Crazy Situation that Just doesn't make sense

[flyingkiwi]

My wife and I are currently living in Japan where she has a teaching job and I operate my own business remotely in our home country. She has just decided out of the blue that we are over (after 13 years of marriage , unlucky for some aye ?).

 

The reason she sites is basically the financial stress on our marriage, which she attributes to single handed financial decisions made by me in one of our businesses which failed. Unfortunately the decisions that were made that caused our business to eventually fail were made by her without consultation with me or against my advice but I cannot get her to understand that. We have been left with huge debts which I have been paying off regularly from my own earnings and we have been living off her earnings here in Japan. She has got this bee in her bonnet about her money being hers and mine being mine and that she shouldn't have to subsidise my lifestyle (which is funny in itself because it is actually the other way round...)

 

To fill you in on the story about 12 years ago we purchased a business for her to operate, she was supposed to be the manager and while she was everything was working well, we were banking some money and building the business and moving forward. Unfortunately after about 4 years max, she decided that she no longer needed to work and would appoint a manager who was paid around $30,000 pa at the time and she would go home and spend her days riding horses (which added another $100 / week + to our expenses) so after finally getting our finances into a breakeven position we were suddenly going down hill $35,000 + per year, money that we didn't have to burn.

 

After about 2 years of this, we saw an opportunity to expand this business, so we discussed it and decided to proceed on the agreement that she would manage this new branch. Well the construction costs ballooned out to $100,000 above our $40,000 estimate, at the same time (2008) one of the major clients in my business fell over owing me around $40,000 and cutting my work back to the point that this business was now struggling to survive. After about 3 months of managing this branch my wife again decided that she was not going to work any more and would rather spend her time at home, so appointed a manger at $52,000 per year now and walked away. I was left trying to make ends meet in both businesses and tidy up after her in her own business so that we could get back on track again. The added expenditure blew our overdrafts to crazy levels and eventually I had to approach the bank to try and consolidate our debts from a high interest OD into low interest secured loans. Unfortunately our bank manager was nothing short of useless and took about a year to sort the paperwork out by which time our position had got even worse due to high costs of interest, extra wages and still being in the growing phase. By the time we got to sign the paperwork to change these over and save us money, my wife had forgotten that we were even looking at this loan and went ballistic in the lawyers office. Anyway eventually she signed the papers but from that day on has not been a happy camper. Eventually while we managed to grow the business back to a good level of performance we got caught out by some missed tax payments and were liquidated by our tax department. My wife blames the whole situation on me, due to me taking out these loans that she knew nothing about and has held it against me to this day.

 

Now she is saying that due to the pressure I have put on our marriage that she no longer loves me, she will not talk about it or go to counselling. If I try and talk to her about it she just calmly makes all of these outrageous claims against me then denies me an opportunity to explain to her what exactly happened and that i am not to blame. She will have no part of a discussion and will bait me till I crack and maybe grab her and make her sit down to actually talk, then she whacks me with the assault allegations. If this wasn't happening to me I would laugh at the pure comedy of it.

 

I have been paying about $6000 per month in debt repayment, am currently working from home doing my own business as well as doing 2 part time businesses, I also do all of the housework and looking after the kids as her job has long hours, she doesn't contribute a thing to our expenses back home and is now on the warpath that i should be contributing to our costs here as well so that she can spend "her own" money..... She has started talking to a lawyer about getting her share of our debts which I am happy to part with as I have sacrificed a large part of my life over the last 7 years to try and tidy up after her.

 

We are still living in the same house as we have kids involved, who want to go with me when I eventually leave maybe to another country, but apparently I have been filling the kids heads with ideas about where they will go etc, when all I have done is console them in the absence of a mother who actually cares about their emotional well-being. She has told them that everything will be alright as she will be happy once I am gone, however she cannot see that they won't be.... She is rather deluded in some aspects of life and generally pretty self-centred, and accuses anyone who doesn't do everything she demands of them as being self-centred.....

 

If it wasn't for the kids I would happily leave, but am not leaving them with her since this is her single sided decision without any foresight. She is doing a lot of contacting people to organise things, telling them how bad the situation is at home, etc. When in reality I am over her and now just live my life as it was before, I will say hello and goodbye, ask what she wants for dinner, ask how her day went, etc but she acts as if I don't even exist (although she did call me today on the phone to ask how to find a file she needed on Dropbox....).

 

Unfortunately the house is part of her job contract otherwise I would tell her to leave and see how she gets on if that is what she wants and I can't afford to leave as I am paying all of my income into debt repayments. I have asked her to pay me the amount she owes me for each month for her share of payments, however this doesn't seem to be forthcoming.

 

I am looking forward to negotiating with her lawyers, as she will have told them a whole lot of rubbish which can't be substantiated, while I can recall all of the aspects of the business operation and the exact consequences of each decision and even produce spending reports for the period as I was using MS Money to record our finances as we were trying to get on top of things. I just hope that the lawyers are sensible people and that once they realise that my wife has been extremelly lucky for me to have looked after her the way I have over the last few years despite her treatment of me that they will suggest she reconsiders her decision, as even if we split only 50 / 50 she will be a whole lot worse and only just survive financially and if she gets (only) her share of the debts which she is pushing for then that amounts to about 75% of our total debt situation.

 

To me she is hell bent on pursuing a Losing situation for herself due to her inability to appreciate the intricacies of business and refinancing, or to the long term ramifications of a short sighted business decision.

 

Over the last 13 years I have pretty much been the perfect husband to her and most of her friends would say she is lucky to have me, I don't drink excessively, I have a reasonable income although it covers debt mostly, I spend a lot of time doing stuff she wants to do, I don't smoke, I don't spend a lot of money on myself, I have never been violent towards her, and apart from one occassion I have never cheated on her.

 

Has anyone ever experienced this sort of irrational situation or even better managed to sort it out ? Despite the way she has treated me over the last few years I still love her and would take her back, but just can't seem to bring this runaway train back under control.

 

Everything I have done in the past week out of my concern for her and her health has been construed by her as something negative. I questioned whether not taking anti-depressants could be a cause for her irrational behaviour ( and her regular mood-swings) that was prying.... I asked her friend if she could just hold back on inviting her out to the clubs at the weekend where she had started going till 6:00am for a few weeks while we worked as a family to get everything back together, that was controlling..... I even started texting her nice little messages as I had realised I had forgotten my family over the past few years due to concentrating on getting out of debt and I was determined that from then on I was going to connect with them all better, well that was creepy. I am in a position where I just can't win. Currently I have stepped right back and just do the basics, be nice to her and manage the house, etc around my own business, and will just wait and see what may come.

 

Sorry about the long post, but this situation seems so damn bizzare to me, it just doesn't make sense.

[2sunny]

Check and see if she's cheating.

 

Sounds like she might be.

 

Sorry for your pain.

[Be_Strong]

You sort of glossed right over the fact that you cheated on her in the past. That can have a huge effect on the relationship. What were the circumstances of that?