I guess this is a good time to summarize progress in my situation.
The new title is "Walk-away spouse is working her way back to me" because this is what she told me the other night. This is good news all-in-all.
Here's a time-line of our relationship I constructed several months ago to try to get a handle on my situation:
2009 W starts running, has never exercised before. Goes from nothing to wanting and doing a marathon.
2010 W has breast enlargement. Has engagement/wedding ring redone frome gold to white gold, her preference. Later stops wearing wedding ring and wears another ring instead.
May 2011 20th annivesary
August 2011 Move from East coast to CA. W must leave job/friends.
Jan 2012 W is bored working from home. starts kick-boxing, not extreme enough and starts Jui Jitsu.
May 2012 W goes to tym 3-4 nights/week. Doesn't want to spend time with me.
June 2012 W makes friends with German guy from gym, he is much younger. Nothing happens, he has to return to Germany.
Oct 2012 Relationship is bad, we treat each other poorly, argue, and have small fights.
Nov 2012 W buys a smart phone, compulsive texting starts.
Dec 2012 W comes home late one night because she stayed after gym for dinner with another guy.
Dec 2012 I start spying, and see W is interested in OM and I confront her and say either she ends contact or moves out. She leaves but returns late in the same night.
Jan 2013 W says ILYBINILWY. Several more times she says she never loved me, and thinks about divorce.
Late Jan 2013 I start DB-ing
March 2013 W indicates she will not be leaving, but is not in love. Staying for kids. Starts kitchen remodel.
April 2013 Relationship is good on surface, but W is not in love. Infatuation with OM continues, but he pays her no attention.
May 2013 W says "she loves me" But then later in month says says she is "work her way back to me" The I love you may have been from guilt.
Overall Assessment: My situation really started in 2012, DB-ing started in Jan 2013, and the situation went from bad to good in about 6 months. My goal is to get to the point where she will start expressing love for me, or states a committment to being in a loving relationship, rather than just being married to somebody that she doesn't romantically love.
I say my W is in MLC because of significant behavioral changes over the past year or so. These changes are: MLC Behavior:
1. excesive exercise 2. goes out with younger, single friends 3. little interest in being a mom and doing mom things 4. cosmetic surgery 5. unhappy with new job after 2 months and it was a "dream job" when she first got it. 6. Wants to go back to college again 7. spends money like there is no tomorrow 8. no longer interested/does older hobbies 9. seeks thrills, wants to go sky-diving. 10. flirst with all other men, regardless of their tyep 11. acts selfish 12. wants a new car, won't drive minivan 13. new clothes 14. takes forever to get ready doing make-up, hair, etc.
Some MLC behaviors have toned down. My W is no longer paranoid about her email, FB, and phone like she was in terms of secrecy. My W is no longer posting on FB as much as she was. If she misses a night at the gym, she doesn't brood the way she used too. She treats me 10x better now. She does go out with me and spend time with me.
Hi Cadet, yes I've read the MLC resources. It helps me understand and deal with it.
Right now things are relatively calm. We spent the weekend mostly hanging around the house doing things. I think following the advice about giving space, etc. has helped. My weakness is detachment -- I still worry about what my W is doing and thinking about my marriage and W consumes much of my thoughts.
I am getting better at detaching and not letting W's behavior run my life. Monday night she went to gym as usual and called from gym that she was going to go out with a GF afterwards. Fine, I said. We've been watching Game of Thrones on Monday nights. Normally I would have waited for her. But last night, I started watching without her. She came home when I was already 20 minutes into the show. She wanted me to start it over again so she could see it from the beginning. Again, normally this is what I would do. Instead I told her no, and I recounted briefly what she had missed. We then sat and watched the remainder of the show.
Why is this good detachment? I didn't start brooding over what she was doing -- instead I did what I wanted to do, watch the show. Second, I was not over-concerned about telling her no and putting my wants first. This is also somewhat of a 180 for me -- being more dominant in the relationship.
I realize it's not a big deal, but these little things add up.
M46,W41 D16,D18 M22,T25 BD 11/12 W moved out 01/13 Piecing 10/13 Divorced 01/15 "Whether you worry or not has no affect on the outcome. But, moving forward, letting go, and making changes can." UrWorthy
Friday around 5:30 I was tired from the week and lied down on the bed to relax. My W lied down with me and we talked briefly. At 6:15 she left for the gym, which she does every Friday. I asked her, "are you coming right back? -- I'll wait for you for dinner?" She answered, "she didn't know" and then when she was leaving, I asked again. I pressured her and I shouldn't have. She didn't come right back, she went out after with a friend and returned at about 9:30pm. The gym ends at 8:15pm. She didn't call either, which is something we have established that we call each other.
While she was gone, I made us dinner, set the table nice, and even cut roses from our garden and put them in a vase. This is advice from my DB coach to "date" my W. At 9 I decided to eat, so when my W showed up, I had already eaten, but I sat with her and had a glass of wine while she ate. She remarked "oh the girls picked some flowers?" No, I did. She didn't say whether she appreciated it or not.
Saturday was a great summer day, we went to a friend's place and swam in the pool. My girls can stay in the water all day it seems. The W came, but didn't swim because she did her hair. Later she went flying, we ate dinner, then she came back from flying and ate with us. Overall, a nice day.
That night, after the girls were in bed, my W was lying in bed and I came in and she says she has work to do, and could I get her the laptop. Instead I lied down next to her. I realize this is what the author if Married Man Sex Life calls a fitness test. She could just as easily go into the other room as me to get the laptop, and she is consciously or not exercising power by asking me to run this errand. Anyway, I didn't get the laptop, and she says I guess I won't work.
We then had a long conversation where she did most of the talking, and I validated or said nothing. She started talking about our girls, women being driven and having a mission in life, and then on her life. My W is unhappy with her current job, which most people would say is a great job with $$ and benefits. Also, it was her dream job when she started it 6 months ago. My W's history revisions involves her always wanting to be a doctor and never "having the balls to just do it." Now she worries it is too late. I was good at validating, but I slipped up once because this is just not true. In fact, my W who is a Nurse always complained about nursing, and once wanted to go into languages instead, even applying to college to major in languages. She seems to have forgotten that she wanted to study and even did do languages about 15 years ago. Other than this slip, it was good to see what my W is thinking and how she feels. Essentially she feels that she didn't pursue things in her life and has not accomplished anything. I didn't argue with her and try to convince her that she did accomplish things because then that is not validating.
Well, on Sunday, we did errands and shopping. The W was in a mostly melancholy mood. Her moods do still affect me. In the evening I brought up again our conversation about college and pursuing a degree. I wanted to know if she remembered that she wanted to study languages. The reason is that she is acting nowadays as if her life dream was to be a doctor, and she wants to return to school to do this (and leave me with the 3 girls). She did remember, but of course not exactly as I do. 15 years ago, we were moving between states and she was going to go back to school to major in languages. But then, 'we' saw that she would be charged out-of-state tuition that was very expensive so 'we' decided that she would go to community college for a year and then transfer when she would be charged in-state tuition. Her memory is that she was going to go back to school, but then "I" said no. This made me feel very sad that I'm being blamed for this, and also I see her point of view. I don't fully agree with it, but I see her perspective. Also, she said that studying a language was her avoiding her dream of being a doctor (this I feel is complete revision!). The discussion became emotional, and I told her I'm sorry if I held her back. She said I'm not to blame, it was her who didn't pursue her dream. We both hugged for awhile.
Afterwards, our evening was uneventful. Put the girls to sleep and my W did yet more online shopping. Her excessive shopping has cut into our savings.
If your spouse is spending money like crazy, how do you get her to slow down spending? Until now, I have said nothing about her spending. Mostly it has meant that we spend what we make. But now her monthly spending is greater than our salaries, so it is coming from our savings. Last week she spent almost $1000 on clothes for herself as one example.
On our anniversary a few weeks ago, in an email exchange, she said, "we're not getting each other gifts right? because we've been spending too much, and by we I mean me." So she is aware of the excessive spending. BTW, she did buy me a gift that came the day after our anniversary, and I think she bought the gift after she received flowers I bought her and had delivered to her office.
If your spouse is spending money like crazy, how do you get her to slow down spending? Until now, I have said nothing about her spending. Mostly it has meant that we spend what we make. But now her monthly spending is greater than our salaries, so it is coming from our savings. Last week she spent almost $1000 on clothes for herself as one example.
That's clearly not sustainable, so I would put my foot down on that right away. Tell her you're going to work up an expense spreadsheet and invite her to participate. If she declines, then do it yourself. The way I did it was to track my expenses for several months using an Excel spreadsheet. I put every single expense in there from house bills to fuel to lunch and dinner costs to groceries to flower/ mulch/ etc. for the yard. Even yearly costs (like property taxes) are broken down to a monthly allotment and shown. Then I was able to project future monthly costs and define how much money I could spend on "other" (clothes, vacations, irregular car expenses, etc.) Do that and show your wife in black and white that she only has "xx" dollars per month to spend on undefined expenses. Then do a spreadsheet every month. My monthly spreadsheet has formulas at the bottom that show that month's expenses, my salary and the balance. That will tell you and your W in no uncertain terms whether you're up or down for the month.
Why did I go to all this trouble? Because my W did EXACTLY what your W is doing- she spent a little more each month than we were bringing in. But she didn't tell me. We maintained separate accounts and she covered her monthly losses with credit cards. By the time she told me, she had accumulated over 80k in CC debt. I think the aggravation over this is a large factor in why we're separated now.
