Trying to Follow DB & DR (4)

[Miman2]

The story thus far ... (1)
Previously in TTF DB&DR (2)
Tough times (3)

After three months of separation the wife has filed for divorce. Its a tough situation to be in. It hurts and I mourn for our relationship and marriage. The reality of the situation is at this point the only one who can stop the process is her.

From here I can only continue to work on myself and hope and pray that she might one day want to work things out.

My previous posts might have led people to think I've given up on the situation. I admit while that was an initial reaction it is not how I feel. Although the no expectations/realistic side of me is hoping for best while preparing for the worst.

[Cadet]

The reality of the situation is at this point the only one who can stop the process is her.


Although the no expectations/realistic side of me is hoping for best while preparing for the worst.

I think the thing that helped me is to let her do all the heavy lifting of the divorce and it truly was her divorce.

Maybe that did not help with my detachment, however I can look back with the rest of my life and know that I did every thing possible to try to save it.

[Wonka]

Miman,

I am sorry for asking you questions and then disappearing into the Black Hole. Some friend...aren't I,huh?? Well, the Black Hole was actually GALing.

First of all, I want to say a big "thank you" for answering some of those questions. I would like to follow through with you on some of the answers you've provided...if I may.

I realize that I should've been doing more around the house. I was really unhealthy almost pushing 400lbs at one point and the depression to boot so the amount of things I could do consistently wasn't much. I'm in a better place now thought, down to 285 and taking care of business around the house.

Good for you in losing the weight! Keep it up. Do you have a target weight? How are you managing your diet?

Is your depression better nowadays?

I hope you've stepped up and do your part of the household chores.

Are you asking what I can do to work on that? Well I'm looking for a new job. I have a bit of freedom now about where I can look for jobs, and GALing a whole lot more. Going out and meeting and interacting with new people.

How's your job search going? I hope you're doing this full-time as it should be. Cannot be done in a half-hearted way. I've learned that networking has helped me land jobs as 80% of the jobs are not advertised. Throughout my career, I have only applied to 2 actual job postings cold. The rest were through the grapevine of my social circle and college alumni network.

We made more than 100K together last year but we have next to nothing to show for it because I was trying to be responsible and said we should pay off our debts instead of spending our money on stuff. So while she wanted to go on 2 cruises/vacations a year and buy $400 purses like her single co-worker who still lived with her parents, I insisted that we paid our debts and try to save up money for a down payment for a house.

Are you the saver in the M? Is she the spender in the M? If that's the case, then there's resources in counseling to work through different financial positions. One spouse may feel the need to save due to how they were raised and the other spouse wants to spend money as a way to show appreciation for those items. Have you two had any HUGE, drag-out fights over finances? As people say, three main things couples fight the MOST about are the following: money, sex, and kids.

She stated recently that she thought the argument we had right before she left was over me not wanting to take the vacation we booked. What I was arguing for was spending less time with the OC because I felt my W becoming emotionally distant. I was trying to say we should spend time with them that weekend that she left because my back hurt and if we did spend time with them my back wouldn't have time to heal for the vacation and then we wouldn't be able to take the vacation. She insisted that she wanted to spend time with the OC that weekend, I asked her if that meant she didn't want to go on the vacation and she said yes because "[seeing the oc] is this weekend and this is what I want to do, [the vacation] is [2 weeks away] and i'm not concerned about that yet" or something like that. During BD, I told her I wanted us to go on this vacation together and that she deserved the vacation, she broke down crying saying that's all she had been wanting to hear.

Have you ever tried to compromise and/or negotiate things like this ^^ with W? Sometimes we need to step back and ask "How important is this to you? Perhaps we can try to find some middle ground here between our desires."

This does two things: 1) You are not discounting W's desires 2) Tells her that you are willing to listen to her without discounting them outright.

When they told the W that she got it I told her I was happy and excited for her but that I had hoped she didn't get it because I didn't want us to leave our life and friends here behind.

Do you see how inserting a "but" negates the previous statement? No wonder W misconstrued your feelings. Why not be more authentic with W with this type of thing? A much more authentic response would have been something like: "I am so happy and proud of you. Gosh, I am a feeling nervous about leaving this area with all of our friends we've made over the years." I bet that it would most likely resulted in W sharing her feelings as well...no?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Will continue on to the next post....

[Wonka]

Continued from previous post.....

My parents are still married, Dad's still in the picture. Dad's the strong, silent, disciplinarian. He keeps his head down and worked a job he hated to keep the family fed. His dad all but disowned him for marrying a hispanic woman. I never really got to know that half of my family.

Mom's hispanic, Dad's mixed European. Each one has boasted of their heritage's infamous temper and ability to hold grudges (for generations if need be). Both had wicked tempers when I was growing up. When one wasn't listened to they yelled, if you still didn't listen the yelling got louder, after that the belt or paddle came out.

Mom regularly told us that they loved us, and they got us involved in lots of activities that we were interested in and they got involved as well.

Other emotions were hardly dealt with. One thing my mom has said repeatedly is that she never heard her father say he was sorry and that she was at least willing to admit she was wrong to her kids. 30 years and I would be hard pressed to use two hands to count the number of times she's done so.

Did your parents ever show affection, emotion, intimacy around you and your siblings?

How do you express your emotions to your family?

What attracted W to you in the first place?

As for the W, her family is very detached. Her parents seem to barely tolerate each other. Her dad wasn't very supportive, didn't go to her graduations, or encourage her to achieve anything. But allowed her to do what she wanted. Mom and dad never really seem to show her affection. She has mentioned that she never really got a lot of hugs or anything as a kid.

She has 2 half sisters, 1 step sister and had 1 half brother. He was killed when she was young. She the youngest of all of them. The next youngest is something like 12-13 years older than her. Her siblings have described the W has the unhappy miserable child, that the first time they had ever really seen her smile is when we started dating. She feels really only close to her youngest sister.

It appears that her family is not demonstrative toward each other. Throughout your M, was W demonstrative to you? Did she initiate hugs, kisses, hand holding?

How about you toward W?

I sense that W is hinting at her own need for emotional intimacy that is lacking in the M. Thoughts?

I'm not sure. Here I think she's echoing herself mentioning that she felt more like a mother than a wife to me. That she felt more like a caretaker than an equal partner in a marriage. I feel like it's emotional intimacy plus something else but I don't know how to put that in words.

Care to elaborate what you perceive here? Does W nag you, give you constant reminders, do ALL of household chores, interact with the school personnel...etc?

What does emotional intimacy look like to YOU? What did it look like in the early stages of the M compared to now?

Have you seen Big Bang Theory?
Familiar with Dr. Sheldon Cooper, theoretical physicist?
I'm Dr. Miman2 theoretical chemist, also in academia where it's literally a publish or perish mentality.
The theory being developed has to be correct to be used by others and you need evidence to proved that it is correct.
Without that evidence then you have no proof the theory you're working on is correct.
A lack of or weak evidence makes your theory questionable at best and a joke/career killer at worst.

I love Sheldon Cooper...on TV. In real life, Sheldon has no place in your M. Do you see how exhausting it is to W when you argued your POV allllll the time to the point of being "proven" correct??!!! For what??!! A blue ribbon??!! If you have done this or continue to do this with W, then do a 180 and stop acting like Sheldon in your own M and around the house. No "Bazinga" either....

She doesn't want a Mr. Smarty Pants in the house, but a EQUAL partner in the house and M. Do you see this now?

[Vanilla]

I would think it would hurt Mn.

Walk towards the pain, please do not bury it.

V

[Miman2]

Well I'm back from my travels.

Thanks Cadet, Wonka, and Vanilla.

It's no problem Wonka, I understand people get busy with real life as well.
I'll have to try to address all the points you brought up in another posting.

My trip went well. Didn't have nearly as much of a breakdown moment as I did last time, of course I remembered to take my meds this time too so that might've helped.

First met with my councilor on Friday. I told him about being served the previous Friday and how I am taking it. He thought I was handling everything perfectly and even started to suggest that we didn't need to meet anymore after maybe another session or two. I told him there were still things I would like to discuss/work through and he said sure, but I won't see him again for almost 2 weeks.

After that I met with the lawyer. They thought that it might be more worth it for me to try to handle everything myself. I got another call from the sheriff while I was meeting with the lawyer. I didn't get to talk to him, the lawyer called him back but only got his voicemail.

Went to CoDA Friday night and shared my updates. I didn't break down in sharing this time. There was someone new to the group who was going through her own divorce process. We wound up talking a lot, she seemed to be interested in my sitch but she kept referring to me as a cheater and swinger much to my chagrin.

Saturday, I went to a board game day nearby. Got some unknown calls and even a knock on my door but when I went to check on who was there they were gone. I texted the lawyer about the sheriff and she finally got back to me on what he wanted. I dunno how much I should post but lets just say I'm not going to be in contact with my wife for a while. Makes me think I should just let the lawyer handle everything. :-/ On the upside I stayed out until 2am playing games and making friends.

Sunday went to church and came back home to take care of things. Cleaning, laundry, playing with the cats and a bit of relaxing.

Back to work today. I found out some item I ordered last week never arrived over the weekend because there was an issue with the address. I've been noticing I haven't received a single piece of mail for like 1-2 months now. I checked with the USPS to make sure there wasn't anything wrong and they found nothing on their end. But it's just one more thing I need to take care of.

Anyways, just wanted to journal a bit and let everyone know I'm still putting one foot in front of the other. I'll have to get to Wonka's posts in another response.

[Miman2]

Good for you in losing the weight! Keep it up. Do you have a target weight? How are you managing your diet?

Is your depression better nowadays?

I hope you've stepped up and do your part of the household chores.

For my height I need to be under 195 so my BMI isn't considered "over weight" and under 230 to be out of the "obese" range. I'm aiming for at least 250. I'm sitting at 279 at the moment.

There was a while I was considering getting bariatric surgery, they mentioned that after the surgery you would basically be having 750 Calories a day. Just after BD there were days where I couldn't eat and so my appetite shrunk accordingly. Now I'm staying below 1000 Calories a day, drinking lots of water throughout the day, doing a bit of strength training and cardio when I can get them in.

The depression is manageable, I still have my bad days especially when new development with the wife comes up. The meds help out a lot.

Since I'm the only occupant at my place (other than the cats) I've been taking care of all the chores.

How's your job search going? I hope you're doing this full-time as it should be. Cannot be done in a half-hearted way. I've learned that networking has helped me land jobs as 80% of the jobs are not advertised. Throughout my career, I have only applied to 2 actual job postings cold. The rest were through the grapevine of my social circle and college alumni network.

I do have a full time job currently that I have to attend to. It is a contract job funded by a grant, so the funding (and thus time) is limited. That's why I'm looking around for other jobs now. At the moment there is enough financial support to get me through the end of next summer.

The job search is going well I think. I've been getting phone interviews from just about every place I apply to.

I've tried going the networking route but the people in my field tend to be a bit aspergers and are anti-social/anti-networking. My phd advisor is one of the most well known, well respected people in the field, but when we got to professional meetings together he runs off to talk to his buddies without so much of an introduction. Networking wise I'm doing the best I can with what I have to work with.

Are you the saver in the M? Is she the spender in the M? If that's the case, then there's resources in counseling to work through different financial positions. One spouse may feel the need to save due to how they were raised and the other spouse wants to spend money as a way to show appreciation for those items. Have you two had any HUGE, drag-out fights over finances? As people say, three main things couples fight the MOST about are the following: money, sex, and kids.

Oh yeah, I was definitely more the saver and she was more the spender.

We both came from the same socioeconomic backgrounds, and even talked about not wanting our (future) kids to have the same upbringing we did because of it. We even said we would wait until we were financially stable before having kids. However when we started making money she wanted to use it to buy things while I wanted us to be prepared for the future.

We never had any huge fights over finances. She would complain quite often how it wasn't fair that we made money but never seemed to have any to do what we wanted with though. In the beginning I managed all the finances. Eventually I suggested that she start doing so and she began to see how much money went to bills. She still had her occasional "want-to-spend-money-we-didn't-have" flare up though.

When she finished school we went out and got her a whole new wardrobe for work. After that though she wanted to do that every 3 months after. We discussed how that wasn't sustainable and she went from buying herself a whole new wardrobe to just an item or two.

Conversely when I finished grad school we went to go get me a new pair of dress pants. The salesman there kept telling the wife how if I was getting pants I would need shoes, a shirt, a jacket, etc... and how everything was BOGO Free. We walked out of there spending more than what we spend on rent in a month. I backed the car out of the parking spot and pulled right back in and took everything back besides the pants I wanted and the shoes I needed. I couldn't bring myself to spend more on clothes than we did on rent.

Have you ever tried to compromise and/or negotiate things like this ^^ with W? Sometimes we need to step back and ask "How important is this to you? Perhaps we can try to find some middle ground here between our desires."

This does two things: 1) You are not discounting W's desires 2) Tells her that you are willing to listen to her without discounting them outright.

Yeah we've tried to compromise/negotiate things like this before. Overtime she became less and less willing to do so though. Saying things like "this is what I want to do and if you don't like it too bad, this is what we're doing" even when referring to spending time with the OC.

Do you see how inserting a "but" negates the previous statement? No wonder W misconstrued your feelings. Why not be more authentic with W with this type of thing? A much more authentic response would have been something like: "I am so happy and proud of you. Gosh, I am a feeling nervous about leaving this area with all of our friends we've made over the years." I bet that it would most likely resulted in W sharing her feelings as well...no?

Yeah.

Did your parents ever show affection, emotion, intimacy around you and your siblings?

How do you express your emotions to your family?

What attracted W to you in the first place?

They did show lots of affection towards each other. I didn't date much when I was younger though. The wife was basically the first and only long term relationship I've ever had. I was lonely as a teenager. I think that's why I wanted a lot of attention from my wife.

Expressing emotions to my family is hard. If dad is told anything he kinda "hmms" and "ahs" his way through it with a basic "don't let it get to you" mentality. Mom seems to always find a way to express that she has it harder than I do because she's always wanted a big, loving, involved family and my brother and I moved away.

We met in a scifi fan club. I don't know if anyone else believes in love at first sight but the wife and I did. We found we had the same interests and similar hobbies, we were perfect friends who complimented each other.

It appears that her family is not demonstrative toward each other. Throughout your M, was W demonstrative to you? Did she initiate hugs, kisses, hand holding?

How about you toward W?

She was more than happy initiate holding hands. She would occasionally initiate a hug and on a rare occasion a kiss. She always had some complaint against how I kissed.

I was the initiator most of the time and would like to do so often. She was receptive of some things but would complain about others.

Care to elaborate what you perceive here? Does W nag you, give you constant reminders, do ALL of household chores, interact with the school personnel...etc?

What does emotional intimacy look like to YOU? What did it look like in the early stages of the M compared to now?

Because of the sitch we were in when we first got together and after we got married, she was literally a caretaker in the relationship. She said she enjoyed taking care of and spoiling me on more than one occasion, even referring to me as her baby. Unfortunately she maintained that role for longer than she would've liked.

I guess I'm not really sure what emotional intimacy really looks like. I thought it would be being able to share thoughts, hopes, feelings, fantasies, and fears with someone you were close with, without having to worry about being judged. I feel like the wife and I had that early in our relationship. Now not at all. Communication break down on our part I guess or maybe we felt like we knew all there was to know about the other person, or maybe we were walking on egg shells so we didn't upset the other person. Yeah, that last one seems to most correct.

I love Sheldon Cooper...on TV. In real life, Sheldon has no place in your M. Do you see how exhausting it is to W when you argued your POV allllll the time to the point of being "proven" correct??!!! For what??!! A blue ribbon??!! crazy If you have done this or continue to do this with W, then do a 180 and stop acting like Sheldon in your own M and around the house. No "Bazinga" either.... smirk

She doesn't want a Mr. Smarty Pants in the house, but a EQUAL partner in the house and M. Do you see this now?

I understand she wanted an equal partner, I thought that's what we were. I thought that by being equal partners we didn't have to censor ourselves or walk on eggshells when it came to discussing things. That we could share our viewpoints and defend those viewpoints with what we knew to be true. I guess I was wrong in choosing which viewpoints were worth discussing.

[MrBond]

So what are your next steps?

Have you talked to her since you confronted her?

[Miman2]

Continue to work on myself, continue going to therapy, church, CoDA, and GAL events. I've read through all the books that have been suggested. I probably should go through them again. I'm working through the CoDNM workbook, that's a work in progress.

I'm taking each day, one day at a time, one step at a time. I'll need to meet with the lawyer again to discuss the next steps of the process, I need to file a response to the divorce papers. Try to continue making progress at work despite all the distractions.

I have not contacted her in any way.

[Vanilla]

And Mn?

V