Separation in the family home? I can't stand this.

[K Os]

I suppose I wonder at your wife's perspective. I agree with the others, you need to take care of you and your son, but is she at all aware of the depth of your care? You say you *don't want* a divorce. But I haven't see a post that says you *want* a marriage, either, or are willing to work to have one.

 

I have more thoughts, but will see how you digest this. It may be my assumptions about your situation are way off.

Thanks for your comments, sapientia. It does sound as though our situations are quite similar.

 

Is she aware of the depth of my care? To be honest, I don't know. Before things reached a 'tipping point' I did my very best to show her how much I care, how much I love her and how much I wanted to stick with it and work through our problems. I was blindsided by her initial announcement that she wanted out, not because we had no problems (we had big ones), but because I wrongly assumed that she would always be willing to work together to solve them, as I was. I thought that was fundamentally understood in our marriage pact. I was wrong. This was a big shock, and still is.

 

Do I want a marriage? Yes, I do. Absolutely. I want a happy and fulfilling marriage, and I always have wanted that. It took me ten years of searching to find it, and we were together for 16 years until she moved out in July. But there is another question now, and it is whether I want a marriage with her or with someone else. I have a big problem with the fact that she has shown by her words and actions that she didn't necessarily regard our marriage as permanent. That's a tough thing to come to terms with after so much time. Is there any hope for a marriage when one partner never made a full commitment from the outset? My own feeling is that there is a slim hope, but we will have to remarry 'properly' in order for it to work. I would insist on slashing and burning our first 'joke' marriage and starting a real one. I would also have to forgive her for allowing me to live for all those years under the assumption that there was a total commitment from both of us, when there wasn't.

 

Am I prepared to work to have one? Yes. Totally, absolutely, unequivocally yes. When she dropped the bomb I did what I could. I was the one who went into therapy on my own, and then persuaded her to come too. We went to four or five sessions, had to have a break because we couldn't afford it, after which she said we had "been through that whole process" and she didn't want to continue. Unfortunately those sessions didn't get us very far.

 

There is only a certain amount of work you can put in before you are just making a fool of yourself. My questions about the 180 are precisely about this. I'm very willing to work hard to have a successful marriage, but at this point I honestly don't know how, because I have no idea what she wants or needs from me. If I thought going round to her house with flowers would help, I would do it right now. If I thought emailing her poems would help, I would stop typing right now and do that. I don't believe these things would help. I know there are some things she wants that I can't provide. That doesn't help me either. (She said in mediation that £1m would help. It would.)

I'm willing to work to have a good marriage, yes, but I'm not willing to do *all* the work, and I need to be given some clues about the work that's required.

 

I'm 46, going grey, developing a nice bald spot. I have to consider, if what I've always wanted is a happy, stable and fulfilling marriage, should I continue to hang onto a relationship in such dire trouble, with a wife who has actually left me, who says she never really married me anyway, who says she will divorce me when we have been separated long enough whether I agree or not; or would I be better off looking for happiness elsewhere? I might find it.

Edited October 6, 2012 by K Os

[RAN65]

 

I'm 46, going grey, developing a nice bald spot.

 

I read in another thread the the Going Grey & Balled Head lead to problems. Sorry to say this , but consider this might be the problem.

 

best of luck.

[K Os]

I could go on, K Os, but not sure if any of this resonates. It may be your wife felt driven to leave. I certainly did. People get tired of 'trying' and getting the same zero result.

 

I think my main takeaway here is that you say you are committed to marriage, but that needs to be more than maintaining status quo. Perhaps your W felt you weren't willing to do the work to make sure both your needs were getting met. I will tell you that women who are married for as long as your marriage (and mine) don't generally pick up and leave. We get the concept of 'ups and downs' in a longterm relationship. Unless your W met someone else, or is perhaps going through a mid-life change and the hormones are making her a bit crazy. But be careful you don't latch on to that last as an excuse for doing any hard work that you may be responsible for. If there is such, you'll know what I mean.

 

So, an essay in exchange for another essay. Hope this helps.

 

Hi sapientia, and thanks for your long reply. I've been mulling this over for a while. I have to say not much of it resonates from my point of view, except in reverse, as it were. I feel that your H has been rather like my W, but in your case you were the one to call it a day, and in my case she was.

 

I agree with you that maintaining the status quo is pointless, and I never asked her for this. In fact I rejected it too. I was genuinely ready for a revolution in our marriage, I believed we could get everything on the table and talk about what wasn't working, and grow enough to live together differently. She wouldn't, or couldn't, hear this. She, quite rightly, rejected continuing the status quo, and couldn't see past this.

 

I feel very strongly that I can't be taken to task for not putting the work in, and not offering to put in even more. Look at this - my question above is about how I can continue to work on things when we are living apart and not communicating any more. To many, my position now is going 'above and beyond the call of duty'. I have friends and family members saying I have already been way too patient and long-suffering about the whole situation. Even my mother is telling me to just file for divorce, and she is a devout Catholic. I never thought I would hear those words from her mouth.

 

I know one thing you say above does ring true:

 

People get tired of 'trying' and getting the same zero result.

It's tragic, but she did feel she was trying. To do what, exactly, I don't know, because she never *communicated* these things to me. She has even said she wished she had spoken up about things that she felt were wrong. Goddamn it, so do I! She has a tongue in her head, and I'm not a telepath. The worst part of this comment is that it wasn't followed by any attempt to discuss the things that have been wrong from her perspective, but just that it's too late now. Even MC was a waste of time - and that was where she should have addressed these things.

 

Unless your W met someone else, or is perhaps going through a mid-life change and the hormones are making her a bit crazy.

I'm afraid I believe both of these are the case.

 

I'd like to add an important thing from my perspective. We've been together 16 years. A lot of that was perfectly ok. Our marriage has not been one that's been rocky throughout. It's had its ups and downs, for sure. But we were pregnant in 2008, and pregnant again in 2009. That's not long ago in such a long relationship (met in 1996). I would never have been trying for another child if I'd been unhappy or uncertain about my feelings for her, and I don't believe she would either. When she was pregnant she was terribly happy about it, and things were good. You simply don't both get to that place if the marriage is crap. So I don't buy it. Sadly, the loss of those two children has a lot to do with the psychology of what followed.

[K Os]

I read in another thread the the Going Grey & Balled Head lead to problems. Sorry to say this , but consider this might be the problem.

 

best of luck.

 

RAN65 - Well, I did quiz her about this directly but she said it was nothing to do with it and seemed genuinely surprised by the question.

 

Gunny often posts on this forum about midlife crisis being fundamentally about the realisation of mortality, and I think that's spot on. Maybe one's partner greying plays to this fear, even if subconsciously. In that sense it probably is part of the picture, if she's suffering from 'Is this all there is?' syndrome.

[K Os]

Thanks, sapientia.

 

in the end it *did* break the status quo. Is it possible she was doing this? I just find it hard to believe anyone would leave such a long marriage with a fundamentally decent partner without some serious issues leading to a lot of pain. I'm not excusing her weakness, but just saying it didn't happen in a vacuum.

 

Yes, I think this is possible.

 

There are serious painful issues in her immediate family's past that I believe she hasn't dealt with properly (a murder, an accidental drowning, death from cancer), and I think the loss of the babies triggered some awful remembered states.

[RAN65]

Thanks, sapientia.

 

 

 

Yes, I think this is possible.

 

There are serious painful issues in her immediate family's past that I believe she hasn't dealt with properly (a murder, an accidental drowning, death from cancer), and I think the loss of the babies triggered some awful remembered states.

 

 

 

 

It's a long story. Shortish version: last June my wife of 14 years (together 16)

 

Painful issues in the family's past, how come did it not surface for the past 16 years. There should be some thing else.

 

 

have to consider, if what I've always wanted is a happy, stable and fulfilling marriage, should I continue to hang onto a relationship in such dire trouble, with a wife who has actually left me, who says she never really married me anyway, who says she will divorce me when we have been separated long enough whether I agree or not; or would I be better off looking for happiness elsewhere? I might find it.

 

As you are already 46, I think it is time to move on.

[K Os]

Painful issues in the family's past, how come did it not surface for the past 16 years. There should be some thing else.

Well, it's not as though it was buried for all that time. She has revisited it with me often since we first met. I just know that, for whatever reason, she hasn't dealt with it long-term as successfully as her sisters seem to have managed to do. And I'm absolutely sure that the loss of the babies kind of connected her straight back to that awful pain. It shut her down.

 

A lot of my reluctance to quit is actually compassion.

[K Os]

Damn, feeling low this evening. Been really strong and upbeat for weeks, doing well, but sometimes it just sneaks up on you, doesn't it? The bald fact. And all so stupid...

[K Os]

This living so close together is still weird and creepy for me. Seven months into our separation, we haven't spoken since she moved out, but she's still just three doors away and I've spotted her 3 or 4 times. Sometimes seeing her doesn't bother me, but sometimes it really does. It can wreck my whole day. I don't really know what to do about this. Our son is now used to the living situation, and I don't want to rock his boat by moving house. He's got important exams coming up, and I want him to be as settled as possible. A lot of the time I can tune it all out and just shut the front door and forget about it. But sometimes it just feels downright awkward. Every time I let the dog out, I check to make sure she's not outside. It's irritating. I feel cramped and watched. I've taken to parking the car somewhere else, further away, to eliminate the possibility of being observed when I go to my car. As I'm typing this, the whole situation seems really nuts. It's amazing what you can get used to, I suppose, but I still don't understand how she's comfortable with it. I can't afford to move house at the moment, anyway, so continuing to adapt myself to the weirdness seems to be the only way to go, for now. At times it just really gets on my nerves.

 

Anyone got any bright ideas?

[worldgonewrong]

I read in another thread the the Going Grey & Bald Head lead to problems. Sorry to say this , but consider this might be the problem.

 

best of luck.

 

Jumping on this old comment, but wanted to add my 2 cents in here to allay any of K O's potential low self-esteem about that:

 

Ex-wife saw me go grey & developing a small bald spot. I think it probably was a tiny percentage of why she grew disenchanted with me.

 

HOWEVER - not all women are like that.

My girlfriend is light years hotter and smarter than the ex, and she treats me like a frickin' king.

 

My point?

1. a good woman doesn't give a hoot about that stuff.

and

2. self-confidence can make a troll look like Adonis.

[K Os]

Thanks, wgw. True stuff.

 

I went to a funeral recently - the very old father of one of my oldest friends. Some of the people there hadn't seen me in over 20 years. A few of them said I look 'very distinguished' now, with my greying temples and white-flecked beard. I'll go with that.

Edited February 14, 2013 by K Os

[K Os]

Ugh. Her birthday. I'm still doing the 180 thing, for my own sanity.

 

It's just another day. Shouldn't be hard. But it is.