I love it when guys say, "I wasn't the greatest husband." What does that MEAN? HOW weren't you supportive of her career? What did you say? What did you do?
Just trying to help you out here, so you can be more specifically different moving forward, so I can maybe give you a bit of a glance in her heart. I smiled when you said you were an engineer...it seems there are more than their share of them here...all that "feelings" stuff.
Hi T I think it's great that your W is very confused. I hate OPs. They are just such pieces of crap. My H's OW finally showed her a$$ and boy did it do a number on H. He felt pretty stupid. And all I could do was smile. I hate to say it, but I did. I couldn't help him. I warned him, along with many other friends. He didn't listen and in the end he said "I wish I could go back and in time and relive this past year." Right, me too buddy. Get the Dolorean and the Professor and some plutonium.
I love it when guys say, "I wasn't the greatest husband." What does that MEAN? HOW weren't you supportive of her career? What did you say? What did you do?
Alright, here is my public confessional:
I guess I had some sort of mid-life crisis after our first daughter was born. I tried to cram down a lot of things that I always wanted to do, but hadn't up to that point. I trained for and ran a marathon. I started a small company on the side of my career. Between these 2 things, I had very little time to help out. W was doing laundry, cooking, taking care of the baby, while mantaining a career of her own. Now that I look back on it, I was amazingly selfish. I remember I would ask if she needed help, and she would reply "No. Do what you need to do." This was an obvious cry for help, but I was completely oblivious to it.
Our second child was born. I think I became more helpful, but not nearly as helpful as I should have been. Shortly after the birth of our second child, my W took a new position at a new company as a manager. It was her first real promotion. This is also the time that she started working under the OM (but that is a sidepoint). I was supportive of the move, but I believe there was some envy in me at the time as well. I helped out more, but it was always on my terms. And for some reason, I had some sort of anxiety over the babies myself. So to help out, I would go grocery shopping while W stayed at home and took care of the girls. W rarely got out of the house unless it was as a family or to go to work.
The new career definitely added more stress on her. She had an anxiety attack a few months after beginning it. I remember being in the emergency room at 2 AM praying that the screening for MS came back negative (the way the attack presented itself was the same as some of the MS symptoms). Fortunately, they said it was "just" anxiety.
At this point, we were having major disagreements on how we spend our free time (which given our careers we had very little of). She wanted some of her free time to go out with our own individual friends. I thought that we needed to spend more time alone together by getting a baby-sitter. But she was already feeling guilty about how little the girls were seeing of us and couldn't have a good time even when we did go out alone.
Less than a year after becoming manager, she was promoted to Assistant Director. This time I know I was envious of her promotion and it showed. I was also afraid of how much time the new position would take. It would mean more travel, late meetings, etc. I remember (and she does too) a statement I made when we were talking about a week that she needed to travel and I was going to need to take care of the children: "You always seem to be trying to fill your life with something. First it was me. When I wasn't enough you needed to get cats, so we got cats. Then when the cats weren't enough you wanted children, so we had children. And now that the children aren't enough, you are trying to fill it with your career." This statement made her extremely angry and for good reason. Her reply: "Don't you dare bring the kids into this." I think this was the most visibly angry I have ever seen her. At this point, I think our marriage was in free-fall.
However, that was not the end of it. After a bad week with a single female manager at work; I made a statement paraphrased: "All the male managers at work seem to be easy-going, but the women all seem to be such b****s". What makes it worse is that I do not swear, so the fact that I did in that statement put that much more emphasis on it. I am not proud of this statement, but it was said and can not be taken back. My W took it personally and still has not let it go.
Somewhere in this time, my W invited me to MC to see if we could get things turned around between us. I agreed and we went. From the very beginning I was feeling ganged up on; and of course I was too arrogant to believe that it could be because I was in the wrong. We were fighting mainly about who should being taking care of the children and when. I would say that we needed to get more help via a nanny or babby-sitter. She would say that it needed to be done by the parents; we were away too much as it is. The marriage counselor frustrated me because we would argue, she would look at us, sigh and say "This is hard. This is really hard." And I felt we were getting little advice on how to solve our disagreements. So in one of the sessions, I got upset and said "These sessions are doing us no good. We just go home more upset at each other than when we came." My wife didn't contend the statement and neither really did the MC. That ended a short stint of marriage counselling a couple of years ago.
However, I believe that I did take some of the sessions to heart and started helping out more around the house. I was doing laundry, washing dishes, changing diapers more than I had before. But I had this problem of always needing her to be on a schedule. If she would go out and said she would be back by 6. I expected her to be back by 6. If it didn't happen that way, I would get upset and be trying to call her at 6:01. She still reminds me of a time when she spent a month trying to get time to go out with a girlfriend and when she finally was able to schedule a breakfast date on a Saturday and she returned 2 hours late - it ruined our whole weekend because I was so upset.
Anyway, I believe that I have been gradually changing over the last 2 years to be the man she says I am today. However, she contends that I changed overnight 8 months ago when she first told me that she was having an EA and wanted to seperate.
I know there are many more times of when I have failed her. But I tried to hit the high points. I hope that is enough detail.
You sound like the male version of me in many ways.
I would start with this, if you haven't done it already....it went a long long with my H when I said it, and I was as serious as a heart attack: (Not exact verbage, but you'll get the point) "H, for a while I've been wanting to say this to you because you deserve to hear it and you deserve me to say it sincerely. I have been thinking about my part that got us to where we are today. (And that would be separated at the time, with him deep in an EA that at the time I didn't realize was a PA for a short time) I want you to know that I'm sorry for the short fuse. I am sorry for the blow ups that really were exaggerated. I'm sorry for the many days, weeks and months you felt you were living on eggshells. I am sorry for putting so much before you and taking you for granted, assuming you would always be there. I'm sorry I over estimated my worth. Basically I'm sorry for my part in getting us here."
It was much longer than that....but I think you understand. I made a list of everything I had done to be a crappy wife and spouse. I had our S and changed careers about the same time. I had a friend getting divorced (ironic huh?). I started to exercise more and took up tennis, sort of half a$$ed, but I did. H was definitely put behind all of that, maybe not the exercise and tennis, but he was not the priority in my life for way too long. I changed our sex life....meaning, I slowed it down a LOT and I made it pretty boring. I stopped going out almost 100% and when I did, I went out for about an hour or two and wanted to go home to the baby. I developed a hair trigger temper. If he said he'd be home at 6:00, so help him if he wasn't. Then he tried to not tell me what time he'd be home from whatever....so help him again. It just got worse and worse.
I could really go on.
And in my defense, he wasn't perfect either, but I can say that as we pushed ourselves toward separation, I was 51% of the problem, he was 49%.
And during our separation, there was the EA/PA...with co-worker OW. I'm working on getting my feelings around all of that now. And H is really starting to help me with that in his own way and also some ways I've told him I need.
Basically, like my H told me....he is scared my changes are all BS. He is waiting to see. He was completely honest about it. He hopes they are real and sincere and will last because he does like them, but he's leary.
On my end, I've told him I will NEVER do this again. No more EAs, and really really, no more PAs.
Wife just called: M: "Hola" W: pause ... "Hi" <awkward silence> W: "I was just here with my mom and told her that I was thinking of you. And if I was doing that, I should call and let you know it. And she said that yes I should." M: "Thank you. I have thought of you today too." W: "So would you like to go out tonight?" M: "You mean us... alone?" W: "Yes." M: "Sure. I guess. What did you have in mind?"
Hi my first name was Almostdonebut... then things turned around and then I changed it to stronger I'm in MLC but probably should not be there...it wasn't really MLC though he had some traits
I think you need to kiss your mother in law and say, "I love you for worrying about us....do you think she felt pressured to call me? I don't want either one of us to pressure her....help me be careful of that ok?" And try to get MIL to back off a bit. Who likes to be pressured?
But the most important thing you can do tonight is be LIGHT AND RELAXED. If she even tries to bring up R talk, stop her and say, let's do that another time...OK, let's have fun tonight. Unless you really have something you need to get off your chest, let's just play tonight.....
I can tell you that I have had every emotion possible toward my H...clearly she still has some feelings for you, and I think wants to do what the best thing is, she just doesn't know what the best thing is.
I am sorry that I won't be able to give much more input as my plate is really really full today and this weekend but I'll try.
Kudos that you could admit all the marriage problems. I have to say the first thing that stood out is that marriage counselor you guys went to the first time sucked!! Probably wasn't bad to leave that one, but it's too bad you didn't try someone else. Ah well, water under the bridge.
Came home from work yesterday. Greeted children, wife came to give a kiss on the lips, I turned to make it on the cheek. Small talk continued, I went up to get ready and smell good ;-) W was excited to wear a new dress she bought after asking me out. It was very nice, somewhat revealing.
We went to eat at a restaurant that we both had been wanting to go to for a while. It was good food and the talk was light. It was fun. We followed it up with an hour of free salsa lessons and some salsa and merengue dancing. Neither of us can really salsa, but we do a decent merengue. That was fun too. It felt like old times.
On the way home, she pops in a CD that I had put together for Valentine's Day. We don't talk a lot, she just closes her eyes. We get home and get ready for bed. She lays pretty much in the middle; I feel like lying with her but take my corner instead. Some time during the night I moved closer, she took my hand and wrapped it around her.
The girls woke us up this morning. She was not in a hurry to get out of bed, staying in my arms. After the girls finally pulled her out of bed, she turns to me and says "Thank you." My reply "For what?". "Being you." she says.
She is taking her mom to church this morning (MIL is Seventh Day Adventist, sabath is Saturday). I will be taking D3 down to my grandfather's birthday. 4 hour trip - wish me well. Before leaving, my wife gives me a big hug and a kiss on the lips (this time I don't turn).
