Can I continue to love her...?

[call2thepen]

I have browsed several of the prior posts and realize I am in a similar situation as several other who have posted on this board.　 My wife and I have been together 20 years and married for 16 of those.　 We have two teen-aged children (16/13) and until Sept of 2009 I thought I had the typical marriage with the everyday stressors.　 I was diagnosed with HIV in 1991 about a month after I started dating my wife who was a senior in HS at that time.　 I tried to get her to move on with her life and finding someone who would be able to fulfill her dreams.　 She stated at that time that she was dedicated and made a commitment that she did not want to break.　 She gave me love and support as I attended college and got my degree.　 We started a family shortly thereafter and she took a huge risk allowing me to have two beautiful children.　 I am grateful everyday to be given that opportunity.　 After getting married and starting our family we moved into her childhood home and assumed the mortgage.　 My wifes grandmother and Mother both lived with us until Grandma passed away 2 years later.　 Her Mother lived with us until our separation.　 I am grateful for the things that her Mother did for us but she was the ever-interfering third parent who had questions about everything and the answer for everything.　 The ultimate authority... With the external dynamics of the house and all those issues we managed to get away by ourselves at times.　 There was never any real discussion about problems between us so I assumed that she was content.　 Finances had been an issue and she took care of the bills.　 She insisted on taking care of the bills and I obliged by giving her my paycheck every week and she would disburse it where it needed to go.　 This was one less thing I had to focus on.　 I kept very busy with the "outdoor" tasks and helped clean the house, do the dishes, and any other "inside" chores that I could help with to make it easier for her.　 She was the impetus for this because I yearned for time with her in the evening.

　

In September of 2009 I could no longer deal with the pain in my back from an injury suffered nearly seven years earlier.　 I came home on a Thursday evening and announced that I would be having surgery the next morning.　 You could hear a pin drop.　 Several days into my recovery, I noticed that she seemed pre-occupied and appeared to be upset that I had surgery.　 Around the same time, she agreed to help my niece prepare for her parents 25th anniversary party.　 It became a nightly journey away from the house to the event hall　or to the store for a few items that took an hour or two-when it should have taken minutes.　 She asked if she could go out with some friends on Friday evening to which I readily agreed to.　 That was the first of several weekend outings in a row for a woman who had never been one to go out to the bar.　 After the third week of this it became almost a game where she would tell me on Tuesday that she was planning on going out on Saturday just to gauge my reaction.　 Our lovemaking which had always been super for both of us became brief, less frequent, and almost like she was going through the motions. This made me uneasy also.　

　

Additionally, I started to receive correspondence from several credit card companies stating that my accounts were in arrears and when could I send a payment.　 The phone also rang frequently with the credit card companies trying to contact me.　 It did not take long to realize that there were 8 different credit cards in my name that had been initiated by her calling the 1-800 numbers on the back of the card and activating them by providing my birth date and SS number.　 For about a year prior to that I joking suggested she was stalking the post man because she would leave work early to arrive before me and she would wait for the mail to be delivered.　 After doing a little searching around the house I stumbled upon a large cardboard box that was stuffed with unopened statements from the credit card companies.　 She had been pilfering the mail between the street and the garage and depositing what she wanted to hide in a box that was hidden in the garage.　 I went on to find 3 additional large boxes in the attic containing 4-5 years worth of statements, bills, and bank statements from our joint account.　 When I confronted her about this she stated that she had opened the accounts several years earlier.　 It was at that time that she and her brother had a shared card that was hidden from his wife and was the butt of jokes among other family members.　 The balance was not being paid and this caused tension which ultimately resulted in my B-I-L's wife finding out about the card and its $10,000 balance which his wife insisted be paid by my wife.　 My wife was threatened with arrest and ultimately agreed to a settlement with them where she would be paying them monthly until it was resolved.　 This episode caused enormous animosity amongst her close-knit family.　 They were estranged for a couple of years which was worsened by the fact that my wife discontinued　payments after only a few months.　 It was September of 2009 when they finally put their differences aside and the family moved on.　 I was never really privy to the agreement that she made with her brother or the real issues that were presented as she led me to believe that it was his fault and that she was being sacrificed by his reluctance to tell his wife the truth.　 I forgave him for the wrongs I had perceived that he and his wife had committed.

　

As the days dragged on and I started to realize the gravity of the situation with the mounting debt and her increased time away from the house every evening.　 One evening, she returned from the store and I was a little testy about the situation. She could sense I was uptight and her solution was to repeatedly state that I was sexually tense and needed some loving. I assured her that this was not the reason and she continued her taunts. When we finally went to bed, she initiated sex which was probably the worst of our nearly 20 years together. Upon finishing, she immediately rolled away from me and with her back to me went off to sleep. As I lied awake and ran all the scenarios through my head, I began to be overcome with fear. My heart began to race and I was sweating profusely. I crawled out of the bed and assumed the position of a soldier in battle and crawled on my stomach to the side of the bed where her phone was located. I had always given my wife 100% privacy as far as her dresser, purse, or any other personal possessions were concerned and I let that go. I took her phone and once again crawled to the door of the bedroom. I proceeded to the basement and turned on her phone. Immediately it indicated she had several new text messages. I opened the texts and was stunned to see messages from a man that stated he loved her and wished her sweet dreams and how she meant everything to him. I nearly fainted. My Mary-from-the-prairie was now typhoid Mary. How could this be? I returned the phone to its place alongside the bed and crawled back in to continue my anxiety/panic attack and sleeplessness until I could not take anymore. I went out into the kitchen and began to journalize my thoughts and provide a timeline of what had occurred over the last several months on the laptop. When she awoke she entered the kitchen and asked what I was doing. I casually replied I wanted to know who “Mike” was. I knew his name because I used my phone to call his number at 3:30 am and heard it on his voicemail message. She was on her way to the “store” and she would discuss with me upon her return since “now you think you know everything”.

When she returned we got into a verbal altercation which resulted in her breaking several items in the house and throwing many other objects at me. She explained that with emotions running high that she was not prepared to discuss with me what the issues were. My 40th birthday was only a few days away and she chose to sleep on the couch. She did this for a couple of days and on the evening of my birthday she was overcome and left for the night allegedly staying at a girlfriends house. It was several days after that she continued to sleep on the couch. As tensions continued and I became more upset by her reluctance to talk about the issues, she decided she would leave again for the comfort of a friends. I learned that she had been sleeping in her car for several days when the wind chills were in the negative numbers. It pained me to see her in that condition and she appeared very vulnerable. I invited her back into the house and insisted on her staying here as opposed to living out of her car. Within days she was back in my bed at night and we shared very close contact-no sex-alternating with fiery anger and her continued destruction of our family possessions. She continued to refuse to talk about her feelings toward her lover but made it clear that her intent was not to hurt me and that she “loved me but also was in love with someone else”. My love was no longer enough. It was at this time that I installed a key logger on my laptop and within 24 hours was able to access e-mails she had written to the daughter of her lover professing her love for the girl’s father and how it would take an act of God for her to ever hurt her lover and how she “hates” me. Very tough words to read, indeed, especially when my wife has said on numerous occasions that I am the perfect husband and Father and that she wished there was something negative that she could say about me to justify her actions. She needed someone to take the place of her brother during her estrangement and he was there as a co-worker. He was able to lend her an ear and their communication was especially productive. This then led to their affair and her describing him as being like “cocaine”. She needed an escape and found when she was with him she did not have to be a wife, mother, or daughter. There was no pressure. Her daily quest to spend time with him pre-occupied her mind and she noted that sometime in early Sept of 2009 she decided that she was going to make herself happy instead of “always trying to make it right for everyone else”. This is when her affair began in earnest.

We decided to sell our home in an effort to satisfy some of our debt when it came to my attention that we owed several years of back taxes and that the county was prepared to take our home. She had also hidden the fact that the taxes had not been paid and she had worked out an agreement wherein she would pay $800/mo. for 18 months to satisfy our obligations. I then realized that an earlier deposit she supposedly made 2 weeks before Christmas in 2007 never made it into our account. We disputed this and my wife took the lead on obtaining the video footage of the transaction to prove to me that she had indeed deposited the money. It was determined by the credit union that it was not worthy of further investigation. I had to apply for an emergency loan to pay for the children’s Christmas presents. I can only surmise that the $800 was diverted to the county to pay the first installment on the taxes that were due. We had a contract to sell the house when we reneged due to the inability to find a suitable residence within the same school district and my Mother-in-laws inability to get a spot in a senior housing complex. Ultimately, we had to break the contract which cost us another $600.

With the onset of the holidays things got better. A whole lot better. She allegedly broke off her relationship with her lover-at my insistence-in an attempt to reconcile. This wonderful period lasted until the first of April when we had another disagreement as I noticed she had again slipped into her previous behaviors including lying about her whereabouts and taking out her sim card from her phone. Red flags began to wave again and we had discussions in which she denied that anything had been going on with her lover. The questionable behavior continued and in early September of this year her brother suffered a fall from the roof of a building sustaining near fatal injuries and being left in a vegetative state with a traumatic brain injury. My first thought when I heard the news was best wishes for his recovery and my next thought was “oh ****!”. I felt that the absence of her brother would again impact her. I could not have been more correct. Just two days before my birthday she exploded at my daughter because she insisted on going to the store with my wife. When I asked why she was so upset she commented that “nothing has changed and it’s still the same BS”. At that point we discussed that once again she was “in love” with this other man who I failed to point out is 13 years older than her and employed as a sewer technician. He is also a known cocaine user and alcoholic. Within minutes I had moved a single bed into the computer room and it became my dungeon for the next 53 days. I know this because I stenciled tally marks on the wall like I was counting down the days of a prison sentence. With no attempt to discuss the issues I was finally able to land an apartment within the same school district and a mere 3/10 mile from the house. I am in the closest possible rental with a balcony that looks directly onto the end of the street I once lived on. Since I moved out, my wife has been insistent on me coming over to have dinner on a nightly basis. She states she feels more comfortable when I am there and that I need to be with the kids every day. She has reaffirmed her affection for her lover and says that she is conflicted because she will forever love me and that I am “too precious in so many ways” for her to let go. She also told me that she does not think she could ever include her lover in any of her family activities as he would not be accepted. I am very close to her sisters and all the other family and in my discussions with them over the last 18 months I have come to realize that she has repeatedly borrowed money with no attempt to pay it back and she was described as a compulsive liar and the one her Father “could trust the least” of all his children. This is disheartening to hear about someone who you put complete trust in and who fooled me for so many years.

This past weekend we had a heart-to-heart discussion and both realized that we love one another but that she is unwilling to break off the affair. There were many tears shed and it was probably the most productive conversation we have ever had with one another. A product of having each others undivided attention and without any interruptions I was told that she was in no position to make any decisions and that she does not know what the future will bring. She was anticipating a trip to the beach for a late winter visit as it was on her “bucket list” and she had failed to get there before. We are about 3 ½ hrs from Cape Cod and she assured me that the trip had to happen for her mental health. The morning of her trip she texted at 4:20 am to ask if I was awake and that she was not being satisfied with squeezing my empty sweater. She suggested it would be better if she could squeeze me. I hopped in the car and went and held her, shed a few tears, and then invited her to breakfast. After breakfast she embarked on her trip to the beach. Without a single text until 6:30 pm, she stated that she would be returning at 7-7:30. I had spent the day catching up on laundry and cleaned the house for her. I asked her if she wanted to eat when she returned to which she replied “yes”. She arrived home around 9 PM and dinner was on the table when she walked in the door. She ate 2 bites. I did the remaining dishes and she sat to watch a movie with me. Within minutes she was asleep in the chair. I excused myself and went home. The next day she apologized and continued to say how good she was feeling about our relationship and how we had made progress in our discussions. She even suggested that she would be amenable to counseling in an effort to solve some of the issues that be felled us. Yesterday, she had the day off and accomplished none of what she had planned. She expressed that she did not make an appointment but had chosen to sit and look out the windows for seven hours. She insisted that I stay for dinner and immediately upon finishing she was out the door to visit her brother who remains in the hospital. At least 2 hours later she returned and acted as though I was not even there. I left feeling very discouraged.

This morning I awoke in a negative way. I told her in a sarcastic manner that it was going to be a great day and that I am going to change my approach to our relationship. I was no longer going to eat dinner with her and that it was time for me to make myself happy at any cost. I have run the gamut of emotions from feeling suicidal to homicidal/suicidal and have played it through in my mind several times how I would eliminate her lover and myself to make her suffer and this worries me greatly. This evening when she came to pick up the kids, I dropped the keys to the house and my wedding ring in her purse and stated that I would no longer need these things. I proceeded to get in my van and she raced across the parking lot to block my exit. She got out and started yelling about why I did that. I just found out that her brother is being transferred several hundred miles away to Massachusetts for intensive rehab and she was on her way to say goodbye to him and my actions only made her more upset. I assured her that I had no knowledge of the pending transfer of her brother and there was no malice in my actions. I may have finally turned the corner! As much as I love her and she has repeatedly hurt me I have trouble being mean or acting malicious. A part of me feels that it has become an obsession on my part because I am fighting for my soul-mate and my wife. Is this wrong to feel this way? Why, after all she has put me through do I continue to have the undying love for her? I look forward to hearing everyones input and I am glad you took the time to read my story. It has been therapeutic just to put my feelings into print and I appreciate you lending an ear.

[Lexygirl]

Call2thepen,

 

I am sorry to hear you have gone through all of this.

 

Of course you still love your wife and I'm sure this is painful.

 

After reading your post, I started wondering if she is into drugs? Just a thought... I guess because I question in my mind what has she been doing with all this money? Plus she is hanging out with a man who is into drugs?

Makes one wonder.

 

Other posters have recommended the Marriage builders website and well I believe it is an amazing website too. Maybe have a look.

 

Other than that, I am not sure what other advice to give you because I'm not in a great place right now. I just wanted to reply.

 

Take care

[Soxfaninfl]

Do you have the link to the marriage builders website.