aloneinmyhead Posted May 15, 2010 Posted May 15, 2010 Recently my wife has told me that she needs time away from me to decide if she wants to continue our marriage. Our backstory is quite long but I'll try to give you the basics. We have known each other since high school and dated on and off for 8-9 years before getting married almost 7 years ago. We have 2 children aged 5 and 10. I recently went back to work out of state and am gone for anywhere from 2-3 months at a time with no schedule as to when I will get days off. It was during my first work trip that she told me there was a problem. I was crushed and lost and had no idea what to do. I couldn't eat or sleep and each time we talked it just seemed to get worse. The problem with our marriage stems from a racy chat that I had with an old friend from high school a year ago. My wife found the chat on my computer and I apologized and broke off all contact with this woman. I thought that was the end of it, but I had just lost my job and we were forced to move back home, she pushed it aside as we had too many other things to deal with at the time, but now that I am back to work she has had time to reflect and think about her feelings. It also brought back memories of all the times that we had broken up before we were married and the girls that I had dated then. She has told me that she thought that guy was gone but 1 conversation brought everything rushing back. So I got to go home for 2 weeks at the end of last month and thought from our conversations that she would know how she felt and what she wanted to do when she saw me again. Well she picked me up at the airport and she still wasn't sure. I had booked us a hotel and spa weekend without the kids to just see if we could reconnect. The first night went ok - not great. But the second day she got sick and that was the end of our romantic weekend. So I tried the next weekend, took the kids to my parents for the night so that we could just go out and try to have fun. But that day we got into another discussion about how she felt and what I had done. She also got an email from the woman I had chatted with who laughed it off as a stupid thing and said she was in a bad place at the time. Anyway, my wife stayed the night at a girlfriends house and I sat at home and drank myself to sleep. The next day she told me that I was this great guy and she doesn't think she will ever be able to find another guy who loves her as much as I do, and she loves me but something feels broken and she's not sure if she can ever get it back. We decided on a trial separation since I was going back to work. So I have been here for a little over a week and am working on a LC basis. I call every 2-3 days to talk to the kids and discuss basic day to day issues with her. After I got here I realized that I hadn't really been clear about some of the ground rules of our separation. I started to freak out thinking that she wanted to date or have sex with other guys since she had said she didn't want to know about what I did while we were separated. So I emailed her about it asking if that meant we were "single" She said that was her understanding. So I called her and explained my fears, she told me that she wasn't interested or in any way ready to have sex with, let alone date anyone else. I told her that I didn't want to have anything to do with other women anyway just her. And that is where we stand right now. So my questions to you guys and gals: What do I do now? How long does a separation last? Is it worse for the marriage the longer it goes? Am I doing the right thing trying to give her as much space as possible? Any advice at all? Where I work I live in a little 1 room trailer with hardly any real interaction with other people so I spend a ton of time in my own head. Is there anything that I can do?
just_some_guy Posted May 15, 2010 Posted May 15, 2010 Go find a therapist, for yourself. Go find a gym, for yourself. Visit 1 and 2 on a regular and frequent basis. Take her number off of your speed dial. Take her address off of your GPS so your car doesn't accidently drive itself by her apartment in the middle of the night. When you talk to her, tell her you're willing to give her some space and that you are going to make good use of this time to work on yourself. Tell her you really hope for the best for everybody and that she too, will make use of the separation to grow and heal herself, so that maybe when you're both in a better place, you can be prepared to work on things together. Then let go. No contact. No desperate frantic phone calls in the middle of the night, no begging, no 14 page letters. Time for you to work on you. That's what you do.
Author aloneinmyhead Posted May 16, 2010 Author Posted May 16, 2010 Thanks for the feedback. I have been working out and haven't got to the frantic middle of the night calls. Like I said I call every two or three days to talk to the kids and deal with any day to day issues (bills, family updates, walk her through how to fix things). So I think I'm doing ok so far. I'm just confused, hurt, and lonely. Trying to make it day to day right now.
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