Upside Down

[Coyote]

For now, if I were you I would hang out here. From what I see your situation is still fresh. Later, as you get by the initial, 'what the?!' you can move on to see what's up with things and look at it in more detail. At the moment, you need to focus on the simple stuff and get them in order. One thing at a time, steady as it goes...

I've noticed that a us Vets who are looking to help do tend to spend some more time in the Newcomers section. More help seems to be needed here.

As a side issue, I've seen there are a number of us Vets here who have a lot experience with MLC issues, myself included.
Yes, I do see MLC patterns here but right now I wouldn't worry about dissecting that. Save that for when things are a little more settled.

Have you read Michelle's 'Divorce Busting' book? If not, start that now. It will give you good grounding on how to approach this whole thing, don't wait on this.

Next, you should read her 'Divorce Remedy.' It's basically a continuation of the previous. Later, when you're in a better place, certainly. Check out other material. No doubt, just make sure it's well recommended though. Not worth the waste of time and money if it's junk (bin' there...I've read 'a lot' over the last six years actually.)

Keep us posted.

[Coyote]

Ah heck, my apologies, I just noticed right after I posted,

"I just got the DB book and will begin reading the other chapters during my wakeful moments tonight."

Keep reading. Make sure you go through it carefully. And on my front I shall endeavour to be more careful .

[stillhopin]

Well we've had a pretty good week all in all. Other than not being able to share a bed or much in the way of her extending any affection. We've had some good conversations, avoiding any relationship or divorce talk.

Daily, hourly, coping is a drag. I'm trying, fairly unsuccessfully to focus on work and on the kids. It's just weird though when she is there constantly inside my head with a world of conversations and interactions whirling around my head like a hurricane.

The big cope was dreading yesterday through this Sunday. She is on trip for a conference, delivering goods from our business and also visiting friends, one of which has a son quarterbacking the state championship basketball game. So lots of fun in store for her and I supported her on doing this trip from the moment she mentioned it. The downside is that game is being played in the same town where her EA friend lives. Guts tied in knots but I know there's nothing I can do about it. I've also made the decision it's not a deal breaker. Too much time, too much of a future, and the love of my children having a family is way too important. Never-the-less, hard not to have my thoughts wander in that direction.

Here's another kicker. Wednesday evening while getting ready, I started thinking about the roads and such as we're having winter storms pretty much statewide. I made sure she had her AAA card and then early yesterday morning before she left I asked her if she would keep me updated on her progress to let me know road conditions, and that's she safe. She said of course. As I readied the kids for school and helped her load the car, the kids were asking for their 2nd and 3rd hugs and having some fun with that. Just before she left I couldn't hold back any longer and said I needed my second hug also (never got my first). She was smiling and said of course. As we embraced, she actually lead with her lips as if to give me a kiss. Since I was headed to her shoulder for the hug, i noticed it a second too late, but decided to just ignore it. The she says to me "Thank you for letting me do this" Odd in its own right because we never think of each other "letting" the other do something. So I said so, I said I'm not letting you do any thing. She said "Well I'm shirking my responsibilities" I'm thinking kids here, but these trips aren't rare and she knows how well we get along in her absence. But I responded with "you also have a responsibility to yourself" and she look away slightly and said "I know". I looked at her and said "you know I've always supported you on this stuff, and I always will" She said "I know" and we embraced again. She finished packing and on her way.

After dropping the kids off at school and heading back home (I work from my home office) I felt oddly quite good. But for some reason it didn't seem to be just our interaction but maybe just that she was gone for a while. I thought about it all day and am not really sure which it was, likely both.

It's still hard and i'm fluctuating hourly, but that whole entire interaction and my feelings is really strange. I want so much to hope something is changing, but I know she doesn't change her mind so easily. So taking something away from that is so hard when I'm scared to make assumptions.

Trying really hard not to think about her stay tonight. And I'll be glad when this weekend is over. Then/Now also stressing about our very first (20+ years) thanksgiving apart. That's a whole other post.

[stillhopin]

Not any comments on that episode? I was curious I guess if other's roller coasters include such love and affection? I could still feel a lot of love in that interaction.

She'll be back today from her trip. Will my magic marker picture of could happen come true? She's had time to think and decided she now wants to work on it. I know I shouldn't do this to myself, but I can't give up hope that she'll get over this craziness. But she'll come home and it will not be like that and it will be all I can do to not be devastated. Trying so hard to to have a PMA, to not dwell on the past, but it is so hard.

[workinghardguy]

I'm guessing folks were off GALing so the board was pretty quiet last night. I wasn't... I was just wallowing in self-pity, so sorry no one gave some insight yet.

A few words of advice... Do not pin hope on her coming home and anything being different. You're still pretty new into this world, but if you want go back and look at other sitches. You'll find plenty of scenarios like yours, and they never come back having had an epiphany.

Second, stop reading into everything. I know you want to see little clues here and there, but it will drive you mad. We've all been there and have all done it, but the faster you can let go of that the easier this will become on you.

The she says to me "Thank you for letting me do this" Odd in its own right because we never think of each other "letting" the other do something.

You don't, but she does now. She thinks this way because her frame of reference is different. An ex-wife would appreciate her ex-husband letting her do something like this. It would be a nice gesture of cooperation from an ex. Shortly after dropping the bomb my W would ask if I would watch the kids and tell me she didn't want me to feel I was dumping the kids on me. I was confused? They're our kids (well, S is and SS and SD mean a lot to me). Now I realize she had already checked out and so she didn't want me to feel taken advantage of.

I'm assuming your reading DR. If not, do that. I also recommend How to Save Your Marriage Without Talking About It. Fair warning that it won't actually help you... you're too far down the road, but the insights are incredible. There are great insights for you as a man and what triggers reactions in you. There are also great insights into the mind of the WAW. Of what it takes, mentally, for a woman to get where you W is. And how, once there, it's so very difficult to come back.

I felt oddly quite good. But for some reason it didn't seem to be just our interaction but maybe just that she was gone for a while. I thought about it all day and am not really sure which it was, likely both.

I'd say more the second than the first. Your world is full of stress right now. The main source of that stress just left for a week. Of course you feel better.

I want so much to hope something is changing, but I know she doesn't change her mind so easily. So taking something away from that is so hard when I'm scared to make assumptions.

Listen to yourself... you're right, it's way too early for any changes. Do not expect anything this soon... IF anything changes it will be months from now.

Understand a few basic premises... first, she has already left your R. She's not leaving, not contemplating, she's out the door at least in her head. You're working towards "if only I could get her to not decide to leave". This strategy will consume you and drive you crazy because you are working towards a non-existent goal.

Your goal has to be two-pronged. First and foremost you have to make changes in yourself that you want to make because this process has revealed things you don't like. For example, this process revealed to me that my temper has gotten short over the years and mostly at the children. I don't want this and so I'm changing it. It happens to also be something my W doesn't like, so it's a two-fer, but it's really for my relationship with my kids that I'm changing it. What is something your W doesn't like about you that you also don't like about you? Start there.

Second, you have to show her you don't need her. Doing this can theoretically make her wonder what she is missing and maybe consider coming back. But it also prepares you and strengthens you for being on your own.

Lastly... ease up on yourself. Your W is not a saint here nor blameless. She is the one proposing to leave, destroy the family unit, and take the coward's way out. Yes you have played a role, but that doesn't mean she isn't accountable too. I looked back at your sitch... realize your W is playing out her history. Her mom walked out when she was 11. How old is your oldest going to be? 11. Really? Maybe it's coincidence but I tend not to be a big believer in that.

[stillhopin]

Thank you WHG. You are absolutely right.

I am reading DB right now and will move on to DR next. It does help. Your desciprtion of the two pronged approach helps as well. I get the "change for yourself" themes that are rampant and at the core of the forums. I have actually been looking at a couple things in myself for quite some time. She's acknowledged this as well. I obviously have more that I need to look at. And I think I have/can be successful at showing her I don't need her. I found DB the second night after the bomb and just from the info on the site and a couple of forums, I started DBing on day 4, noticed immediate reactions that just reinforced the need to GAL. It's thinking about the pain my kids will face, and my anger at her doing this that can drag me down into despair, fortunately I think I've been successful keeping those emotions from her.

We had an interesting conversation last night after she got home. Among all the things we discussed she told me she felt like I was pushing her away. I told her I didn't understand because after the first couple of days I've not done anything like that, not about us, about counseling, etc. She said its like its passive/aggressive or something. I acknowledged that I'm giving her space and am focused on myself and on the kids. But, I said,I don't see what the aggressive part is? She didn't really have an answer here. Maybe I'm wrong here, but I think this is a flag that she's noticing my DBing efforts and doesn't know how put my actions into perpective.

She did say she thinks I'm ignoring the situation and forcing herr to make all the decisions. I asked what and she said like figuring out how to tell the kids. I told her I wasn't prepared to tell them and given her desired time frame of leaving I don't understand her desire to tell them so quickly. She thinks they will know something is up and be even more angry and hurt by waiting. I agree she is re-playing history, which makes it that much more difficult to understand why she'd be willing to put her own kids through this, especially w/o seeking professional help.

I sure am tired of seeing 4 in the morning.

[workinghardguy]

Gar... my W is doing the same thing on the kid front. She's been pushing to tell them soon after the new year. I could not figure out why, if we're not splitting until June timeframe, we would tell them months ahead of time. Why would we make them walk through the same fog I've been in?

But I've finally realized it's her anxiety. She admitted as much last night as we were eating dinner together that the anxiety of telling the kids is eating her up. I think she's sees telling the kids as ripping off a band-aid.

Thankfully last week she went to see an IC through my employer's Employee Assistance Program. While the appointment was largely a trainwreck for my M, the one thing of value is that the C was aghast at the idea of telling the kids months before any split. She wondered why a mom would want to torture her kids and put them in the middle of that sadness for so long. She advocated only telling them a few weeks to a month ahead of time. I had been advocating that we don't tell them until W knows where she will be living since that will be the very first question we get, and "I don't know but mom will figure it out" isn't a very good answer.

As far as being willing to do this without help... she made it through and survived right? Sure this who debacle is going on, but that's only because she married YOU, not because there are any fundamental issues on her part. She's fine and turned out ok, she just made a bad decision marrying you and you've been a bad egg.

And please realize the entire above paragraph is tongue-in-cheek, BUT it is to some degree how I think the WAW sees things. Only after months of this, probably seven deep talks, and seeing a C is my W finally owning her piece to a degree. Identifying that she has fundamental abandonment and personality issues that she needs to address to be mentally healthy.

It won't be enough to spare our M, but at least she's seeing she needs help.

[Coyote]

" I am reading DB right now and will move on to DR next."

For now, stick to this. workinghardguy has some interesting sources, and I agree...

"I sure am tired of seeing 4 in the morning."

I see this one. Stick to the simple stuff (I actually didn't sleep for 4 -5 days after the bomb, it was nasty to say the least. )

Keep it simple for now. Make sure you take care of good nutrition,

1. Write things down, get it down on paper.
2. Find a trusted counsellor, either a DB coach or a recommended one that's been recommended by word of mouth. The DB coaches are good, I will give them that. However, a trusted friend or someone who is familiar with your sitch who doesn't have a bone to pick with marriage is good too. Those who are bitter about this can be a bummer. If whoever you're talking to has the, 'you should free. Easy as 1,2,3...' Well, move on politely.
3. Go for walks, exercise regularly.
4. Talk with family and friends. Just make sure if they indicate to you, 'we've been talking about this same thing for weeks/months,' time to switch or vent somewhere else for a bit.
5. This may be hard. If your S is often hitting you with a shifting target, aka, if you fix one thing and there are 'many' more that needs fixing, constantly,

Take care of what you can. Fix what you can for yourself. Don't loose yourself over what you can't fix. If some of it gets unreasonable...fine,

Start pointing yourself in a better direction.

[stillhopin]

Thanks guys. Good stuff.

WHG, sorry about also having the kid pressure. It totally [censored]. I got sucked into a few short fights today but I did manage to insert something that may stave that off for a while. Good advice from a DB coach. My wife said she thought i wasn't even thinking of the stuff we need to be working on and that included the kids. I of course told her it couldn't be further from the truth. But I also told how much of a bad idea I thought telling them would be and this is why. There are so many unknowns right now that we can't even address how are we possibly going to answer the questions that come from the kids if we tell them - where are we going, where are we going to live, when will this happen, where will we go to school, how often will we see papa, etc, etc. Ha Ha. Who was thinking about it now? She totally backed off and nodded. We'll see how long it lasts. I think she was doing it to somehow reinforce her decision and get her another step closer to her current goal.

Unfortunately things went south after that. I had mentioned that "I'll never know the pain that she went through when it happened to her and given that I can't understand why...nevermind" (you can see where that was headed and I didn't want to go there, I bolted.) We were in the car, and I recognized I shouldn't be going down that path and I got out went into the house. When she came in she confronted me and said it was that pain that has kept her from doing this sooner. But she's done punishing herself. And I responded so now you're going to punish the rest of us. Of course she stormed off.

A few minutes later and both a little more calm. I said look, I don't want those discussions, we need to get a long and i'm trying to do that. So we ended up all right but man it is too easy to get sucked in even when I feel like i'm trying so hard to avoid those kinds of conversations. She too admitted that she's confused and still trying to work some things out. And she says she doesn't want to dredge up old stuff but that is all she does. She says she has this anger towards me and it is all old stuff. The kicker is that the majority of the things she struggles with (not all, i've got some issues for sure) are due to her misinterpreting my comments for some negative intent. That she then stewed over for days before it became a huge issues. When all she had to do was to ask right then and there what I meant. I so think our issues are solvable. We've had such a good year, it almost seems to be grasping at straws to justify her decision. It's weird to say the least.

Coyote. Thanks so much, those are good ideas. Coping has not been fun. I did notice today though that the anger i felt from those arguments actually felt better. I got some real work done today at work. But your tips are spot on and I need to remind myself of them - hourly sometimes.

[Coyote]

Thanks for the cudos garwayne, much appreciated.

I actually have to practice what I preach and go spend some 'me' time. Long day. For now,

"She says she has this anger towards me and it is all old stuff."

When an S is in the mid-years thing of 'finding themselves' their spouse is the first one to get the brunt of their anger. Unresolved stuff from earlier. Abandonment feelings from their younger years, sure. You will be blamed for this n' that, ya. Some of it will be unfair. Helps to understand this though so you don't go blaming yourself for 'everything' W says. Helps to put this in perspective.

"And I responded so now you're going to punish the rest of us. Of course she stormed off."

You back slid here. Oh well, learn and move on. However tempting, don't accuse W or point a finger at this and that for a good while. This type of discussion has to wait for when you're both in a better place. If she brings this type of thing up, listen, acknowledge her feelings on this and then carry on. Steady as she goes. Instead, steer towards things that need addressing, eg, kids, laundry, bills, etc. Vent elsewhere.

Try to understand that the ups and downs when dealing with this type of thing is par for the course. Certainly, things will get weird, probably even weirder. Brace yourself. I know it's not easy but try to be on an even keel when you interact with her. The steadiness can be disarming. Save the blowouts for later for when you're by yourself