Nicole, you just aren’t getting this. THERE IS NOTHING YOU COULD HAVE DONE BECAUSE THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU.
If you want to “do it right this time” then let him go. Detach 100%. Figure out why you would be willing to accept so little while you blame yourself for his problems. Do this so you don’t unwittingly teach your daughter to put her needs behind everyone else for the rest of her life.
Ownit, yeah I'm not feeling convinced that there's nothing I could have done, but because you all have more experience I'll tell myself it's true. I see his problems as separate from mine, that the things I did wrong don't excuse what he did wrong. It's going to take some effort to change my mindset. I'll let him go, but still hope someday, whenever it might be, that there could be some kind of peace and forgiveness. I'll try to let go of that hope as well, but I'm not quite there yet.
Nicole, if you're right, he will come back when he sees you doing your own thing and being the best person you can be. Nothing wrong with striving to be that. But I'm telling you right now, you have rose colored glasses on and are not seeing the truth of who he is. NO BASICALLY GOOD GUY who just has a temporary lapse of judgment and then is discouraged in reconciliation because his wife can't let it go, SAYS THOSE THINGS ABOUT HIS OWN CHILD!!!!
I've seen lots of cases here where a reconciliation is attempted and the wife can't let it go or stop punishing their husband. The husbands in those cases do not behave like yours!
What you had instead was a failed reconciliation because HE wasn't actually committed to the idea. He lapsed back in to his affair or his addiction - this happens a lot.
Your life is not ruined. You can plan new dreams and get back on your feet and open up a whole new life for you and your little girl. You cannot fix the fact that her father does not care about her, but you can seek a whole new life with new people in it that can form a friend/family around her.
My sister's sociopathic ex left her when their daughter was 5. My sister went on to marry a good guy who was a good dad to my niece - went to all her games and band performances, fixed her car, etc. My niece calls her biological father "the sperm donor" because he's been such a poor father figure in her life. Thank god she had a great step-dad and an uncle she is close to.
Get an attorney, get an order for temporary support, get the financial support that is due to you and your daughter, then get out of there as soon as you can. If you are meant to be with him let HIM do the hard work of getting over his addictions and making it up to you and your daughter. You were not unreasonable to expect him to do things to make you feel safe and cherished when he came home - he didn't do them because he already had one foot out the door again.
And I think taking time to focus on you and not your marriage is the best thing you can do right now.
It's not moving on or away from your H, it's moving forward to finding who you really are, what makes you happy etc. It's a good thing, growth. Growth is always good. Try to find optimism. Not for your marriage...and I'm not saying discard hope for your marriage...but optimism with life in general. I can feel a change in you, and that's good. As you said, find the positives.
Me 50 H 48 S 23 S 21 D 19 Together 31 years Married 25 years Separated April 2009 Reconciled 2010 Separated September 2017
Hi Nicole, I think you've had some really good advice these past couple of days. Plenty of food for thought hopefully.
The general theme? Step back and let go of your marital situation just now. Offer it up to God or the wider universe as out of your control.
And turn the focus inward. How can you best care for yourself and your little one just now? How can you start to rebuild, calm anxieties, seek the small joys in life, manage the ruminations.
This is the path to take I promise you xx
T 13 M 7 Me 48 H 46 SS 15 BD 7.14 PA D final 5.16 (H filed)
We receive & we lose, and must try to achieve gratitude & embrace with whole hearts whatever of life that remains after the losses - Dubus
Ownit, KML, Caz, Sotto, thank you again for your input. I'll leave him alone and try to stabilize. I'll write more when I have some kind of positive update. Thanks again. You were here for me in the worst time of my life. I really, really appreciate it.
Oh honey, i feel for you, i really do. I’ve been there, I’m sure we all have. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, looking back we can always see things we could have done better. Learn from it and move on. There’s been loads of good advise here for you. Take it in, breathe and focus on you. I wrote a letter at some point for my wh, i said my piece and i left it there. You’ve done that now, he can read it and absorb it in his own time. Cliche, and you’ve been told this , but it will get easier if you focus on you. I didn’t believe this much myself to start, you feel the hurt will never ease, but it does. But you need to focus on the here and now and you. Please please take a bit of time to do some you things. Take your daughter out and enjoy seeing the smile on her face. No one can tell you what the future may hold, he might come back, he might not. But you must work on making yourself happy- you owe it to yourself and your daughter. I know how you feel about feeling bad for your child bringing her up without the mum/dad setup, but believe me- she will be happier with just one happy parent than two unhappy. You’re going to set the example to her if what a woman is and how a woman should be treated. You don’t want her to think it’s okay for a husband to ignore/ cheat on his spouse.
Take care of yourself. Breathe, remember the old oxygen mask speech. Do something for you, anything- whatever makes you feel good about you.
Me 26 H 25 M 4 T 5 Baby born 4/14 BD: 1/15 EA: 2/15 PA: 4/15 reconciling: 4/15 ILYBINILWY- 11/15 ILY-1/16 ILYBNILWY 4/16 ILY 6/16 ILYBINILWY 6/16 Baby due 3/17 BD 8/16
Cherry, Jim, and Joe, thanks a lot for checking-in. I said I'd write again when there was something positive to report because I didn't want to keep writing about the same issues without progress.
Cherry, your advice is solid and I'm trying to do what I can - reaching out to my career network, going to therapy, talking with friends every day, exercising, doing activities with my daughter, etc.. I don't have any money at all at the moment so I can't really go shopping or buy a lot of stuff, but this is the first time in my adult life I've been without an income so hopefully in a few months my financial situation will improve. I reserved a new apartment in a new building in the city where I'm planning to move, sent an application for a new school for my daughter, and told everyone there I'm coming back. Nothing really makes me feel any better yet. The hardest part is still just feeling totally alone.
All, last week I apologized in person to my husband for everything I did wrong but he was resistant and emotionless. He said he still wants a divorce no matter what he. He started to say "maybe in a few years...." and then stopped.
I haven't done anything to check what he's really up to all this time, but he left to go overseas to take his father to his home country with a stopover in Dubai. The story didn't add up to me so I really had no idea where he actually went. One day, a few days ago, I just decided to check an old facebook account that I new he had years ago. His password to everything is the same so I just quickly checked. I saw that he's been actively searching the name of woman here in our current city the past two months. I went to her profile and saw she's a 26 year old nurse with whom he works. I searched her name on google and found an Instagram account with freshly uploaded pictures of "Dubai 2018." So obviously he already moved on with a woman 14 years younger than I. Most of the pictures on facebook are of her in a bikini holding a bottle of beer partying with friends. So I guess that's it. At some point in December he moved on.
I will go through the divorce process since I have no choice. Sorry I don't have any positive updates. My general impression of DB is that it doesn't work, I'm sorry to say. Not that I did a great job with it this time around, but it seems most on this board end up getting divorced. I believe it's just too easy to get divorced in the Western world with our values of freedom and independence. It's just too easy to say "I'm not happy so I'll just go dump my family and pursue a fun new life." Having traveled to a lot of developing countries in Asia, Africa, Middle East, and Latin America, I have a much stronger preference for cultures where divorce is saved for extreme situations. Yes, a lot of people might be unhappily married in those places, but our culture of just walking out the door and abandoning our loved ones isn't necessarily better.
