But for the sake of time and simplicity, I decided to make a new thread with a simplified version of the story. I have been reading Michelles DB book. Here is my situation.
My wife and I had been separated for over 3 months now. She has been set on divorce since the beginning of our separation. The reason is because, after a big argument that we both had, I failed to contain the argument between us and my family found out about the argument. Then I vented out to my parents, who were in town, about the incident. While my intentions were not to slander her name with my family, the fact that I vented out to my parents caused a chain reaction of disappointment and resentment against my wife. At the beginning of August, she moved out unexpectedly. I know she was going to move out, but she never told me when exactly. I deeply apologized to her by first acknowledging my faults and empathizing with her feelings. To this day she still express to me how disappointed, hurt, angry, and hateful she is against me, and I truly understand her feelings. Even our mutual friends have been involved. It is a true mess! She continues to lash at me pretty much every time we see each other, but I truly understand the way she is feeling and I don't argue with that. I truly love her and I am doing things that I believe will rebuild this severely damaged relationship. And by the way, I am not here to defend myself. So feel free to call me out. Any advice will be truly appreciated.
Here is a little background story. There were two major incidents that lead to our unfortunate separation. This is the first incident.
Around 3 months ago we had a formal wedding (we first married around 2 years ago at the court house). We both worked pretty hard for this event (she worked harder, off course). At the rehearsal night, my wife got offended by my sister-in-law (which was part of the wedding party) because she did not acknowledge my wife when she walked into the venue the night of the rehearsal. In other words, my wife got upset because my sister-in-law did not say “hi” to her when she came to the venue. This was later proven to be false.
They were having issues since the beginning of the year, but 5 days before the wedding, they "solved" their differences. At least that's what everybody thought, including me. My wife went and hugged my sister-in-law (SIL), and then my SIL said 3 times “I’m sorry for everything”.
Back to the rehearsal night, since I wanted to make my wife happy, I had to compromise by telling my brother that I prefer for his wife (sister-in-law) not to be part of the wedding party anymore. This caused a negative chain reaction, because now my brother (best man) did not showed up for the wedding, as well as my aunt and uncle. My aunt and uncle helped my SIL and wife to reconcile 5 days before the wedding. We still had the wedding with some bitter-sweet feelings in my heart. But we still had fun, and I made sure I was smiling in front of her so her day will not be ruined. I grew feelings of resentment after this incident. I asked my wife to please allow me to recover from all of this. It was like taking a bullet from her; I was hurting and needed time to recover. It had nothing to do with me hating her or a reason for me to end our marriage. I was feeling very sad for my brother, my SIL, my aunt, but especially, for my parents who were in town just for our wedding. My brother was always there for the preparation of the wedding, as well as being the person that was in charge of the venue the night of the rehearsal and our wedding. He also was the one who was supposed to provide the cake.
This is the end of the first story. More things happened, but I had to keep it simple. I will be posting the second one tonight. Thank you for reading.
When family gets involved, it can really muddy the waters. I wish I had found DB back when our problems really started rearing their ugly head because MWD talks about avoiding that trap. Unfortunately, I had a similar situation to you and just like your W, it seemed to spark the fire that lead us to where we are today. My sister threw a whole gallon of gas on it when she got upset at my W 3 months after W had visited W and BiL about a pair of shorts she had worn during that time while working out.
When you talk with people about your W now, what type of language do you use? When friends and family speak of her, how do they speak of her? One thing I found that helped change things was that I chose to only speak positively of her. If others started to speak negatively about her, I would tell them that I was doing my best to understand what she was going through and that I found talking about all the negative things didn't help. I didn't do this so that it would get back to her that I was doing that, but mostly for my own peace of mind. Re-hashing the things that had happened over and over just felt like picking through the trash.
As a result of that, I found myself feeling less on edge around her and I think she could feel it too because things changed. It wasn't huge and she didn't come running back, but it was a positive step.
Looking forward to more of the story.
M:35 W:31 S: 9 D: 5 M: 11.5 yrs BD: 5/13 W moved out: 7/13
I agree with Topgun. It's of course helpful to get advice and support from family, but be careful that their opinions dont send yours down a terminal dark hallway. It really does help you maintain PMA around WAW when you don't feel like you are "turning off" negative thoughts about her the moment she makes eye contact. Coming at her from a position of understanding (even if you are actually upset) helps you come across as genuinely open to and unpressuring towards her.
M: 33 W: 33 M: 9 T: 10 3 S's: 8, 6 and 1.5 BD: 8/3/14 Living together
You are correct about this. Let me expand more on the issues between my SIL and my W.
A year ago we decided to plan a wedding. We were already married at the courthouse. This already shows how private I normally keep things from the family. We didn't even told our families about our marriage until 6 months later. Back to the wedding plans, my W was jobless at the time we started to plan from the wedding. In fact, she lost her job for a total of 6 months and I took care of everything during that time. It wasn't until January of this year that she actually found a very good job at an investments firm. During the planning of the wedding, she opened up to me and confessed how sad she was because her family was not as close to her as my family was. In fact, she felt closer to my family than to her own family. I did not really understand why because, after meeting her family, they seemed to be great people. As a result, my W chose my SIL to be the Maid of Honor.
But with the past of the time things changed. My W reconnected with her family and she added more girls to the bridal party. This was a good thing because I saw that she was finally reconnecting with her cousins and friends. Again, I wasn't sure why she was so disconnected from them. According to my W, at some point in her life she had issues with almost all of her family. Most of these issues relate to the trauma she lived as a child, in which her father abused her for nearly 7 years. She fell rejected and abandoned because nobody cared about her well being after she finally got free from all of that horrible situation. But there were strong reasons of why her family could not contact her. There was a protection order against her mother's side of the family so they could not even contact her until she turned 18.
During the wedding plans things got a little heated between my W and SiL. My SiL speaks mostly spanish so she will rely messages to me and then I will rely these messages to my W. One of the major things that sparked these arguments was the fact that my SiL personally spoke with my W multiple times and told her that she would feel more comfortable if she (my W) would just tell her (SiL) what to do or what kind of dress and shoes my W wants her to wear, instead of meeting with the rest of the wedding party to discuss these things. In other words, my SIL did not feel comfortable talking to the rest of the bridal party because she did not really knew them and she had an extremely hard time understanding them. My SIL basically said "You guys decide whatever you want, and I will just go with the flow, no matter how much it costs. Just tell me what you want me to wear or if you need help from me." My W understood this at first, but then she made a Whatsapp group for the bridesmaids and included my SiL. Again, my SiL called me and asked me to please take her out of the Whatsapp because she kept receiving too many txts from the bridal party. Keep in mind that most of the girls from the bridal party didnt have a job, so they will text literally all day long. So my W took her out of the Whatsapp group. Then a week later, my W gave my SiL phone number to the matron of honor, which was my W's SiL. She gave her the phone number without my SiL consent. Then my SiL received a text message from the matron of honor with instuctions on when to get the dress, what kind of shoes to wear, etc. My SiL got upset at this point and texted me saying that she would prefer for my W to communicate with her instead of the other girls who were strangers to her, and that she does not appreciate the fact that my W gave her phone number away without consulting her first. The original message from my SiL sounded very harsh, but that was basically what she meant.
Things got very heated up, and at this point I was upset with my SiL. I mean, she could been less mean in the text message or at least she could of text my W instead of me. Since we didnt replied to her text message, she later wrote back and said that she didnt wanted to be in the wedding party anymore. After this I had couple conversations with my brother and then finally my SiL decided to be back to the wedding party. But my W was not happy and wanted to talk to my SIL, which was a very fair request. But as time passed by, my W tried many times to speak to her during family events but my SIL was acting indifferent towards her. It wasnt until a week and a half before the wedding (my birthday) when my W finally confronted her. Things did not turned out well, because my SIL always had the understanding that she was still part of the wedding party. This confusion was a result of a comment that my W made to me a month before the wedding. She literally said "Look, if you SiL wants to walk, let her walk. I dont want to add more drama to all of this. Lets just have fun and forget about all of this." As a result, I thought also that my SiL was going to walk. My SiL and W argued over the phone for this misunderstanding, as my SiL already bought her dress and shoes according to my W's request months ago.
After this unfortunate event, we met with my uncle. After an hour long conversation he asked us to make peace with my brother and SiL because of the potential long term damage that this whole situation can cause. He said he understands both sides and that he sees that my SiL was being insensitive. 5 days before the wedding we met with my brother and SiL at my aunt's house. My aunt and uncle acted as mediators. We apologized first for the misunderstanding and expressed that we would like to move forward. But then my B and SiL started to talk and make their point. At this point things started to get heated up, because apparently my W and SiL had separate conversations that I didnt know about. In these conversations they spoke about my SiL walking with the rest of the wedding party. But my W denied all of this, which cause my SiL to look like a liar. Then my SiL tried to physically attack my W. I stood between them and I yelled at my SiL. Things were out of control. But then I saw the light. Apparently it was also my fault because there was information that I did not rely to my wife, which made my wife also look as a liar. I truly apologized for this misunderstanding and then things started to cool down. At the end, my wife went and hugged my SIL while telling her "I dont want u to be mad at me". My SiL then said to my W "I'm sorry for everything" at least 3 times while crying very hard. Then my bro asked my wife if it was okay for them to be part of the wedding party, to which my wife promptly replied 'yes'. Then right after that, my wife said that she always wanted my SiL to be part of the wedding party. Everything was going well.
We had a pleasant conversation the rest of the afternoon. I took my W aside and asked her how she was feeling about all this. She said she doesnt want any drama so she decided to drop it. But she also expressed to me that she was very upset with me because of the misunderstanding that I caused. Then we went home.
Then 4 days later was the rehearsal night which I described earlier in this post. Please, feel free to ask any questions. Have a blessed day!
. When you talk with people about your W now, what type of language do you use? When friends and family speak of her, how do they speak of her? Looking forward to more of the story.
To be honest, when I speak with family about her is because they ask me how things are going. I do not even start talking about her. Now, once we start talking we only refer to events like those that took place at the wedding. Also, we talk about issues that happened in the past in front of the family. Few family members dont speak well of her. They will say she is very self-centered. Even her aunt said to me that she is being selfish and manipulative and that she has always been like that. I do NOT talk trash about her, nor allow people to talk bad about her when they are in front of me. As a side note, I never told anybody about our issues before. We always kept everything to ourselves. The very first time I vented out to my parents was at the rehearsal night (refer to the first post). This was because it involved the family directly. Even tho I defended my W, but my family was already affected by the outcome of this unnecessary drama. I took a decision to make her happy, and it hurt me. But I still remained by her side. So, when I speak about my W to family or close friends, I speak with a sense of disbelief and dissapointment. Something like 'I cant believe shes divorcing me for this...' or 'why would she talk to me this way? I havent even cheated on her or abuse her.' I hope this answers your question.
It is time for some updates. First of all, thank you for your responses. So far they help me see the situation in a clearer view.
My W and I met two weeks ago in order for me to give her my signed and notarized part of the divorce papers. We started the conversation in a polite way, but it quickly turned into a blame-me-for-everything monologue. It has been well over 3 months of separation and we are still talking about this like it happened yesterday. After a while of going back and forth we finally hugged each other. She then told me that she still loves me but she cannot deal with my family, and that she doesn't want to see my family ever again. I proposed, again, for us to work on ourselves and forget about family for now. But she said is too late. Then we hugged again and she went back to class.
Later that day she texted me asking if we could go out for dinner. I said yes and we went out later that night. We had a good time, however she decided to vent out to me about how she was feeling, and how I destroyed this marriage. Regarding the beach incident, she also said that after what she went through with my family, she had the right to vent out and yell at me because she had no one else to vent out to. I am new to marriage and I don't know if it is normal for a spouse to yell at you in public and saying things like "now I know what kind of man you are...You are just like your f...ing family" when all I did was to hug her and listen to her feelings. We finished eating and we went to her car because it was raining and it was close to the restaurant. She then drove me to my car. Before I left, we kissed for a while. Then we went to our respective apartments.
More on the second incident is coming soon. Stay tuned.
...My W and I met two weeks ago in order for me to give her my signed and notarized part of the divorce papers. We started the conversation in a polite way, but it quickly turned into a blame-me-for-everything monologue.
...After a while of going back and forth we finally hugged each other. She then told me that she still loves me but she cannot deal with my family, and that she doesn't want to see my family ever again. I proposed, again, for us to work on ourselves and forget about family for now. But she said is too late.
...Later that day she texted me asking if we could go out for dinner. I said yes and we went out later that night. We had a good time, however she decided to vent out to me about how she was feeling, and how I destroyed this marriage.
...I am new to marriage and I don't know if it is normal for a spouse to yell at you in public and saying things like "now I know what kind of man you are...You are just like your f...ing family" when all I did was to hug her and listen to her feelings.
...Before I left, we kissed for a while. Then we went to our respective apartments.
Do you see a pattern? You get together, she gets angry, she wants to be close to you and does something to initiate that, you get together, she gets angry, she does something to be close to you.......
In my SSM, my wife of 38 years at the time, whenever she begain to feel close to me, would pick a fight with me so she could maintain an emotional distance.
In movies/sagas/stories, to have a "super hero" requires a "super villian" If you wife needs to re-write history to make her "the good guy or hero" in your divorce story, she needs to have villians she is opposing? You and your family are likely the villians to the drama she is writing in her mind.
You can't have Batman without the Joker, Sherlock Holmes without Professor Moriarty.
You sound like you are handling things mostly well, as she keeps coming back and then pushing you away. Congratulations on the "she keeps coming back" part.
Your challenge is to look at what you could do differntly (i.e. a 180) when she is back so that she doesn't get to easily push you and your family away.
One of the hard lessions I learned was not to be baited into arguing with my W no matter what she said. I also needed to not knuckle under to her in a "MR NICE GUY fashion." If you have read No more Mr. Nice Guy, you will know what I mean. I had to learn to be an integrated, strong, polite MAN, who when she yelled at me, didn't respond with anger but assumed the adult/leader role and asked her civil questions that she could hear. I couldn't tell her what to do, only she could decide what she was doing, but I could guide her thinking.
I remember one event where we were out at dinner in a restaurant and she did yell at me (it does happen, but not often). I just looked at her with a question on my face and said I was sorry she felt so upset, but what was it I had just done that caused her to get so angry in a public place. She thought for a moment and then apologized and said she had no idea why she did what she did.
As part of your GAL, you may want to read lots and lots of books on relationships, especially on setting boundaries as you and your W (or ex-W now that the papers are signed) will both need to set boundaries, especially with family if you ever get back together. If she sees and learns from you about setting boundaries it might help her come back to you.
So what kind of 180 are you going to do the next time you meet?
Good luck.
>43 years of marriage--My wife and I are now closer than we have been in decades. I believe that my SSM is over.
Thanks for your response. I apologize I replied so late. I have been extremely busy lately between work, church, studying, and trying to find a cheaper apartment to move into.
You have described my W without even knowing the rest of the story. I am impressed! I believe this is where experience kicks in. I will be posting the second story soon, but is a long, long story. So I am trying to keep it as short as possible.
Back to your post, you are right. Two days ago she came to take the dog and give it to her brother. We could not keep him due to the unavailability of taking good care of him (we work too hard and have little time for the dog). So she walks in my apt and gives me a hug. She then started to brag about a "singles party" she did at her place couple days ago. She said it was "wild". I still feel that sometimes I am talking to a high school girl. But as the conversation went on, you can easily figure out that it wasn't a "wild" party at all. It was just around 8 coworkers celebrating the UN Day.
She then noticed I was getting big (I am a skinny guy but I've been going to the gym for the past 3 months, and now Im 15 lbs heavier). Then she started saying that she doesn't even feel like we were married. She thinks is probably her coping mechanism (she went tru a horrible physical and emotional trauma as a child caused my her own parents). But, as the conversation went by, she started accusing me again for ruining everything. I had to stop her (I never did this before) and tell her that I am done listening to the same complaints over and over. It has been 4 months of our separation and she keeps bringing this up. I told her that I am willing to listen to her, but not to listen to things that she had repeated so many times in her past. But she kept talking and began to cry. She said she believed on us, on our future together. And that she put all the effort in this relationship. As a man, I get tired of all this situation when I dont get even a single acknowledgement. I also put a lot into this relationship. And when I start giving her examples on how much I also contributed in this relationship, she cuts me off saying "Alright, alright, fine..."
So we talked for like an hour and a half. Then she hugged me and said "I really love you, but not like before...I believe we should have been friends in the first place before becoming lovers..." Then she added "lets work on our friendship now." She was very emotional.
But then she asked me if I can help her pay her phone bill. We are sharing the same plan under my name, but she was paying her half. She said that since I am moving in with a roommate, now I will have extra money to help her with her bill. I told her that:
1. she makes almost double the amount that I make, plus commissions. 2. She decided to leave and erase me from her life for ever (she deleted me from FB, talked trash and lies about me to others, etc.) 3. We are not together anymore. 4. The reason why your phone bill is so high is because you wanted the iPhone 6 plus an iPad.
So we are separated, she is not going to help me repair our old apartment before I leave, she left a mess when she moved out, she told me shes not willing to help me at all, and on top of that you are looking for financial support from me? WTH girl!
Then she hugged me again before getting in her car. At this point she was crying a lot. I told her "you know my position, you know that I apologized to you and asked for forgiveness so many times. And I know you said you forgive me, but you did not want to fix anything. You moved out suddenly without even letting me know...But still I believe we can fix this together..." She didn't say anything and got in her car. I kissed her and left.
