I believe that I am cycling as someone posted earlier. The down cycles are not very fun but, they do reveal some deep seeded feelings.
Happy 4th everyone. Today is our 10th year anniversary. Not a very happy one though.
S is being more cordial than usual and is more prone to talking than she has been in awhile. She still has some negative things that she feels the need to hit me with from time to time. She is still not positive about our outlook. She seems to be sitting on the fence/trying her best at cake eating. She doesnt say she wants a D but she doesnt say she wants to work it out either.
Look, generally speaking its too early for WAS to decide anything. You got BD in this March! Have you seen everyone's signature block? I myself got BD from my H in Oct, lived together like you did for 3 months until he told me he still wanted to leave. Then it took nearly 2 months for him to move out. Since the initial BD in Oct he hasn't once mentioned D, he still has the key to the house, still contributes money to cover our joint phone plan etc. It's been what 9 months and I still don't know where he stands but I won't ask or beg.
Like everyone says the only things you can do now is to give her space and focus on you. She's going to make some kind of move sooner or later. Let her decide what she wants to do.
Question: you said your W resents that you got nearly 50% pay cut. Why would she resent that unless it was your fault. Did you make a bad move at work that forced the company cut your pay? Or was the cut because the company was not doing well or are you a spender and kept shopping as you did before the cut? I did not resent my H even a little bit when he lost his job because it was not his fault and we both lived very frugally while he was unemployed for nearly three years. So I wonder why she resents you for that.
Happy 4th of July to you.
M37 H36 M8 T12 inc 3yr L-dist 7/12:H broke down 10/12:H dad D frm W4. BD soon after 1/13:H wants to leave 2/13:H gpa passed. Feels closer but H still leaving 3/13: S begins
Regarding the pay cut: My company went into bankruptcy. The paycut was a direct result of the contract we ended up with and I was demoted due to downsizing. S did say it was my fault but, there are 3000 other employees in the same boat as me and none of us wanted to take a pay cut. I am mind reading when I say this but, she resents me for everything right now. She has said in the past that 90 to 100 percent of our problems are my fault. Typical WAS script. Nothing I do is right and anything I do seems to make her annoyed or mad.
She gets annoyed because of the 180's and AsIf's because I am giving her no reason to leave. I do backslide, but some of what are considered backslides here are boundaries being set by me. I discuss my boundaries with my MC to make sure I am not way off base with them. I would like to see a list of general boundaries. I know that everyone's situation is different but it would helpful to see what other have set as boundaries and how they helped or hindered their situation,
I understand that it is early into my WAS scenario. I am cycling still and I am in a down cycle for the moment. Outwardly, I am positive towards her but internally I am frustrated. I know, welcome to the club right.
Thank you for your critique and keep them coming please. I appreciate all help this forum affords. Your support is what keeps me going forward.
Lots of talk about what your W is doing and how she's feeling...
What are you doing for YOU? GAL type stuff
Are you reading anything right now?
Tough question, what would your life look like right now if you let your W go? You do what you want and let her do her thing.
The frustration you're feeling is most likely being cause by you. You're feeling stuck because this isn't working out like you want. You really feel and believe you've changed and are the H your W should want. Problem is your W has been very clear where she stands and doesn't really give a crap what you think. You are struggling with accepting it. I get it, lived it for a long time. The reason GAL is so important is to help you rebuild your confidence and start moving forward again with YOUR life.
Your W's resentments towards you...those are her things to deal with. It blows and I get it (mine resented me and blamed me for everything you can imagine). You own the things you feel are issues and leave the rest. Don't get caught up in taking blame for things that she's pushing on you, happens all the time and you won't get anywhere doing that.
The other thing not mentioned enough on the boards is the WAS will not change their mind until they truly miss you. Changing yourself is great and gives them a reason to miss you but if you're always around and available and always pressuring them they can't miss you. Has your W missed you at all?
Personality is who the world sees, character is who you are
I dont believe my S has missed me. I am home too much for her liking. I am tossed up with wanting to be home for my kids and for her to see my 180s and such. I am gone usually 4 days per week due to my job.
I can travel anywhere in the world for next to nothing because of my job. If I were single without kids I would be visiting my sister and her family in Cancun right now. However, because we have two amazing children who I love to spend time with, I stay close to home and try to let my S do what she wants with her girlfriends while Im home. That is how I am giving her space. Then I go to work and she is rid of me for 3 to 5 days.
If it were not for my kids, I think I would be in Cancun right now, even if my sister wasn't there. My family has no idea what is going on with my M and how precarious it is. My hope is that me and my wife can work out our issues and we can resume our relationship with out anyone knowing how close we are to separation and D. I know that is a big ask but, that is what I have been praying for.
I know I cant change or fix the way my wife is feeling. I am frustrated though.
Is it wrong to take off to Cancun for a couple of days without my wife and kids. It makes me feel very guilty just thinking it.
Just wanted to check in to see how things were going.
Regarding your trip to Cancun, this is my opinion, and take it for what its worth, just an opinion, but if i had known then what i know now during this BD, i would have given anything to take a trip anywhere just to get away and clear my head a bit.
I think you should go and relax, try to get your mind right for at least a few days. The guilt about being away without W and kids is something i struggle with (mostly being away from kids) but like i said, i would do it in a second.
Take care of yourself and start having some fun! Its the only way to stay sane during all this.
Me: 41 W: 36 M:9 yrs Together: 12 yrs Kids S7 S4 BD: 01/13 W filed 5/13 D final 8/13
Part of the reason I have not gone yet is because I have nobody to go with. I have let my personal life suffer for the last ten years just as my wife has. We were too caught up in raising our kids that we forgot to take care of our individual personal lives.
We didnt realize how important the personal space and growth were to the health of our relationship. We thought that we got enough space apart because of my job but we sacrificed our personal identity and personal authenticity. I believe that is one of the root causes of our marital crisis.
I will try and respond to your theory as best i can, cause it matches what i have gone through regarding trying to balance going out with friends vs. staying home and being a dad and husband. You might see some familiar things in your sitch as well.
When my W and i first met, i had 4 or 5 good friends that i would go out with almost every weekend prior to meeting her. We would go to the clubs and raise h#ll, go golfing and just about everything guys do together when they are not married.
I think this is where it starts as far as losing contact with friends and you can let me know if you see any similarities.
You start dating her seriously, yet she mentions that you're not spending enough time with her and she maybe resents the fact that you still want to hang out with your buddy's. She wants to start being the most important thing in your life so over time you start losing contact with them. At first, she is willing to hang out with you and your friends because she doesn't want to seem needy and controlling. Over time though, you end up leaving your single life and friends behind for the sake of your new relationship with this woman, and things seem perfect. You end up now spending more time doing things as couples with her and her friends and now your single buddies that you spent so much time with kind of go thier own ways and end up getting into relationships and married as well. During this time you establish new friends as a couple and you stop doing things with old friends because you don't want your new partner to think you refuse to grow up and you are worried she might see you as immature.
Then you start to take life more seriously. You plan a wedding and a future together all the while you are distancing former friends more and more for this new life.
You get married and start a family because thats what we all want, right? Now your lucky to see your old buddies once every couple months. They eventually move on and get married and start families of their own and move to different towns for careers or because that is where thier spouse lived.
Well, you stop seeing your old buddies except for maybe getting together once or twice a year, and if any of your single buddies are still around, wives don't want us to spend time with them because they are immature and we act like idiots when we get together.
We now start taking life more seriously. We start hanging out with her friends who are couples more and more. We feel we need to be more and more responsible because now we have children we need to raise and bills to pay and a household to help run. We become content to stay home and stare at each other every day. Wife decides she is bored and wants to start going out more with her friends. We become boring and stagnant. We are not as exciting as we were to them when we first met because we aren't as mysterious to them as we were.
We want to start going out more with our wives or buddies, but money always seems to be a concern. We can't afford it will be the mantra. We can't afford a babysitter or that restaurant is too expensive. So we stop trying to even go out on dates together as H and W.
I feel honestly that this is where i started losing my W.
We are no longer exciting to them. They become bored with us and we start becoming grouchy and irritable because this is not what life was supposed to be like. We start to bicker and argue because we are losing CONTROL.
We try to get back that control and stop being a team or a couple. They say things to us to try and get us to change, but we have already changed into what we thought they wanted us to be all along, stable, providing, and safe for them.
They want to be loved, respected and treated like they are still the most beautiful and special person you thought they were when you first met.
We lost our independence, and our sense of adventure in order to be a "family man." The very thing that attracted our wives to us in the first place in order to become what we thought they wanted. But we realize that they still want us to be independent and a family man as well. We forget how to balance those two things.
In short, we become co-dependant. We stopped being the man they fell in love with and we think that we cannot be happy without spending every minute with them, and when they want to go out seperate from us, we start trying to control them. Why should she get to go out on her own and i don't we ask ourselves, when in fact, the opposite is true. They start to resent us because we are always around. We are boring. There is no excitement in staying at home with us.
During BD, my W told me she wanted me to get out of the house more, to spend more time with my friends, I had become a shell of the man i used to be, but i thought i needed to be home all the time to be the responsible one for our kids. I started to resent her wanting to go out without me. She wanted to spend time with her girlfriends so she could have some conversation with someone besides the grouch at home who never does anything besides work, come home and drink a few beers and fall asleep in the chair watching tv.
It became more important for me to be with my kids because i had no friends anymore. They were all off leading their own lives and didn't have time to go out anymore, or our schedules never permitted it.
Now we are faced with a D. We don't exactly know what it means to go out and GAL because we don't have any single friends anymore. They have all moved on. We feel ignored and hurt because at the beginning, our wives wanted to spend all our time together so we change the way we act and live to meet their needs and over time we grow apart from each other.
It is important to shut off our outside distractions and pay attention to what our wives are telling us. It is important to look into their eyes when they talk to us and have a serious conversation with them so we can both share our feelings and concerns.
So many couples stop doing that. They only want to discuss their own individual feelings that they start ignoring what their spouse needs. It seems so easy to fix now, but it is broken for good and it cannot be fixed overnight.
One way or the other, we need to learn from this. Whatever path your life takes from here on out, we need to pay attention to what has happened to us to make sure it doesn't happen again. We need to learn how to be independant and happy on our own without being controlling.
We start to feel like we can't be happy unless our spouse comes back, but they don't want to be around us right now because we are making them unhappy.
I don't know if this adds to your theory, and i am sorry if this got a bit long, but i just wanted to share my viewpoint on what i see as similarities between our sitch's.
I get what your feeling, and i am also uncomfortable with being faced with trying to get out and meet new friends, but remember, you can become happy again. At the very least, our kids deserve to see us at our best.
Take care, i will try and stop by your thread as much as i can.
Me: 41 W: 36 M:9 yrs Together: 12 yrs Kids S7 S4 BD: 01/13 W filed 5/13 D final 8/13
I will try and respond to your theory as best i can, cause it matches what i have gone through regarding trying to balance going out with friends vs. staying home and being a dad and husband. You might see some familiar things in your sitch as well.
When my W and i first met, i had 4 or 5 good friends that i would go out with almost every weekend prior to meeting her. We would go to the clubs and raise h#ll, go golfing and just about everything guys do together when they are not married.
I think this is where it starts as far as losing contact with friends and you can let me know if you see any similarities.
You start dating her seriously, yet she mentions that you're not spending enough time with her and she maybe resents the fact that you still want to hang out with your buddy's. She wants to start being the most important thing in your life so over time you start losing contact with them. At first, she is willing to hang out with you and your friends because she doesn't want to seem needy and controlling. Over time though, you end up leaving your single life and friends behind for the sake of your new relationship with this woman, and things seem perfect. You end up now spending more time doing things as couples with her and her friends and now your single buddies that you spent so much time with kind of go thier own ways and end up getting into relationships and married as well. During this time you establish new friends as a couple and you stop doing things with old friends because you don't want your new partner to think you refuse to grow up and you are worried she might see you as immature.
Then you start to take life more seriously. You plan a wedding and a future together all the while you are distancing former friends more and more for this new life.
You get married and start a family because thats what we all want, right? Now your lucky to see your old buddies once every couple months. They eventually move on and get married and start families of their own and move to different towns for careers or because that is where thier spouse lived.
Well, you stop seeing your old buddies except for maybe getting together once or twice a year, and if any of your single buddies are still around, wives don't want us to spend time with them because they are immature and we act like idiots when we get together.
We now start taking life more seriously. We start hanging out with her friends who are couples more and more. We feel we need to be more and more responsible because now we have children we need to raise and bills to pay and a household to help run. We become content to stay home and stare at each other every day. Wife decides she is bored and wants to start going out more with her friends. We become boring and stagnant. We are not as exciting as we were to them when we first met because we aren't as mysterious to them as we were.
We want to start going out more with our wives or buddies, but money always seems to be a concern. We can't afford it will be the mantra. We can't afford a babysitter or that restaurant is too expensive. So we stop trying to even go out on dates together as H and W.
I feel honestly that this is where i started losing my W.
We are no longer exciting to them. They become bored with us and we start becoming grouchy and irritable because this is not what life was supposed to be like. We start to bicker and argue because we are losing CONTROL.
We try to get back that control and stop being a team or a couple. They say things to us to try and get us to change, but we have already changed into what we thought they wanted us to be all along, stable, providing, and safe for them.
They want to be loved, respected and treated like they are still the most beautiful and special person you thought they were when you first met.
We lost our independence, and our sense of adventure in order to be a "family man." The very thing that attracted our wives to us in the first place in order to become what we thought they wanted. But we realize that they still want us to be independent and a family man as well. We forget how to balance those two things.
In short, we become co-dependant. We stopped being the man they fell in love with and we think that we cannot be happy without spending every minute with them, and when they want to go out seperate from us, we start trying to control them. Why should she get to go out on her own and i don't we ask ourselves, when in fact, the opposite is true. They start to resent us because we are always around. We are boring. There is no excitement in staying at home with us.
During BD, my W told me she wanted me to get out of the house more, to spend more time with my friends, I had become a shell of the man i used to be, but i thought i needed to be home all the time to be the responsible one for our kids. I started to resent her wanting to go out without me. She wanted to spend time with her girlfriends so she could have some conversation with someone besides the grouch at home who never does anything besides work, come home and drink a few beers and fall asleep in the chair watching tv.
It became more important for me to be with my kids because i had no friends anymore. They were all off leading their own lives and didn't have time to go out anymore, or our schedules never permitted it.
Now we are faced with a D. We don't exactly know what it means to go out and GAL because we don't have any single friends anymore. They have all moved on. We feel ignored and hurt because at the beginning, our wives wanted to spend all our time together so we change the way we act and live to meet their needs and over time we grow apart from each other.
It is important to shut off our outside distractions and pay attention to what our wives are telling us. It is important to look into their eyes when they talk to us and have a serious conversation with them so we can both share our feelings and concerns.
So many couples stop doing that. They only want to discuss their own individual feelings that they start ignoring what their spouse needs. It seems so easy to fix now, but it is broken for good and it cannot be fixed overnight.
One way or the other, we need to learn from this. Whatever path your life takes from here on out, we need to pay attention to what has happened to us to make sure it doesn't happen again. We need to learn how to be independant and happy on our own without being controlling.
We start to feel like we can't be happy unless our spouse comes back, but they don't want to be around us right now because we are making them unhappy.
I don't know if this adds to your theory, and i am sorry if this got a bit long, but i just wanted to share my viewpoint on what i see as similarities between our sitch's.
I get what your feeling, and i am also uncomfortable with being faced with trying to get out and meet new friends, but remember, you can become happy again. At the very least, our kids deserve to see us at our best.
Take care, i will try and stop by your thread as much as i can.
Oh wow just wow, thanks for putting all of that into words, shouldistillhope. I can relate to it minus the children part. However I do accept the fact that I played a part in not paying attention to my W.
I hope you're doing fine still in your sitch BKS. We can only become stronger and stronger everyday
