Update after several months of absence

[trc2009]

First of all, here is my previous thread if anyone would like to catch up on my situation. Given that a lot has happened and the so many things have changed since the last time I posted, I thought it would be better to start fresh.

http://www.divorcebusting.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2455878&page=1

When I last left posted here, W and I were living together, she finally got a job, we were generally getting along, and there was no sex, touching, etc. We had a family vacation planned with my family back before we were having problems. She said she really wanted to go but I actually know for a fact she wasn't going to be able to get time off of work because she had just started her job. Given that we were doing so well, I left it at that and didn't push the issue.

We got back from vacation and she seemed legitimately happy for me to be home. But around the 4th of July, I could sense that she was starting to settle back into that cycle of uncertainty about our marriage. I asked her about it which I'm not sure in hindsight was a good idea but it led to her saying that she wasn't sure if she could ever be physical with me anymore. Obviously that was a huge kick in the pants and it led to a few weeks of uncomfortable tension w/ her and I.

Well, a couple of weeks later I was driving her car to get the oil change and I opened up her glove compartment to get the service schedule out. I found written down on several notes apartments and what other stuff. Again, I wanted to know the truth so I asked her about it and she got very upset with me. She made up the excuse that she was looking for an apartment for her friend at work. That was complete and utter b.s. and it led to a fight. Finally she admitted that she wanted a divorce and she was going to get an apartment. She was just wanting to see if things got better and if she'd snap out of it. At that point the cat was out of the bag and I think she just decided it was time to move forward.

If you go back through my sitch you can see that I thought she was having an EA but she was denying it at every turn. I handed over the phone responsibilities to her in January because she asked me to trust her with this guy who lives several states away that she was good friends with growing up. Well, at this point, she said she wanted a divorce and I HAD to know. The phone is in my name so I registered for my own account and started doing a little digging to know the truth. Holy crap. From January to that point in July, they had traded over 8,000 text messages and had had several phone conversations that lasted hours and hours. Now, most of them were from January-March when we were separated. But they were still very much in communication after we ended our separation.

Of course I confronted her about this and she was very upset. I asked her if she loved him and she said no that they're just friends. I called the guy. To his credit, we had a great conversation and he was open and honest with me. I asked him if it ever got inappropriate beyond just friends. He said from his standpoint, no. He did say a few times he loved her but it was never "love you" from more than a friend standpoint. His exact words were "I can't tell you if your wife thought the same." He did say he could understand why I was upset about it and it hindsight he was sorry that they communicated so often.

So that was behind me. Well, she moved out. Strange, strange experience which I'm sure some of you can attest. I immediately started back with my 180's (although several of them I was still doing the whole time). She took a lot of the furniture so the house looked bare. I told myself I'm now turning this into "my house," not "our house." I bought all new living room furniture, took anything off the walls that had her or her family. Completely moved rooms around. Repainted a few rooms, etc. We're doing shared parenting which believe it or not is going wonderfully. Her and I have almost always agreed on the parenting aspect. But on nights I don't have them, I've been doing everything in my power to stay busy. Practice the 180's, and move on.

Before I go any further, let me say that I've learned so much this year about working on yourself, doing 180's, and learning that I need to be okay and happy with or without my wife. Even though it was hard to hear her say she wanted a divorce and she was moving out, I knew deep down that I would be fine. And I still know I'll be fine. But that doesn't mean I want to completely give up either.

NOW HERE IS WHERE THINGS ARE GETTING INTERESTING AND ULTIMATELY WHY I'M BACK HERE.

About a week or so after she moved out, we both agreed to go see an attorney together to discuss our options. We both agreed that a dissolution is much more desireable than a divorce since we already agree on finances, the kids, etc. It's cheaper, easier, and faster. To her credit, she isn't asking for a dime but the court may require me to pay some child support whether she wants it or not (income disparity...so be it). At that point, I suggested we take two breathes, make sure everyone is okay in their new roles, and we'd reconvene within a few months (no hard date set) to start the process.

We talked briefly about dating other people. She said if someone asked her out on a date and he seemed like a good guy, she probably wouldn't say no. She actually told me "you've gone so long without sex, I'd give you a high-five if you were finally able to." Strange statement but I think she was just trying to ease the tension. If we were separated and heading for divorce, I guess dating other people isn't the worst thing in the world.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and I had to call her about something with the kids one evening. I could tell she was very distracted. I asked her if she was on a date. She slowly said "yes." I asked "how many dates" have you guys been on? She said "four." I wish I would have just left it at that. But I'm human and I didn't. I got pretty upset with her, which turned into a fight over the phone and the next day when I dropped the kids off it turned into another big fight. A couple of days after that when I came to pick the kids up, she was still very upset and said if we didn't go see the attorney to get the dissolution started immediately, she was going to file for divorce.

Well......that's been almost five weeks ago. We haven't had a fight or argument since then. She's still seeing this guy and I know for a fact he stays there a lot of nights when she doesn't have the kids (she lives off of a main road that unfortunately I have to drive by nearly every day). Well, last week, I was dropping the kids off in the morning before work and was just a few minutes early. He was pulling out as I was pulling in. Not sure if it was the right move but I asked her if he was staying there. She said yes. I already knew the answer to that but I wanted to hear it from her. Me and my sense of humor, I said, "okay, I kind of figured it was more serious than what you were letting on, but you told me you'd probably be dating someone if they came along. If he's spending the night here, I seriously doubt you guys are putting puzzles together until 7 in the morning." I actually got a laugh out of her on that one but she said "we have not had sex, but I can tell you that we aren't just friends."

Here is where I need some help.

Now, I've pulled my insecurities and temper into a monumentally big check over the last year and DBing & therapy has helped me a lot with this. Sure, is it uncomfortable for me that my wife has another guy staying with her and I'd say there's a pretty good chance they're sleeping together even though she denies it. Absofreakinglutely. I've been on a few dates with someone but I actually just told her this past weekend that while I'm still married we can be more than just friends. My W may not share those same feelings but I'm still committed to the marriage vows even though we're headed toward divorce.

The problem is this. The last time we even had the slightest conversation about meeting again with the attorney was a couple of weeks ago. She said she wasn't sure her work schedule so she hadn't gotten to it (a lie....she told me her work schedule for 9/1-9/19 a week prior to that). Since then, she hasn't said a word about meeting with an attorney again.

Now, I try not to kid myself that my w may be having second thoughts. I asked her if she had the money to pay her half a couple of weeks ago and she assured me she did. But part of me thinks she's cake eating. The only thing I support her at this point is health insurance. She is paying for everything above and beyond that. I know money is tight for her because she doesn't make that much money. I seriously doubt she's taking handouts from this guy. When we first dated I lived with her for a couple of months and she didn't have money then. She is to proud and stubborn to take money from people. Maybe she's just getting this out of her system? She won't even tell her family his name. We have an agreement that nobody is allowed to be around our children until either of us are in a serious relationship with someone. She said last week that it will be a while before the kids meet him. Is she trying to see who is the better option?

I've been 180ing to a "t" since I found out she was dating him. I even went so far as to say "as long as you're doing what you feel will make you happy, I won't get in the way of that. I know I'm okay married or not married. As long as you and I are good for the kids sake, then that's all I care about." That may have been giving her a green light to sleep with this dude, but that's on her conscience, not mine.

In the meantime, keeping the 180's is key. I'm not nearly as co-dependent on her as I was. I actually enjoy some of the nights I'm home alone. It lets me go out and do some stuff that I otherwise couldn't do. I've been completely faithful to the marriage although I've gone out a few times with a very cool girl.

[Two Sided Coin]

Ouch. Sorry to see you're back here. Hang in there; we're rooting for you.

[trc2009]

I'm not trying to put the cart before the horse, but I'm amazed at my new found ability to just get over stuff. I'm not bitter at all about her behavior earlier in the year. Knowing what I know now, I know she was just following the WAW script that we see so often here.

I don't ever want to be her second choice. I flatly told her during our last fight that if she runs out of money, I will not take her back just because of that. That was before she started sleeping with this dude (I'm just going to assume that she is.....no sense kidding myself. Believe none of what they say and half of what you see fits her like a glove).

I'm moving forward at this point. If someone I like comes along, I will ask her out. If I get those butterflies we all love, then it may turn into something more. That is now an option for me. But man, I'm not sure if I could get over this. Especially if she comes back hat-in-hand for financial reasons. Again, I don't want to put the cart before the horse....but I suppose I need to have an idea of how I think I should handle that type of situation.

[Ahoy]

Take it one day at a time, trc. You don't have to think about how you will react when the time comes, just focus on the now and self care.

I would recommend not asking questions of your wife that you don't necessarily NEED to know the answers to. Sometimes that pushes the WAS further away. It's hard when you find information about apartment hunting and other men not to say anything, but that is really what you should do. It won't help you to know the details. If she wants back, she will tell you. When she's ready to move on, she will tell you. You are making it easy for her to move on by asking her because then, after she tells you, she may feel that there is no going back, or that too much damage as been done.

I too had to watch my spouse apartment-hunt, saw a card for a lawyer, saw sneaky behavior possibly indicating an OW, and had to bite my tongue. How would it benefit me to know these details? If I ask him about the lawyer, it might precipitate a conversation about divorce from which we could not recover. I did try asking him about if he were having an affair, and it just made him angry (denying it) and pushed him further away from me.

Now I live by the mantra "Don't ask, don't tell." I don't ask him details about his life relative to our situation, and I don't offer details unless asked directly, and then I keep it vague and friendly. Time is your friend. Be patient.

Today you may feel excited about meeting someone new, tomorrow you might be angry at your W, the next day you might be a sobbing mess. It's part of the ride. Try to see it for what it is, allow yourself to move through those emotions, but also know that they won't last. Things will get better, one way or another, in time.

[trc2009]

Ahoy, your last paragraph sums it up perfectly. I feel ready to move on one day. Ready to go out on a date the next day. Ready to make the next day with that person the next day. Only to be in my own head about my W the next day. Then pissed at her the next day. Then okay the next day. It's crazy what it puts you through.

The one thing I've done very, very well is keep things friendly. But obviously there's a fine line. I don't want to enable what she's doing but I don't want to be an a-hole either.

Don't ask, don't tell is probably the best advice I could give anybody reading this. I'm much better at it than I was 6-8 months ago but it's still very hard. Especially when there's an OM in the picture. But the reality is this.....what else do I "have" to know? I already know she's been dating him for a month or so. I already know he stays overnight quite a bit. I already know they "aren't just friends." Other than her coming out and saying "we're having regular sex," what else is there?

How much worse could it get? Other than her accidentally getting pregnant or something, I just don't see anything that could get much worse......lol. I may want to knock on some wood.

[trc2009]

I've done a very good job of "don't ask, don't tell" for a while now. We're at this weird point where I don't know if she wants us to start the dissolution or she's just waiting to see how things go. As far as I know, she's still seeing the OM but again, I don't ask therefore I don't know (honestly don't care that much considering I've been casually seeing someone as well (although stayed true to the marriage vows)).

She hasn't come out and asked "when do you want to go see the attorney?" Honestly, if she did I'm not sure how I'd respond. Part of me would like to say "as soon as humanly possible so we can get this over with." The other part of me would like to say, "if you still feel like it's our only option, then I'll support that." Then there's still a small part of me that would like to say "I to see if we can work things out."

I asked her about whether or not she wanted to see our attorney to get the process started about a month ago (we went and saw her two months ago when we first separated to discuss our options so we've already been once before). She seemed very ready and said that she wanted to see what her work schedule was like first. Well, that's been a month ago.

She makes small comments about it, but never just comes out and asks. We had an insurance claim that's been pending on one of our cars for a while now and the check came to her. She made the comment, "do we just want to split this check?...that way we can use it to pay our share of the attorney." Then she made the comment a few days ago after she went and got a new car (to replace the one that was totaled) and she made sure she went out of her way to say "they asked me how much I was going to be getting in child support but I wasn't sure.....but I said $400."

Those two comments are LITERALLY the only times she's mentioned seeing an attorney or anything alluding to a divorce over the last four weeks. Part of me just wishes she'd quit beating around the bush and just make the damn appointment so we can move forward.

She seemed so certain that this is what she wanted a couple of months ago. I'll be honest, I've been a d.b'ing machine since then. It may be working, it may not. I certainly haven't been flawless and there have been moments of weakness, but I've put on the strongest, most confident front than you can imagine over that time (fortunately, it's not completely a front. I've been way more strong and confident over this last month or two than I've been in nearly a year of this crap).

Strange. Any advice or thoughts on how to interpret this? Or should I just let a sleeping dog lie on this one, let her initiate anything involving an attorney/divorce, and just continue living my life as if? I think I know the answer, but it seems so strange to have a person so certain that she wanted a divorce (and as quickly as possible) to drag her feet like this. After we met with the attorney a couple of months ago, she seemed pissed at me that I told her I wanted a little time to let the dust settle. The last time we had a full-on discussion about a divorce was 8/17. At that time I told her that I was ready to move forward if she was and made that PERFECTLY clear.

WAS's are strange creatures.

[AWAW]

Sounds like you're Plan B. If it doesn't pan out with OM then you're there as long as a D is not in process. Ask yourself if YOU are okay being HER plan B.

[trc2009]

That could very well be the case AWAW. It's so hard to say with her.

A lot of it goes back to the fact that she's having this early mid-life crisis (she even admitted that to a certain extent earlier this year). She loves having this type of freedom to do whatever she wants on days she doesn't have our kids. To be honest, it's kind of nice for me as well because I now have time to do things that I didn't have time to do before.

And for her, one of those things is dating/talking/seeing whoever she damn well pleases. She met me when she just turned 21. Had our son when she was 22. She made the comment a few times earlier this year when we first started having problems that she may have been too young to get married. Honestly, if that's the way she feels, I honestly can't blame her. Some of the best times of my life were in my early-20's and she didn't get to experience that. I'm 6 years older than her and I was very much okay with starting a family when I met her. I was ready for that type of commitment.

Even if I'm not her Plan B, she's at the very least doing what she's doing so she can weigh/judge what she really wants for the long term. And if that's the case, do I really want to be married to someone who needs to have a hissy fit of epic proportions like this in order to determine if she still wants to be married? Unstable/Uncertain/Conflicted are all words I'd use to describe her.

[trc2009]

I guess this is my current struggle. If there wasn't an OM in the picture, I'd have NO hesitation with giving her as much time and space as she needed without pressuring her to go meet the attorney.

But w/ the OM in the picture, when do I say enough is enough? She wants the independence to do what she wants w/ OM but she obviously isn't in a hurry to end the marriage like she was.

Do I sit around for another month? Hoping things w/ the OM cool off?

I'm not unwilling to forgive the OM (especially since we are clearly separated, divorce is imminent, etc.). People can be redeemed all the time. My father had an affair for an entire year w/ someone about 10 years ago. And even after we all found out, he still continued to see here off and on for several months....thinking all the while that he was right and everyone was wrong. It wasn't until he kind of hit rock bottom when he finally realized how bad he was messing up and how much it devastated all of us....and too his defense, he owned up to it, did the right things by my mother, and today their marriage is as strong as ever. So I know first hand that it can happen.

But it's almost like a person addicted to smoking. Ultimately, it has to be THEIR idea. They have to be the one willing to say enough is enough. No amount of outside pressure will change their habits. If anything, outside pressure makes it worse.

I've read Divorce Busting a few times over the past year and have read the infidelity portion a few times over the last month. The one thing that keeps being repeated is patience. And that you'll think an alien has abducted your spouse. That is so true. My W was the same person for the first 5 years we knew each other that preached to me that an EA is just as bad as a PA. And that she'll never forgive her grandpa for sleeping with other women while he and her grandma were still married, etc. She was a virtuous person and I never once questioned her commitment to the marriage.

Crazy what can happen in less than 10 months. She's had an EA with one person and then a PA with another in less than 10 months.

[Starsky309]

But it's almost like a person addicted to smoking. Ultimately, it has to be THEIR idea. They have to be the one willing to say enough is enough. No amount of outside pressure will change their habits.

True. All you can do is remove yourself from the second-hand smoke. Just because they decide they're not going to quit smoking, doesn't mean they get to continue to do it and still have YOUR presence nearby.

A poster named Jayne once posted on here the best description of boundaries that I've ever read. I saved it:


Jayne, on “boundaries”:

Think about boundaries like this:

Boundaries are not about controlling the other person, because boundaries are about drawing "circles" around *you* and determining what you will and won't allow inside that circle.

Your WxW can do whatever she wants OUTSIDE that circle. You are not telling her what to do.

But you will only let into that circle people who treat you with respect.


She's free to go on treating you with disrespect, but you won't know about it because she'll be outside your circle. She's free to go on and draw his own boundaries of no expectations and no responsibilities, outside your circle.

She can do WHATEVER he wants. She's a free person, free to make WHATEVER choices she wants.

BUT SO ARE YOU, and you are free to choose who to allow within your circle.

That's all. Not about trying to control her at all. Tell her she's totally free. She has the WHOLE WORLD, outside your circle, to go and do whatever she wants.

If she's saying you have to let her into your circle no matter what, then THAT is about HER controlling YOU.