A Little Epiphany - (and a newbie delurking)

[Dia]

About a week ago, I had just returned from a job interview and apartment hunting in H's town. On the drive back home, I stopped at a fast food place and gave myself a horrendous case of food poisoning. It struck in the middle of the night, and by 10 am, I was weak in bed, groping for the phone between trips to the bathroom. I called H to tell him I was sick on the off chance that the offending food item had come from his fridge and not the fast food place. He didn't answer, so I left a message.

He called back within about 10 minutes, his voice full of concern. I asked if he and the kidlet (who is with him on visitation) were ok, and he said the two of them were fine. Then he chatted lightly about taking the kidlet and a friend to the beach the day before. Kidlet was exhausted and grumpy by the end of the day, but they had a great time and to dispel the grumpies, H introduced the kidlet to Monty Python's The Holy Grail. Kidlet loved it, rolling and kicking laughing on the couch at the scene with the Black Knight.

"Your arm's off!"

"No it isn't."

H and I quoted a few more lines together and shared a good laugh. I've been wanting to reconcile for awhile now, but the Monty Python moment was this wonderful epiphany for me about how compatible we are. I mean, there I was, weak and feverish from food poisoning and in the lull between vomit sessions and we're sharing this delightful moment of geeky humor. Yep, the man who can tell you Monty Python jokes while you're throwing up? That is SO the right man for me to be with.

So here's a quickie on the details. He's 38 and I'm 42, married for 15 years on our next anniversary and together for about 19 years. We met in college when he was barely 18 and were casual friends, then good friends, for about three years before we started dating. I'm not entirely sure, but I think I'm a walk-away wife. I didn't ever plan the walking away though. In fact, I never even said the D-word until I discovered he was having an affair with the wife half of the couple we thought of as our best friends - and the woman who was my confidant when he and I started having problems.

Looking back, I was over-hasty in my decision and acting out of hurt, shock and anger. Going to my mother's for a week or two to get my head straight would have been a good idea, maybe even a month or two - but leaving for good was over the top. To be fair, he and I had been having problems for over a year and both of us were hurting, needy, lonely and just aching to have someone, anyone, tell us were were wonderful, attractive and worthy of love. We were both vulnerable for an affair and I have to admit that I had an emotional one as well.

We've been separated for two years, and I've known that I wanted to reconcile for the last year and a half of it. I started the divorce proceedings, but after the initial anger-fuelled filing, I continued the process not because I wanted to, but because there was so much pressure from so many people (sometimes including him) to finalize it.

Continuing the paperwork process (there were no lawyers) against my will was soul-rending, and I thank the stars above that the papers got kicked back so many times that we're not actually divorced yet. I have told him that I can't proceed with it anymore, that it's not what I want and it's destroying me to do it. If he really wants to be divorced, then HE needs to be the one to divorce ME and we'll see if he can bring himself to do it.

I huge part of me wants to file a dismissal. In fact, I know that's the right thing to do for me. But I'm afraid he'll be angry about it and it will make things worse between us.

So back to this trip to where he lives... We live about 200 miles apart, but in the same state. I love his town, and even if we finish the split, it's where I'd like to be. I also hate my town. I landed a job interview up where he lives, and he said I could stay at the house for a few days to do the interview and apartment hunt. He said he wanted me to be closer and it would be good to have me back in town. He does not, however, want me to move back into the house, and at least verbally, he says he thinks we should finalize the divorce.

The weekend I was there was absolutely great. We laughed, we cooked together, we went out to dinner, watched movies on the couch, etc. Both of us admitted we still found the other attractive and that we were restraining urges to be physically affectionate. Him out of hurt, fear and anger (I think?) and me out of respect for where he's at and out of not wanting to push him away.

So I want my marriage back (the alcohol problems are over) and while he's ambivalent about it, I think he wants it back too - he's just not ready to admit it yet.

So there's the quick version. I've been reading this sitge and Michelle's blog and I just ordered two of her books - can't wait to get them.

Here's the issue immediately at hand - how do I handle contact between us? Right after I left, he was starting to email me to tell me little stories about the kidlet's day, etc and there was this huge blossoming of contact. We're both Harry Potter fans, so I asked him if I should go see the movie myself, or if we should wait and see it as a family. He told me to go by myself and that email felt... different, colder. So I must have hit a landmine somewhere and he's retreated back into defensiveness. So I stopped initiating contact unless it was necessary and things have ground to a halt again. So I wait... right?

I've already read a lot of things about working on me (been doing that for a year and a half!), being positive, 180s and not talking about the relationship unless he wants to.

So what else should I be doing?

Oh yeah - and Hi, everybody! I'm new here.

Cheers,

Dia

[mac-ct]

Ji Dai,

Welcome aboard. You have come to the right place I promise.

You seem to have been doing very well in handling your sitch. You seem to be a natural at it

Getting right to the nitty-gritty I can see one change that might have triggered the withdrawal you felt.

Up until that point you were both just being free and easy, no pressure of any kind. Just having fun together. Boy is that so important.

And then - pressure...

I asked him if I should go see the movie myself, or if we should wait and see it as a family.

I don't see the reason of going quiet. You just need to steer things back just one step. This may be hard depending on how big a land-mine your H thinks it was. Baby steps. Do what you were doing but not to much. Don't overdo things and check the results out.

Keep us up to date with progress.

Chin up.

Mac

[Dia]

Hi, Mac,

Thanks for the welcome, and yeah, I can see how the comment about the movie might have changed the dynamic for him. I have gone back to upbeat emails communicating positive details about my job search and preparations for the move, asking about the kidlet, etc. and he went right back to responding in a similar vein.

I'll add more stuff about our sitch later today. I've got packing to do today so I'll be out for a few hours.

Cheers,

Dia

[mac-ct]

and he went right back to responding in a similar vein

Yay!

Packing?

Mac

[Dia]

re: Packing - yes, to move back up to his town. I don't know exactly how, when or where yet, but I'm moving back there.

I'll be posting our sitch in bits and pieces as I don't ever have a long block of time to tell the whole thing at once.

Alcohol - The first hint of an alcohol problem came during the tech stock debacle in 2001. H was working for a dotcom, had a great salary, great benes and was allowed to telecommute. We'd just had a baby and we decided to move from the Bay Area where the company was located down to the Inland Empire, where both of our families live. I was a SAHM at the time because the baby was so little. We sold our condo with the three bridge view, made a killing on it and bought a 4 bed house with a pool that was about double the size of our condo. His job seemed safe at the time, so we also furnished the house.

Then, at about noon on April 15th (tax day for you non-US folks), he got a call from his work saying "You're laid off effective immediately. Please work out the day." He only got 2 weeks severance and his stock options weren't vested yet so we couldn't sell them. By June, things were financially dire, so I walked into the local school district and took whatever job they would give me - which happened to be teaching Special Ed at a high-poverty school.

At first, he tried to be a stay-at-home dad, but his depression got so bad that I put the baby in daycare instead. He also started drinking. I don't know exactly how much or how often but I remember him asking me to get another bottle of brandy as I was prepping for a Costco run. The bottles at Costco are huge - 2 liters or so - and I knew I'd stocked a new one last time I was there only a week or two before. I mentioned that was a lot to be drinking in such a short time, and he agreed and said he'd ease up.

The unemployment dragged on for more than a year, and I know that's so hard for men. At one point, he was so discouraged that he stopped even looking for work and was afraid to tell me. The depression got bad enough that when I had to be maid of honor in my sister's wedding, I wasn't sure that he'd be able to get himself and our son there in time for the ceremony and my son was supposed to be the ring bearer. I had just given him an ultimatum about seeking help for the depression (not the kind of ultimatum that involved me leaving) when he got a job offer back in his hometown. He moved up there and stayed with family friends to start the job while I stayed behind with the baby to prep the house for rental or sale.

After about 3 months, the three of us moved into a house owned by his family, the house where he lived as a child, in fact. Everything seemed amazing at first. He and I were closer than ever, we'd always wanted to be back in his hometown, we could walk to the beach, etc.

After two years in the hellhole school, I decided to go back to grad school to finish my doctorate, so I was a SAHM mom again while working on my studies. It worked *really* well.

The real estate market was booming, but I was having these gut feelings that the bottom was about to drop out and we should sell the house down south before it hit. He wouldn't agree to the sale because his family made their money in real estate. Things were starting to unravel at this point, but I wasn't aware of it. Several things were going on.

One, my thyroid went on a permanent vacation, taking my adrenals along for the ride and anyone who's been down that road knows what it's like. Trying to get diagnosed and then properly treated was a nightmare all it's own. I had been managing the finances, but a thyroid disorder affects your brain (better now, thank you Armour thyroid!) and I knew I was not competent to manage the money at that time. He took over the finances, but resentfully and unwillingly.

I begged him for months to put together a budget because I had this bad feeling that we were hemorrhaging money on the house down south even with it rented but he didn't for over a year. By the time he did, we'd burned through our investments and about 30k on a home equity loan. Finally, he agreed to put the house on the market. We bought it at 259k, listed for 550k and sold it for 485k. It was just at the start of the whole real estate collapse here, and we were early enough that we should have made a killing. But we didn't. We made all of 8k profit on the house and he turned that around and paid off a credit card with it.

While that may sound like a responsible thing to do, we had agreed that the first thing we would do with the house money was repay what we'd had to take from the kidlet's college fund. when the house sold and the checks came in, I was in the final prep for my doctoral exams, and then taking the exams themselves. I asked him to please wait just two weeks for me to get clear of my exams before he distributed the money so that I could be a part of the process but he wouldn't. He paid off the credit card and didn't put one dime back in the kidlet's college account. This was devastating for me. I never would have agreed to take the money in the first place if I'd known he wouldn't put it back. It wasn't even our money in there. It was all gifts from aunts and grandparents. I felt like he had stolen from our son.

For his part, he says he asked me a couple of times to sit down and deal with the house proceeds but I just kept putting him off - so he handled it as he saw fit. Yes, I was putting it off, but only til my exams were over.

As you can imagine, this year of severe money stress, coming right after the unemployment and me with a severe health problem took a toll on our marriage. I was tired all the time from being sick, and mentally foggy as well. I think his drinking started back up during this time, but I'm not really sure. I do know that he withdrew, spending hours upon hours playing video games on his computer. If I tried to talk to him, he would often scowl at me for interrupting what he was doing. I also had to try to keep our son away from him during these times because he was snappish with him and felt he deserved his downtime. He wasn't doing much housework, and since I was sick, I wasn't either. We started having fights about this.

I'm trying to keep this post mostly about alcohol, tho, so back to that. It got to the point where he was drinking most nights of the week, probably 5 of 7 on average, and he was having up to 6 shots worth per night. I'd expressed more concerns about the drinking and he said he'd cut back but that usually only lasted a few days. By this time, we were in marriage counseling but he was lying to the marriage counselor (or in denial) about how much and how often he was drinking. He said he drank maybe one or two nights a week and only one or two drinks. I knew it was a lot more than that, so I started marking the bottles and that's how I know it was almost every night and around 6 shots worth each night.

There were a couple of issues related to the drinking that were extremely hard for me. One, of course, was the lying. He didn't think he had a problem - other than me - with drinking. He went to two or three AA meetings but he said they weren't his kind of people, that they all had problems like DUIs, losing their jobs, losing their licenses, totalling cars, etc., that he just didn't have. Inwardly, I was thinking "Yes you do. You're about to lose your wife and son over it."

Another issue that was hard for me was that he would come home from work, ignore me completely, take the supper I'd made into his office and eat at his computer, then stay on the computer til 11 pm or midnight. By then, feeling lonely, worthless and rejected, I'd have gone to bed. When he was done with the computer, he'd come to bed and wake me up for sex with alcohol on his breath. I was sexually assaulted in college by a date who had been drinking, so that combo was bad from the get-go. But aside from that, the whole thing just cemented for me that I was worthless, not worth spending time with, talking to or being affection with - but still good enough for a drunken f*** after he was done with all the stuff he'd rather have been doing for the night.

The alcohol also led to one of the big nails in the "I'm leaving" coffin. Some friends of mine from down south were going to a club on a Saturday night. It had been more than a year since I'd seen them, and I wanted to go. I didn't get out much, so he said he'd watch the kidlet and I should go and have a great time. The three of us got a hotel room so we wouldn't have to drive at 3 am. There was no drinking at all - I just didn't want to worry about falling asleep at the wheel.

I got home around noon the next day. H was asleep in bed and our son, who was 5 at the time and in kindergarten, was hiding under the dining table with my big sewing scissors and half of his hair missing. The places where he'd cut it were cut so close to the scalp that there was no way to cut the rest and camouflage it. We had to shave his whole head right down to the skin. Those were big, sharp scissors, and I'm amazed that the child didn't manage to slice his scalp or take off part of an ear. H had been up drinking and playing computer games until 6 am when the kidlet woke up. H told him he was going to bed and to call him if he needed anything. The kidlet was still in his clothes from the day before, and he hadn't eaten anything. H says the kid should have told him if he was hungry.

This is one of the areas where the marriage counselor and I didn't see eye-to-eye. She said that was a just a permissive, laissez faire parenting style which, while different from my own style, was ok and I'd need to accept it. My take was "No, that's neglect and child endangerment."

After that, I never left H alone with the kidlet for more than a few hours during the day on weekends while I studied.

Even tho he said AA wasn't for him, H did stop drinking, and he promised that he would consume zero alcohol as long as we were together. That sounds fine in words, but there was this undercurrent to it about how it was mostly to shut me up about the alcohol and he was going back to the bottle the minute I left.

Oy, not confidence-builders for me, hmmm?

Ok, so there's the alcohol part. I don't see any alcohol problems now. He's not completely abstinent, but I don't think that every single person who's ever had a problem with alcohol has to be completely abstinent. I think moderation is fine for some people. We shared a bottle of wine while I visited that I brought as a bit of a 180 and a peace offering. I knew he'd gone back to light, social drinking, so it's not like I brought wine to a hardcore alcoholic to sabotage his recovery.

Thanks for reading everyone. I appreciate the eyes even if you don't leave comments.

[Dia]

BTW, I'm not trying to paint H as the big bad guy. I've done some doozies of my own that I'll get to as the story unfolds.

I could sure use some extra voices in here. I think if I'd had more support, more people I could talk to (ok, ANY people I could talk to) that it might not have progressed as far as me leaving.

If you're not sure what to say, it would be fine to just say "Hi, Dia. Welcome to the board."

[givingitmyall]

Hi DIA.

Sorry you find yourself here, but it is a great resource.

What is the current situation with your H's drinking? Sorry if you put this in your post, but I have been driving most of today (picked up S9 from camp), and I'm a little tired.

[Dia]

Hi, GIMA,

Thanks for stopping in.

The drinking has subsided - at least as far as I have seen - to a point where it's a non-issue for me. I think it was situational both times, and I think he may have finally admitted there was a problem, not only with frequency and amounts, but with his reason for drinking also (to dull pain). It may be something that we both have to keep tabs on in case there's a resurgence if things get bad again, but I'm willing to give this a go and see where it leads.

[givingitmyall]

OK.

You said you ordered a book(s) from Michele. Read them as soon as they come (I am sure you will).

From teh sound of it, you have already been doing some of what the book will recommend.

Stay positive and work on you. Then when you have interaction with your H, be interested, but don't pursue him.

Good luck. I will keep my eye out for you.

[Dia]

Whoah. I just did something major. I admitted my emotional affair to my mother. Casually, with regret about the affair but without guilt. Not because an EA doesn't deserve a whole crap-load of guilt, but because I've been down that long, miserable guilty road and I've finally forgiven myself for it. And somewhere along the line, I forgave H for his as well.

But re: my mother - it's not fair to H to let him take all the heat (at least in my parents' eyes) for a big, narsty PA with my best friend when I strayed myself.