SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

ohfor,

I don't mind the t/j at all! Let us know how DDF is doing.

I just skimmed back a couple pages of this thread and I realized that me trying to get her to turn back to our M is me going backwards. That is not what I want.

Booyah,

you are a MAN with conviction.

I don't quite feel that. But I'm getting there. I appreciate the support.

Wishy-washy statements like that just mean she's not committing. Not committing means she's not serious.

File for D and move on.

"I'm super suspicious too. I often wonder if my constant second guessing myself and suspicion of her was a hindrance to our R.

Oh, my dear Squid. The answer to the above is HELL NO!

The hindrance to your R is having a broken spouse. You cannot fix her. You cannot fix her. You cannot fix her.

Are you just stalling on filing for D cuz I said I'd come to court so we can go out an have a beer afterwards?? Don't worry, I'm a Grandma and I look like one. No one will talk, they'll just think your grandmother came to offer moral support.

And, be the designated driver.

josiep,

Are you just stalling on filing for D cuz I said I'd come to court so we can go out an have a beer afterwards?? Don't worry, I'm a Grandma and I look like one. No one will talk, they'll just think your grandmother came to offer moral support.

Well, unless you're of Filipino descent, that probably won't happen.

Honestly, I'm just being an idiot. My heart is having such a difficult time catching up with my head. But I honestly feel the two are not that far apart now. I've been stalling because I wanted to wait until after the holidays, after we'd told the kids about what was going to happen. I blame my stubbornness for not pulling the trigger sooner. I should have ripped the bandaid off a while ago. Thank you, codependency.

Geez, this thread's almost 3 weeks old. Shit or get off the pot already!

If she is not clear and concise about seeking R, then she isn’t.

Take her at face value...if she isn’t busting her ass to get you to R then you don’t need to wonder, or ask, or even think about it. It’s time to file and move on.

You need to concentrate on your future for yourself and your kids, and obviously she doesn’t want to be a part of that future.

No, Squid, you'll do it when you're ready. You get to be the boss of this. If you're not ready, you're not ready. And it doesn't sound like it makes a lot of difference to you financially or future retirement, etc. so be gentle with yourself.

There's something holding you back. Instead of beating yourself up, sit back and relax and see if you can figure out what it is.

Squid:

I'm not going to lie, brother. After delivering two by fours to you on this and the other site, I stumbled across this thread today and got incredibly excited for you.

Then I arrived at today's update...

You know this isn't about her anymore... It's about you. Love yourself enough... Respect yourself enough to not accept less than what you deserve.

File the papers.

tried to convince me to keep things "normal" when DD18 came home for spring break. Which I assume means that she'll still be here in the house by then and act "normal" while DD18 was here with her friends from college. I'm not interested in that at all.

Help her lie and hide what's going on from your daughter. Really?

I won't lie. I've been hoping she'd turn to our marriage. But I see that's just not happening.

You are lying to yourself.

I'm trying very hard to maintain the 180 and NC. Thoughts?

You can't or won't let go so you'll keep yourself bound in limbo.

The 180 NC requires self discipline. You're not even close.

You keep hoping she'll "get it" but you are the one wo doesn't "get it".

Great thread.

Squid, this is so tough. I’m going through the same what if’s.

Let’s escape infidelity. You can always remarry if there is true change. Forward progress.

That said, doesn’t your heart just scream some days. Like you are going to go out of your freakin mind!

I’m here with you.

I like that line about “when you are going through hell... keep going”

[This message edited by Catch44 at 1:00 AM, February 1st (Thursday)]

Oh squid,

When I read this I nearly let out one of my now famous groans.

I often wonder if my constant second guessing myself and suspicion of her was a hindrance to our R.

Nothing you did was a hindrance to R. I wish I was your teacher and could give you compulsory home work. I would make you go back and read every post you ever made and require you to try and find just one indication, that she ever even made a half-hearted attempt at R.

You did no second guessing. All you ever could do was the first type of guessing. She never gave you a straight answer on anything so all you had was a guess. There was no 2md in that.

Please squid, file now. Ask anyone here. Those that never had the choice and then those like me whose choice it was. Makes absolutely no difference what camp we are in. Once that D is filled, your life begins to seep back. At a different pace for each of us. Admittedly, with the odd hiccup and our old friend emotional pain revisiting on occasion, but for everyone, without fail, a better course than we had been on up until that point.

Now on to DDF’s first day at Varsity (what we call it here, sort of our version of the Australian Uni).

Well, when she got home she was still wearing the wide eyed, stunned look. When I asked how it went all she could say was, “I never realised how different people can be and how many there are”.

You have to realise that this is a little girl whose world, for the past 12 years, has pretty much revolved around her school. The familiar fields, and buildings, and rules. Every one of the 700 odd children all neat in the same school uniform. Boys, hair all trimmed to specification. Girls all tied back. Greeting every adult passed in the hall with a “good morning sir”, “good morning M’am”.

Her world has just expanded a little. This is a large campus. 62 000 students enrolled. She is a 1st year so all of this is new to her. The dress, the attitude, the lying on the lawns and kissing in public. The music blaring from the speakers at all the different sports and social activity tables. All just wow!

And then it must be realised that she is in the fine arts faculty. On any of our university campuses, a fine eye will realise that, while the formal school uniform is no longer worn, a closer look recognises that there are still uniforms. Engineers all wear T shirrs and shorts, and it would appear that the hairy legs protruding from them are also standard issue. The medics all wear white coats and stethoscopes, even though, they are not going to use then for several years still. The science folk wear lab coats, in an attempt to look as if they are doing medicine. If only they could get those nifty stethoscope thingies. The commerce folk wear whatever is the latest in neat fashion.

In the arts faculty, the uniform is anything that is not uniform. They wear everything and anything or even nothing at all. As long as it shocks and makes you question.

Yip, this is going to be a year of learning for her.

squid,

You are human and a great Father. Of course you want and hope to save your marriage and your family. You HOPE your WW gets it and misses the same things. Point blank she won’t.

I didn't want to file since this was all XWW’s doing. She blew up our family. Divorce was her idea based on her actons. I didn’t want to do her dirty work. But guess what if I didn’t file I’d still be in limbo still “hoping” she would come around and she would still be controlling me. I had enough! Pull the plug squid!

I wish I was 21 again.....some of the best times ever with college buddies and getting ready to enter the “real world”. But guess what squid....I’ll never be 21 again. And like you my family and marriage will never be the same. It’s all in the past.This is my life now. A single 41 yr old divorced Dad. This isn’t what I wanted my life to be like but “It is what it is”. I’d rather be in this life than the life I was in. That life was fake. I thought I had a loving wife that would love me forever and we would be on this journey until we passed. I was wrong. I was played a fool and was lied to. Yes it hurt but I’ve picked myself up and dusted myself off. I now live my life for me and my children. That’s all that matters to me. XWW is one less thing that I worry about or stress out about. I simply wish her luck in life. She decided to go this way with her life. I’m going the other way. People enter into our lives for reasons. Sometimes those people stay in our lives sometimes they don’t....for a reason.

Your WW (like mine) is of the latter.

You can’t understand or control what WW does. She broke a promise and a vow to you. Squid....get off this terrible merry go round you are on.....File for D and start living YOUR life!

[This message edited by SuperDaddy1027 at 5:21 AM, February 1st (Thursday)]

Please file. You have done everything you can.

It has been a while since I had been here to SI. I hit a plateau where I was feeling pretty well, and mistook it for being "over it" and fixed. I had the inevitable dip in the roller coaster and bottomed out a week or so ago. I came back here to see how many people I had followed were doing, and find the support/shared experiences to help bolster myself again.

I fell like chiming in on this thread because of the eerily similar situation and time frame shared with squid, Superdad, etc. You would think at some point our ex-WW would find something new under the sun to tell us as to why they did what they did. Anything but the truth. It seems like we are of the personality to take the first reason at face value, which amounted to it being our fault because we made them feel unwanted/unloved. So what other choice did we leave them then to go find love/acceptance from a concerned, loving "other." I see that now for the crock of shit that it is. Wish I could have seen it sooner.

In not seeing the situation as it really was, I was like you, squid, trying at every corner to salvage the marriage, blaming myself for the lack of an progress in it. Turning a blind eye again to the fact that she had checked out long before and holding firm to the faults I brought to the marriage that would never allow her to love me like that again. Feeling like I just hadn't done enough to make us work. I see now that I did do enough, way more than enough. Trying to put that effort in, while the other is not putting in the same commitment, is just a futile attempt at a lost cause. There is alot to be said for trying, but there is also something to be said for realizing if you are not met with the same effort in return, there is no shame in putting that effort into healing and fixing yourself.

I am exactly where you are now. Attempting NC, just keeping to the subject of our children, doing alright most times. Slipping and engaging in to much of the "chatting like old friends" charade. I just pick at old scares and end up licking my wounds and feeling sorry for myself later. I am committed to ending that cycle.

File when you are ready, and do it with a clear conscious knowing your did, and are doing, the right thing for you and your kids. I am finding happiness in a life I never envisioned. It still has its ups and downs, but it involves my kids, and that counts for so damn much! Hang in there.

Being stuck in this very same place for over the last year I understand exactly all the internal negotiating that takes place. You can see the state of your marriage...but you just keep hoping that somehow you can still re-write the ending. As if everything we've been through to date doesn't feel bad enough, it's very easy to start beating up on ourselves for not wanting out...or for not feeling strong enough to actually carry out what we know is ultimately in our best interest. I know so many times in the last few months when talking with friends I've said: I just want to want the divorce.

One thing that has helped me throughout this process is to stop and really look at what it is I am really grieving. When I did that I was surprised to realize how quickly I had quit wanting HIM.

Most of my initial grief centered around my concept of the marriage - which was not what the marriage was in reality. I was grieving the loss of the illusion - which seemed so strange since I had long felt that was gone from the first d-day. But what I hadn't realized in all those years I thought we were reconciling, I had actually not really experienced the full impact of the initial loss of the marriage because I was able to direct so much of that grief toward the belief we were building a stronger, better marriage. IOW, twelve years later I was still grieving what was lost at the first d-day...it had been unfinished.

Later I realized I was grieving the loss of being married. I still am experiencing that to some degree. I liked the day-to-day of that. I liked feeling like I had the connection to someone...or even that identity of being a married person. That's further compounded by the fact that I feel some shame (I know, I know...shame is not really a logic based emotion) about being divorced...about having to check a box on a medical form that says, "Divorced". I just really want to go back to that comfortable "Married" box. Which means tying up all these loss ends and starting completely over - ie, dating - and doing all the things that I didn't have to do because I was married. Ugh.

Another component of the grief is the loss of all the future dreams I had. I'm learning it's not even necessarily the dreams themselves (though some of them I do grieve)...it's that they've been shattered and nothing yet has come into a replace them. I'm almost in this dreamless/hopeless - passionless - state. There's just this...void. And it feels hollow, empty, and I don't really have a name for it. How do I drag myself out of bed in the morning if I call that void exactly what it is? If I admit that it is no passion or hope IN life itself? I found that I was calling it him, my marriage, this divorce thing because it was an easier label to accept...than to simply realize that I was - for the time - empty of any dreams and subsequently any passion. This has been the most challenging place for me to sit and allow. It's what sends me back to the idea of him, the marriage, the trying to write a different ending, every single time. It's an extremely uncomfortable place. Sometimes the grief of the other really does feel better. But I'm also finding that if I can allow myself to be in it - to release the need to somehow wrestle it to the ground and make it my bitch - then I actually meet myself in that place. That sounds weird but it's as if there's a part of me that's been on the trajectory all these years from an intention that was set in place years ago. It's not that I necessarily disagree with the path that I took...it's that I never really evaluated it again once the initial "business model" was set in place. I became what I was by the doing...and other parts of me went unnoticed - perhaps because they were not needed but still...there was so much more to me than even *I* knew. And this void of shattered dreams can facilitate this reacquaintance if you can have the courage to show up in that place.

When we are clinging to a person, to a concept...especially when we intuitively know that its time in our life is over...WE are the what and who we are avoiding. And THAT is the source of the suffering. It feels like a splitting because it is.

I realized I was grieving the loss of being married

This...

loss of all the future dreams I had

And this...

MST3Kfan,

I am exactly where you are now. Attempting NC, just keeping to the subject of our children, doing alright most times. Slipping and engaging in to much of the "chatting like old friends" charade. I just pick at old scars and end up licking my wounds and feeling sorry for myself later. I am committed to ending that cycle.

It's a crappy charade. I am truly understanding that NC No New Hurts. Because every time we start chatting things up more pain emerges. More stupid hope and then me kicking myself for ever being so dumb. Her still living at our house makes NC very difficult. The morning routines and evening dinners make exchanges inevitable.

A lot of your post really gets to the heart of my experience.

truthsetmefree,

When we are clinging to a person, to a concept...especially when we intuitively know that its time in our life is over...WE are the what and who we are avoiding. And THAT is the source of the suffering. It feels like a splitting because it is.

To your entire post, all I can say is, "Yup."

When you write about still trying to re-write the ending, it resonates with me. I guess that's just stubbornness on my part.

Your post back in November really hit me hard. I'm still in that hollow, passionless state. Still clinging to that person. That person that is clearly no longer there. I'm trying like hell to snap out of it. Like you, I keep asking, "What's the point of it all? Of anything?"

Look, I understand this is all par for the course. Lost, gutted. It's a through-way on the path to the other side. The only way out of hell is through it, right?

[This message edited by squid at 1:09 PM, February 1st, 2018 (Thursday)]

Your post back in November really hit me hard. I'm still in that hollow, passionless state.

You know I understand this. I did quite a bit of reading on "the dark night of the soul"...and that really helped me to be able to just allow/accept this place. I did find that the less I resisted, the less pain I suffered. I held the thought of a horse pulling against the bit in it's mouth....and tried really hard to not do that.

You're not alone, squid. Not ever. I know it can be hard to see that in such darkness. I do believe there is a perfect and divine timing to everything. Obviously, I'm not the timekeeper...and many many days I'm not happy with that. But I remind myself I didn't make this world either; I don't even necessarily understand it. But it is up to me to decide if I believe it to be hostile or friendly. *I* get to choose how I experience it. So I choose to believe that there is a reason for every single thing I experience...and thankfully I do have enough experiences that give me a hindsight perspective that holds me in that belief when I am at my lowest. From this belief in perfect timing, I can trust when I feel ready and when I don't feel ready - no matter what my brain (ego) is telling me. It's a surrendering.. to ALL of it, exactly as it is in the moment... and having to be done over and over again.

Hugs. It will change. Of that much I can promise you.

I'm sorry that you are here. Only you know when it is right. Honestly even when it is the right thing to do, it is one of the hardest things to do.

Deep breathes.

There is life after D. I am only 3 yrs out and its something new and different every day. Some good and some bad but it is all mine. Find your life and live it.

(((hugs)))

[This message edited by Futurefear at 12:04 AM, February 2nd (Friday)]

So I'm mid convo with DD18. It's WW b-day tomorrow. DD18 is asking about the status of things at home. I tell her "normal". She asks "What does that mean?"

I reply, "Well, your mom is looking at apartments where she might live. But she's also considering a research position on Texas over the summer."

DD18 replied, "Whoah, that's a big step."

I replied, "Yep"

DD18 replied, "What about us? Is moving houses in the near future?"

I haven't replied yet. But likely in about a year.

Just an update.

I’m interested to hear how you’re doing? I’ve caught some of your posts in others threads and it sounds as if you’re approaching the meh stage. Am I really far off the mark?

Praying for you Squid