Hi Tom, you posted to another thread asking me to take a look at yours. I went back and read it all from the beginning. Your situation sounds so much like mine that I feel like I could have written a lot of your posts. We had a marriage our friends were all jealous of. We got along fantastic. We had (still have) 3 amazing kids. We did things together as a family, but we also did things separately and maintained some healthy independence. We very rarely fought, in 20 years I would say maybe 3 or 4 times. We were quite religious, faith was important to us. We had a beautiful home that was paid for, sizeable savings for each of our kids to fund college and healthy retirement plans that were going to allow us to retire in our mid-50's. BD came without warning like a bolt out of the blue. Things went from a peaceful, happy marriage to discussion of splitting assets and how we were going to work out child visitation so fast that my head was quite literally spinning for months.
One thing I've seen you mention several times is the need for closure and the need to know "why". As Vapo replied, you'll never know "why", because more than likely your W doesn't even know why. Oh sure maybe you weren't as loving as you were earlier in the M, and didn't communicate as well as you could have, but the same could no doubt be said for your W and pretty much every other person in a long term marriage or relationship. And I would wager that like my XW, your W would have done ANYTHING earlier in the M to save it NO MATTER WHAT PROBLEMS CAME UP. Right? So what happened to her that she went from wanting the M at all costs to not even wanting to lift her pinky off the table to try anymore? I don't know. You don't know. She doesn't know. Something is happening to her internally, there is some kind of struggle going on and she doesn't know where it originated or why. But she's no longer in love and she no longer wants to be married. THOSE things she does know.
And it was the same for my XW. Unlike you and your W, we did go to therapy. We had discussions, and months after BD we even went to Retrouvaille which was her idea. So we had a lot of dialog. Whenever asked why she didn't want to be married, her response was without exception "I don't know." I'll give you a specific example, the therapist asked her if I was a selfish person and she replied "no, he's a very warm and giving person." She asked her if she respected me and she replied "absolutely." Asked her if I was an uncaring father and she said "not at all, he's an amazing father." Then she said "what about sex, does he not meet your needs?" Her reply shocked me since we had not had sex since BD, but she said "oh I really enjoy the sex and wouldn't mind continuing to have sex even now." The therapist said "I'm confused, you say you trust and respect him, he's an excellent father and the sex is great, we call those the three pillars of a healthy relationship. So why is it you don't want to be married?" "I don't know, I just don't want to try."
And in the almost 10 years since BD, that is as close as I've ever gotten to an explanation of "why".
So you will get closure, but your closure won't be in knowing why, it will be in letting go of the need to know why. Sometimes things happen without reason.
Early on I sought reasons to explain why it was happening. I looked into anti-depressants and menopause in particular. My XW was going through menopause at the time, and she had been taking A/D's since our son was born. Particularly with A/D's there is a lack of research on the long term consequences of continual usage, but preliminary research is indicating it CAN affect "love feelings" and that some people lose love for their spouse and even their kids after having been on them for years. Ironically my XW and I had dinner with two of our kids last night and XW was talking about how she's cut her A/D's down to about 10% of what she was taking and now feels more like her old self, she said "I didn't realize how drugged up I was all those years until I started cutting back." I'm not offering this as any kind of explanation, but I've always felt that something "external" happened, that this wasn't just a case of me being a poor husband. And I'm still convinced there IS a reason even if I'll never know for sure. My brother thinks that when we die the answers to all of life's mysteries will be revealed to us. I know this will be number one on my list, LOL!
But I did finally let go of the need to know why, and I let go of my XW, and let go of our M. I moved on, found new ways to be happy, and became at peace with it all.
She has hardly spoken to me since the filing 11 months ago last September. We have seen each other in person a mere three times. She has refused to talk, which hurts even more, because the "why" still makes me weep. I have a feeling that she is not talking because she doesn't want to take a chance that her will to divorce will weaken. For years she said we didn't communicate very well, yet after suffering in silence for years, she is committing that very same offense -- not talking.
She's not guilty of an offense, she just doesn't know. There's nothing to verbalize. And she knows telling you "I don't know" is just going to make you frustrated and possibly angry, and so she'd rather just not talk. Plus the separation is her way of letting go, and she's probably afraid that if she sees you she might second guess her decision. This decision she made was a very difficult one and she is wracked with guilt over hurting you, the kids, your family and friends. She hates herself for it. She probably cries a lot even though she may appear cold and indifferent. But she still feels like she must do this to survive. My XW told me all of these things, but not until long after BD.
I am a tender-hearted man. I still can't sleep more than 4 hours a night without sleeping pills. I had a heart arrhythmia which turned out to be temporary. I had other symptoms of stress such as extreme nighttime sweats.
These things are unfortunately normal for what you're going through. It'll go away but it takes time.
We are (were) a Christian couple. The Bible says that marriage is made in heaven and we are commanded to try and make it work. The bible also says that if you are in conflict with another person of faith, and feel you can't communicate with that individual, you must find a third party who will help intercede. She did none of this.
Again she just doesn't have anything to say that will help anyone understand. The most difficult thing a LBS can do is set aside their own hurt and see things from the WAS's perspective. She is in extreme pain internally. If you knew how badly she felt, if you could step inside her for a moment, you would probably feel real anguish for her and back off and leave her alone to help her recover. All your attempts to talk to her and find out why and negotiate are just making her feel worse.
I am not saying what she is doing is right, not at all. I'm just saying you have to respect her wishes, it's the only way forward.
So I'm trying to pick up the pieces. How do you take apart a home that has so many wonderful family memories? How do you subdivide possessions in a house that is the only home our three children even knew? How do you accept what is the ultimate rejection of you -- a woman who looks you in the eye (via an attorney) and says, "after knowing you for 34 years, 32 as your wife, I don't love you anymore and do not want to spend another hour with you"? How do you accept the death sentence administered to your marriage?
You do it because you have to. You don't have a choice in the matter, it takes two to get married but only one to divorce.
If there is any consolation to all of this, it's that Michele says that men in my situation make great second husbands. Because once we got to rock bottom we would do anything to save our marriages and be better men. She also says that marriages in this situation can be turned around if the woman is willing to talk for the first time. Sadly, that is not my situation. So I suppose it will be another woman who will benefit from Tom version 2.0.
You don't know what the future holds. People reconcile after very long periods of time. A consultant I work with remarried his wife after they were divorced for 15 years. My XW and I get along better and better each day, at first she wanted nothing to do with me, did not even want to talk or text. Now she finds all kinds of reasons to contact me. Yesterday she asked me to come over and fix some nail pops, said she just can't fix them like I do. Then she invited me to dinner with two of our kids as I mentioned before.
Does that mean we will reconcile? I don't know, and to be honest at this point I don't really care. I love the life I have now, I don't know that I would ever want to be married again. I have a lot of good friends, and I have my own home set up the way I want it. I do my sculpting on the dining table, why? Because I can, haha! I eat when I want, I go the gym when I want, I ride my motorcycles when the mood strikes. Sometimes I go to bed early. Sometimes I stay up late. I'm not going to lie, it's all pretty darned awesome!