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Member
Member Since Nov 2017
Location: USA
Posts: 48
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#81
Thanks sky. Yesterday and today I felt much better than I have in weeks. I feel like I am gaining control of myself and my future. Whether she will be with me in that future or not is kind of irrelevant at this point--now it's about what I can do to maintain personal integrity and build self reliance. I'm going to need that in the future either way, right?
It's funny because I've wrapped so much of my view of my self in the context of being a husband and a dad. I have an interesting, enlightening journey ahead of me. |
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Purple,Violet,Blue
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Member
Member Since Oct 2017
Location: West US
Posts: 261
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#82
Agreed. Do whatever you want.
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Purple,Violet,Blue
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Mapman
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Magnate
Member Since Sep 2017
Location: Britain
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#83
Glad you had a few good days. Yeah, just keep looking forward, forward, forward.
If you were my dad, I'd be really proud of you. |
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Mapman
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Mapman
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Member
Member Since Nov 2017
Location: USA
Posts: 48
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#84
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Purple,Violet,Blue
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Legendary Wise Elder
Member Since Mar 2011
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#85
What you have been slowly learning about with this experience is that your wife doesn't want to respect or care about you, that she never really included that in her relationship with you. That is the kind of person you married and with this parting you now have a chance to actually see if you can find a woman that CAN respect and appreciate you so you can actually get to experience what it's like to have a relationship like that.
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divine1966
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Member Since Nov 2017
Location: USA
Posts: 48
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#86
Hey all. Remember me? I'm still kicking now, 4 months after my wife moved out. Just wanted to provide an update.
I've had a very up and down four months, but it feels like things are really smoothing out for me. We are marching toward divorce, which I think will happen within the next month. It will be a good thing. My ex and I have been in counseling regularly for the last three months, spending a lot of time ironing out what went wrong and trying to figure out how to effectively co-parent. She and I have been meeting regularly, and I'm finally at a point where I'm letting go of the pain and anger and acknowledging her place in my life as the mother of my kids. Letting go of the pain and anger is helping me because it's less work than holding on to it, and I have a lot of things that I want to do with my life so I don't need the constant distraction of that painful history. She and I talked for a while yesterday and it is very clear that I'm moving on and she is the one who is hurting now. The guy that she was messing around with is not really in the picture anymore. She indicated to me a while back that she realized he had no more intention of pursuing her meditation practice with her than I ever did, which I think was a major disappointment to her. So now she doesn't have anyone and says that she is "content with going it alone." That makes me a little sad, but it's a sadness for somebody whose bad behavior had unintended consequences for her. We did have 20 years together, and it's difficult to see her hurting. She told me she's spent a lot of time crying. I've told her that's unfortunate. As for me, I dated somebody for a while, but about a week ago we mutually agreed that it was too early for me to be dating. I really need to be dating myself right now, so that is what I am going to focus on. I want to spend time with my kids, work on my house and my finances, spend time with friends, etc. If someone comes along during that and it feels right I won't deny it, but I won't be out there really looking for it right now. One major thing that I've realized in the last couple of weeks was a mistake I made in my marriage, and I want to pass this on to other men and women who, like me, came from a dysfunctional, chaotic childhood household. My tendency in my married home was to seek stability and predictability above all else. Any type of disagreement with my wife, major or minor, felt threatening to the stability. Even asking for what I wanted felt like it would jeopardize things, so I didn't ask. And these recent events made me realize how much wasn't said, or requested, or demanded that I had every right to ask for or pursue during my marriage. I spent a lot of time denying myself of things while making sure everyone around me was getting what they needed. I was the fixer, the "smoother-overer" in the family. I avoided confrontation with my wife for 20 years and denied myself of so much. And you know what? At times I resented the people around me because of that. Don't get me wrong--my poor communication was never an excuse for her to cheat on me, but it absolutely did not bring us closer, and my secret resentment provided something of a wedge. So my lesson in this is to be clear with myself about what I want, to let those around me know about it, and to pursue it if it isn't harmful to me or my loved ones. And if they disagree they can let me know, but that's much better than denying myself things that I've worked for 35 years to attain. I can no longer fashion my life to meet what I think are others' expectations of me. I gotta do me. |
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Anonymous57777, Open Eyes, Purple,Violet,Blue, Shazerac, yagr
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#87
Thank you for the update. I'm glad you are doing well. It is certainly not an easy thing to go through, but you are handling it admirably. Hugs.
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Legendary Wise Elder
Member Since Mar 2011
Location: Northeast USA
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#88
Thanks for the update Mapman, sounds like you have been growing as a person and in a healthier direction.
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Grand Magnate
Member Since May 2015
Location: earth
Posts: 3,029
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#89
Glad to hear you are doing well and marching on. Thank you so much for the update
__________________ Eat a live frog for breakfast every morning and nothing worse can happen to you that day! "Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be left waiting for us in our graves - or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.” Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged Bipolar type 2 rapid cycling DX 2013 - Seroquel 100 Celexa 20 mg Xanax .5 mg prn Modafanil 100 mg |
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Magnate
Member Since Jul 2014
Location: limbo
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#90
Quote:
Not wanting to rock the boat, kind of thing is not an uncommon thing by many partners in a marriage. I think in particular a lot of men, for some reason, end up like this. I am glad that you have come to that point where you can see your contribution to the breakdown in a productive way, meaning you are looking into yourself and plan to work on yourself for awhile. Glad also that you realized it isn't time to date yet. Everyone is different but within a few short months, it's usually not long enough yet to find yourself and your independence that is so needed in relationships today. My favorite statement you made here is Quote:
Good for you! Be you... do what you want, when you want and how you want and at some point someone that accepts you as you are will come along! |
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Trippin2.0
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Member Since Sep 2017
Location: Britain
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#91
Really glad to read this, Mapman! That's great advice for us all. Good luck!
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Grand Member
Member Since Feb 2017
Location: M
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#92
I just read this thread and I am happy for you, Mapman. You’ve been through a lot and have come out swimmingly. I’m not surprised that guy lost interest in her and I wondered if she was “enjoying the comforts of marriage,” as a previous member posted. Financial security.
Her contacting you from her apartment and saying she was hurting, etc. while you weren’t...breaking your agreement that it would be “business only contact, like co-parenting.” You responded well....she was giving you a Pity Play and you didn’t take the bait. Good job. I was married for 18-years and learned he didn’t love me. I’m pretty sure there was infidelity. It’s so confusing to be told you’re loved by them for so many years....and then you learn that was a facade. In my case, he didn’t love me. He was there for the money. I got out, too. We are in a better place. I wish you the best. |
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Chyialee
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Member Since Nov 2015
Location: New York
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#93
Quote:
Hi Mapman— Yeah I’m guilty of that too—but when I wanted something badly and never asked directly and got turned down or blown off sometimes it wouldn’t matter ... but sometimes even though it mattered I’d try to play the cheery husband part or just be guy-stoic and the emotion would just come out in some other dysfunctional way like being passive aggressive or sullen. It wasn’t healthy and didn’t help the marriage at all because it never set appropriate limits for my wife. So when she was so crazy later in the marriage I can’t help feeling I could have helped steer her away from that behavior if I’d set better limits and better boundaries earlier in the marriage. |
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Member
Member Since Nov 2017
Location: USA
Posts: 48
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#94
Hi all. I've experienced a major degradation in my mood and outlook over the last couple of weeks. It was triggered by a particular event that has resulted in me regressing substantially, and a lot of the progress that I wrote about in my previous post was lost, unfortunately.
The event was that my wife's personal email started coming through our shared email account again, and I saw new emails from her lover. For those of you who haven't read this entire thread, this is how I found out about her affair back in November 2017. Through this new set of emails, I found out that he moved to our town, and that they were seeing each other. That news was a surprise but wasn't particularly shocking because I knew that was his plan all along--to move back to the west coast from the east coast. What made it difficult was that it was a trigger to the trauma that I experienced back in November. It made me start to question everything all over again. I had made such good progress and I'm disappointed that I lost it. I'm losing sleep again because I'm fixated on the fact that she was never the person I thought she was and that makes me feel like my entire 20-year marriage was a sham. That I loved and lived with and had two kids with and devoted my life to a woman who was not devoted to me. It's painful. I'm seeing my doctor about medication to help me stop obsessively thinking about this so that I can regain at least some of the certainty and autonomy I had a couple of weeks ago. It's like a waking nightmare because when I think about any event over the last 20 years, happy or sad, it is sullied by knowing that she was not 100% with me as a partner in our marriage. She always had one foot out the door--sometimes passively, sometimes actively. It has been six months now since I found out about her affairs, and my obsessive thinking is affecting other aspects of my life--my work, my relationship with my kids, even my driving has suffered because I'm not fully paying attention. Can anyone give me some words of wisdom to help me through this? I would love to get to a place, mentally, where her past and current actions are irrelevant to me so I can get on with living my life. |
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Purple,Violet,Blue, TishaBuv
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Member Since Oct 2011
Location: USA
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#95
It’s unfortunate that wisdom only seems to come with age. It’s very disappointing to realize that after many years you are , or were, just being used.
To be abandoned by the one person we would do anything for. Life is just a game where people just use each other to survive. To get by. To try and find some happiness in a cruel world. The main thing I found to be helpful after such a betrayal is to start being selfish and just care and think about yourself. Because if you don’t you will be run into the ground. I too wish that I could be as heartless and unfeeling as these people seem to be. But the best revenge is personal success. Do whatever it takes to make new memories. Create new “loops” of thoughts to replace the old ones. Realize that marriage is nothing more than a contract that is hard to live up to. After awhile love has nothing to do with it. Sad. __________________ Today is the first day of the rest of my life. *Disclaimer * Anything I have posted is strictly my own personal opinion or experience , and is in no way, shape, or form meant to portray a professional assesment of any kind. CB |
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Wise Elder
Member Since Oct 2017
Location: USA
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#96
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Member
Member Since Nov 2017
Location: USA
Posts: 48
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#97
Hey, it's been over 4 months since my last post. I was in a bad place back then in May, and I'm in a much better place now.
I am now at a place where I recognize that my life now is much better than it would have been had I stayed with my cheating wife. She is really becoming less and less important to me, and I see that I can have a relationship with her that has no emotional component to it. That frees me up to be romantic with someone else who has entered my life. Someone who understands what I went through, who is patient, and most of all who cares about me and wants me to be me, not someone she wishes I was. For anyone out there going through a traumatic breakup with a partner, know that it does get better. Take your time. Live your life. Talk to your health care professionals--both mental and physical. Allow yourself to feel bad AND allow yourself to feel good. Lean on friends and family. Say "YES" to stuff! And one other thing that has helped me tremendously that some of you might find controversial: I am holding on to a piece of the grudge, the hurt, with my ex-wife. I know we are supposed to forgive, and the reason to forgive is to allow ourselves to be freed from the baggage and not allow the other person to have some control over our feelings. But I am required to maintain a relationship with this woman because she is the mother of my kids, which means I have to see her and interact with her. That is dangerous for me because of the familiarity of being with her for 20+ years, and knowing that she knows me well enough to manipulate me. I've been surprised a couple of times by feelings of warmth when I've been around her, and then being jarred into remembering the horrible way she treated me. That is a gut punch, which I think of as PTSD, and which affects me for some time after seeing her. So my solution is to hold on to some of that ill will so that I do not get those warm feelings from the past. It's purely a protection mechanism that I am using now, and over time I see the need for it diminishing, particularly as the kids get older and head off into the world. But it is incredibly helpful now with helping me move on. This doesn't involve actively badmouthing her (and never, ever saying anything negative about her to the kids), but looking at her honestly and acknowledging that she is not somebody that I would be friends with, let alone someone I would be emotionally involved with because I do not want people of such low character to be part of my inner circle. Just to be clear, while she has made some overtures of regret about the way things turned out (including somewhat anemic indications that she regrets hurting me), I have not received a clear message from her that she regrets any of her actions. In addition, she has never asked me for forgiveness in a substantial way that fully admits and addresses what she did wrong. In my mind it's because she doesn't think she did anything wrong, that she was following her path that she HAD to follow. This feels so right to me--the right way to go forward and continue to heal. It puts me in control. |
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Buffy01, eskielover, MickeyCheeky, Open Eyes, Purple,Violet,Blue
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Buffy01
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Wise Elder
Member Since Oct 2017
Location: USA
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#98
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Wise Elder
Member Since Oct 2017
Location: USA
Posts: 9,511
(SuperPoster!)
6 9,696 hugs
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#99
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Mapman
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Mapman
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Legendary Wise Elder
Member Since Mar 2011
Location: Northeast USA
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#100
Good to hear that you have progressed towards meeting someone who can appreciate you and help you open up to being more positive about yourself and your life. By doing this you can begin to learn what you had missed in your relationship that you may have not realized before. Could be you were actually unfulfilled and just didn't know it, it's important that you allow yourself to find that out instead of obsessing about how your ex wife disappointed you and let you down. It's like wearing the same sneakers for years, somehow losing them and feeling really upset but then you find a new kind of sneakers that are WAY BETTER and you finally get to a point where you say, damn, glad I lost those old sneakers cause this pair is WAY BETTER and I would NEVER go back even if I could.
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Mapman
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Mapman
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