Time for LBH to move home? WAW can do the walking.

[AlwaysTrying]

It didn't work. I failed in my ultimate goal. I tried my best, and I'm proud of that.

I also did a lot of things wrong. Spying on her. Getting caught spying on her. Didn't give her enough space. Showed my anger more often and more intensely than was helpful.

I could never make the struggle go away. There was always a struggle over when I get to see with the kids or be home or so much back and forth and mistrust over money.

Early on, my wife asked if we could be separated for 6 months to a year. That is how she started this with me. It was a hell of a bomb. I'm pretty sure if I had just taken her up on it, we'd have been piecing within a few months. I wasted my first opportunity to rescue the marriage by being to slow to change the things that were hurting her (before the bomb, while we were in counseling). How dense was I that we were in counseling and I didn't realize my marriage was teetering on the edge.

A couple of weeks after the bomb, we were still in counseling and she was giving me a chance to turn around, but too often I followed her around the house trying to get explanations or reassurances and ultimately, suspecting an EA, spied on her and got caught. She told me I had to move out or she would file.

I couch-surfed at friends' houses for about 5 weeks. We had very little contact and being shut out by her was really hard for me to accept. The last two weeks of that time were good for her, though. The distance was making her heart grow fonder. I was boiling over, though and moved back into the house. She filed a few days later.

A couple of months after my wife file, I moved out on the condition that she put the divorce on hold. She wouldn't agree, so I did it anyway and finally got her to agree to those terms. I did my best divorce busting during that period, but things were probably too far gone. IDK. Nothing seemed to really work.

A few months after that, she started marching down the divorce path again, so I moved home. Honestly... Some things started to seem better during this period. This is when I stopped posting on the board.

I tried so hard. But we passed the tipping point, it would seem, when I moved back in the first time, or maybe when she caught me spying on her, or maybe way before that and nothing I did was good enough.

I guess what I'm saying is... don't be me. When things look bad, calm down and get a grip on yourself. Be strong no matter how you feel. Space is OK, even though it's scary. Take LRT seriously.

My divorce isn't final yet. I've spent the last month pestering my wife to do a separation for a while instead, but that obviously hasn't helped. She's been moved out for about two months now into her own place. I see the kids 8 out of 14 days, even though I only get 4 sleepover days out of those 14.

We're still fighting over child support. The NY State formula specifies that should give her an amount of money that will make me go bankrupt. She wants $300 in child support a week, plus half of child care, plus I still have to maintain a house and a life for them, plus I pay half of medical expenses and pay for half of the clothes and books and coats and hats and everything else. It's insanity.

But she won't talk about it.

Anyway. Checking in. I wish I hadn't dropped off the board, but I felt so defeated when W decided to go forward with the divorce again and I moved home and I just couldn't post any more.