It's been almost one-year since I posted this thread, and the details are there for anyone who wants to read them. I was in a very sad and lonely place last year, and I wanted to post this update in the hopes that it might help anyone experiencing something like that right now.
My wife and I have reconciled. Not long after my Christmas 2019 posts, I finally threw in the towel emotionally and turned the corner accepting that my wife wanted a divorce. It was devastating to me -- as I'm sure it is for anyone who loves their spouse and wants to hold their marriage together as their spouse insists on divorce -- especially so in my case since I felt largely responsible for the destruction of our marriage. I was carrying extreme sadness, fear of the future for me and my children, and heavy guilt for my mistakes.
I felt I was at the end of my rope. Up until that point, only my brother knew anything was going wrong. But I reached out to a few other close friends to talk to them when I had some time alone. For me, it was the first steps toward accepting what I had been trying to prevent for the past 7 months.
We were busy with lots of kids' activities during the holiday week, but the day before New Year's Eve, I initiated a discussion with my wife about the relationship. I told her that I couldn't take living like this anymore. I told her that I loved her but that if she did not want to reconcile, we should move forward with a divorce. I apologized again for what I had done wrong. I shared with her my perspective of trying to focus on being thankful for the time that we had been given together, for our healthy and beautiful children, and for what we had shared that had brought them into the world. She was emotional, but held firm in not wanting to reconcile; we hugged a little, we cried a little, but things remained the same -- she did not want to reconcile and wanted to move ahead with a divorce.
I did tell her that day that I would soon be moving out of the spare bedroom and back into the master bedroom in the next couple of days. I said that the reason was that after we divorced, who knew what our living situation would be, but that our oldest boy had never had his own room and always wanted one, and that for whatever time we remained in the house, I was going to let him have that room as his own.
Then I probably deviated from the DB philosophy and did some things that are not advised, and probably shouldn't be advised in most cases, but I'll relay them here anyway.
Later that day same day, I drove to my parents' house a couple hours away to talk with them. They had no idea anything was wrong, and they were stunned and heartbroken to hear the news. I confessed to them the mistakes that I had made, my part in the breakup of our marriage. They were kind, because they saw how defeated and devastated I was at that point, but of course, they knew I had made serious mistakes. My parents love my wife, probably as much as they love me, and they knew I had hurt her badly. They asked me to ask my wife if it was OK for them to reach out to her. My parents told me about the faith-based "Retrouvaille" program and asked me to consider giving it a try. I was willing, of course, but I told them that I didn't think my wife would be interested. But I agreed to ask her about it.
I returned home and spent New Year's Eve with the family. At some point on New Year's Day I told my wife about Retrouvaille, and asked her if she'd be willing to consider it. She was not. She said there was no point in trying anymore.
A couple days later, I moved back into the master bedroom, and back into our marital bed; she began sleeping on the spare twin bed was have in the master bedroom. So we were sleeping in the same room, but not in the same bed.
I returned to work after the holidays. The next couple of weeks are a blur. I know that my parents reached out to her via email, and maybe also via phone, and I don't know all that was said, but I know they were sympathetic to her and tried to show her that she was loved and that they understood where she was coming from, having been hurt by me so badly. I had some conversations about it with my mom and dad during the first and second week of January, as they were communicating with her. I'm pretty sure that during that two-week period, I asked my wife once or twice more if she would be willing to try Retrouvaille, and her answer was always the same -- no; she saw no point in trying to reconcile.
Although my parents were asking me to be more flexible, I could not take living like this anymore -- emotionally it was hurting too much. Moreover, I felt that by allowing her to stay in the marriage, and reap all the comforts of what it means to be provided for by a husband, and to not have to face the real world on her own, without any effort at reconciling, and repeatedly rejecting even the idea of reconciling, was counterproductive to any hope of reconcilliation. I knew it was a last-ditch move, but I reached a point where I truly felt that the best move -- the only move, really -- that I had left to make was to actively move ahead with the divorce. Most of me had given up hope, only a very small part of me clung onto the hope that maybe actually being faced with the stark reality of how her life would be post-divorce would cause her to reconsider her refusal to try to reconcile.
Since my wife seemed to have (to me) unrealistic expectations about how the marital assets would be divided up, and what standard of living she'd have post-divorce, I recommended that she have a frank discussion with her divorce lawyer (I knew she had met with one) about realistic and reasonable expectations, and then asked that we sit down to discuss the divorce in a week, the following weekend, to try to reach agreement on the broad outlines of the terms of our divorce. I scheduled an appointment with my own divorce attorney for Monday morning following that planned weekend discussion.
When that weekend arrived, we had an early morning talk. It was super tense to start. I beleived we were about the begin the actual work of negotiating the terms of our divorce. We sat down, and I asked her if she had spoken with her divorce lawyer, and she said yes she had. And then, when I started to talk about how to split up assets in the divorce, she cut me off and said that she was willing to try to reconcile with me.
I was stunned. It was only when I had basically lost all hope, and reluctantly brought myself right to the point where I was going to file for divorce on Monday, that this good news hit me. She told me some things that she wanted me to change; most of which were pretty reasonable, and to which I agreed. And from that moment on, we've been working to repair our marriage.
It turned out that some of the emails that my parents had sent her, confirming their love for her, their understanding of her feelings, and their thoughts about the importance of trying to work on our marriage resonated with her. They at least made her pause, raised some doubt about the feminst-mantras she had been telling herself for months, and ultimately, brought her to a point where she was inspired to change her mind.
We did end up attending a Retrouvaille weekend retreat a month later, and I think that really helped us get back on the right track. Even at the retreat, during introductions, she described herself as this being the "last chance" to fix things in our marriage, which to me seemed more extreme than I felt at the time. But in any case, we did have a positive experience that weekend, and our marriage has continued to improve ever since. It's not been without hiccups, and not without some arguments, but definite overall improvement month by month. Even during this crazy, unusual COVID time, when we were forced into close quarters with us and the kids all under 1 roof nonstop for months on end ...
There are no hard and fast rules. Talk to friends and family if you need to, as I did in my case. In my own personal view, I don't like the idea of a married couple trying to deal with all of this on their own, and keeping it all "private" ... that's unnatural, and it's not how we evolved as people or how our human societies evolved. Sometimes, we do need the wisdom and love and advice of family and friends. Our extended family, specifically my parents, did, in the end, help us reconcile. And I'm thankful for that.
I wanted to write this post-script to my thread for anyone who might stumble upon it and for anyone who might be reading these forums searching for any sign of hope that things can work out. Last year, around this time, when I felt completely alone in my grief and my sadness, I came here. Thank you to all who responded and offered words of comfort, advice, or even commiseration. I needed that. Remember that every relationship and every situation is different. But in the end, every relationship is between two people, people who are imperfect, whose thoughts and feelings can and do change. Nothing is permanent except God's love and plan for us. And I had to bring myself through the painful process of accepting the break-up of my marriage, accept it, and initiate the process of moving on, before things fell into place to begin a reconciliation. For anyone who is experiencing a difficult time this Christmas season, my heart and my thoughts go out to you. There is always hope.
"What is best for my kids is best for me" Amor Fati Link to quotes: https://www.divorcebusting.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2879712
Last edited by job; 12/17/2009:14 PM. Reason: added link to new thread
Sit quietly, the answers will reveal themselves when you least expect them to. The past is gone, the present is a gift and you need to focus on today, allow the future to reveal itself when it is ready.
