it every day, there is no way you will fail.
