God, this feels terrible. I just get the feeling that tonight and tomorrow will be very difficult for me.
I know I shouldn’t ask why, but right now I’m at the point of....why are things like this, what could I have done differently, and when will it get better?
I guess it’s better to bare my heart here than in front of her....but man this is rough. This hurts.
7 years ago it was so exciting.....and now I sometimes feel like we’re 2 ships passing in the middle of the night.
What IC and I talked about was my worry that I could drive her further away from me....and right now this is one of those moments.
It’s stuff like this that really makes me NOT want to be in front of my students tomorrow....and our topic is....matrimony / marriage. Talking about matrimony / marriage on my anniversary when things are rough between the 2 of us.
Ugh...sorry Bo. I know how you feel. We all do unfortunately. I wish I had some good advice to give other than to give your W the space and time she has asked for. Difficult when you want to do the opposite, I know. (((Bo)))
Thanks, (((DV))). I’m glad at least someone hears me, so I don’t totally feel like I’m shouting / crying into the wind.
Boy did my heart sink when the date flashed on my iPad to Monday, December 10th.
I’ll do my best to give her the space that she needs.....but right now I feel like such a fraud.
Co-workers? Things are fine.
Extended family? Things are fine.
Friends? Things are fine.
Students? Things are fine.
Pretend like nothing’s wrong. It’s one thing to be a teacher where the job is isolating enough because of the long hours and personal / professional boundaries I have to maintain. But then to effectively be isolated at home, too.
In my darker moments (like 10 minutes ago), I sometimes run through the what-ifs....
Maybe I shouldn’t have married W? What if I married someone else—why did I pass up all those other women at various points in my life? God how F-ing stupid I was not to see that that girl was into me and I couldn’t or wouldn’t cash it in. Would this still be happening to me? Maybe, maybe not.
And then I also think about....’you know what, maybe I do want her to pull the plug on this if she’s that unhappy. She can take her chances elsewhere. And so can I. She wants to nuke this and leave, then I’ll push for an annulment and hope that it will be granted so I can be free (in time) to date and marry some young, hot, faithful Catholic honey who would be worthy of me, respect marriage and actually be proud to bear me children and help me raise them. I’m only 35, have a good stable job where I work with kids in which I am well-established, successful and respected, helped create and raise 2 beautiful kids of my own, have a pretty decent moral code and no serious vices, and am pretty decent-looking. Sure I have some things to work on, but maybe her doing this in my mid-30s could be a great favor for me. Sure it would be awful, especially with respect to parenting and the kids, but maybe since she travels so much for work and does outearn me than the courts will order her to pay and I’ll get more favorable custody and this and that and the other....’
And then I snap back into reality.
That while I wouldn’t be going through this if I didn’t marry her, I also wouldn’t have these kids, especially the ball of joy and love that is YS.
Welp. Off to bed. At least for a little while, and then back at it.
Bo...as Deja says we are all right there with you. we each have our dates that trigger us and all of those thoughts/what ifs like you do. as was told to me when i first got here, what we fight against is the lost of control in our lives...we were going along just fine and then BAM what we knew is all gone. we want back what we had to regain that control in our lives...i think the longer our sitches go, the more we get away from that cling to the past feeling and then that opens us up to both positive possibilities but great fear/worry. it is that fight within ourselves that we each must go through and man i can tell you even 10 months into my sitch my fight goes on.
many of my best teachers were those men/women of experience. those who not only could tell me about WWII, but also lived it and through it. i would challenge you when you are with your students today to keep that in mind. not that you have to spill your guts out on your sitch to them, but you can provide to them a thoughtful discussion on the topic perhaps more so than someone who has not gone through what you have. maybe more of an open ended discourse where the students can debate/talk through their thoughts on the topic. who knows their inputs/opinions may do your troubled soul much good.
and yes, come what may you are still very much a young man with lots of future in front of you. no one can know what the future holds for us, but if your wife departs then you have the gift of time and freedom to plot your new course. there's no pressure to figure it out all at once. give yourself the grace of time and let it come to you in due time.
I’m glad at least someone hears me, so I don’t totally feel like I’m shouting / crying into the wind.
I can assure you that we don't all just hear you, we empathize. Each of us has hit the rough patches. You saw on my thread my own struggles yesterday. Thanks for stopping by.
These rough patches are times when I believe we have the opportunity to learn and grow from it. They stink in the moment, but ultimately help heal us.
Stay the course, and try not to be so hard on yourself. We can't change our choices from the past, but we certainly can learn from them if we open our hearts to it.
I’ll do my best to give her the space that she needs.....but right now I feel like such a fraud.
Why is that, because you feel like you are hiding how you really feel from her? That's what she wants right now though- no pressure. So you are just giving her what she wants.
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Pretend like nothing’s wrong. It’s one thing to be a teacher where the job is isolating enough because of the long hours and personal / professional boundaries I have to maintain. But then to effectively be isolated at home, too.
No matter what the outcome, a few years from now this will all seem like a bad memory. It's absolute hell to go through but you WILL come out the other side. Some of us come through with reconciled M's and some of us don't, but most of us end up happy and fulfilled no matter what the outcome of our M. So try to keep in mind that this misery you're going through right now is temporary. I know it consumes darned near every waking minute right now but that's just your fear of the unknown. If you could see the end result you probably wouldn't be worried at all.
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Maybe I shouldn’t have married W? What if I married someone else—why did I pass up all those other women at various points in my life? God how F-ing stupid I was not to see that that girl was into me and I couldn’t or wouldn’t cash it in. Would this still be happening to me? Maybe, maybe not.
My ex and I, I would have told you we were made for each other. We got along so great it was crazy. She thought I hung the moon, absolutely idolized me and I thought she was pretty darned great too. We were together about 5 years and had even bought a house together before we finally got married. We were both quite successful in our fields and we had some beautiful children. Throughout our 20 year M we were very happy with each other and had a great sex life. So what went wrong? I have no idea. All she ever said was she changed her mind about wanting to be married. I hope everyone here will take this lesson away from my sitch- people change. They can change slowly over time, or they can change so rapidly it leaves your head spinning. Sometimes it has something to do with you and sometimes it doesn't. But here's the thing- pretty much every long-term M goes through a major upheaval like this. I'e spoken to elderly couples that have been married 40+ years and they've all told me at some point they went through something similar and went through an in-house or out-of-house S. So you ask if it would have happened with someone other than your W? Yes. Maybe sooner than 7 years, or maybe much later. But yes, it's pretty much inevitable.
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And then I also think about....’you know what, maybe I do want her to pull the plug on this if she’s that unhappy.
But you are losing sight of WHY she is unhappy. She THINKS it's the M, but chances are it's not. So you've got to give her time and space to figure that out.
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She wants to nuke this and leave, then I’ll push for an annulment and hope that it will be granted so I can be free (in time) to date and marry some young, hot, faithful Catholic honey who would be worthy of me, respect marriage and actually be proud to bear me children and help me raise them.
Why is that, because you feel like you are hiding how you really feel from her? That's what she wants right now though- no pressure. So you are just giving her what she wants.
To a certain extent, yes? But also feel like a fraud in the sense that I have to pretend in front of others (especially family / friends) that nothing’s wrong. I understand keeping good boundaries, and I also understand DGAF about what others’ think. But in this sense, I am trying to give her what she says she wants / needs.
No matter what the outcome, a few years from now this will all seem like a bad memory. It's absolute hell to go through but you WILL come out the other side. Some of us come through with reconciled M's and some of us don't, but most of us end up happy and fulfilled no matter what the outcome of our M. So try to keep in mind that this misery you're going through right now is temporary. I know it consumes darned near every waking minute right now but that's just your fear of the unknown. If you could see the end result you probably wouldn't be worried at all.
You are very much correct—this has been the focus of a lot of my prayers, especially back in the spring. My prayer was / is that 5 years from now, we look back on this as a bad memory. And I hope we still do, but I also realize that this is not totally up to me. So the goal is for me to look at this as a bad memory in 5 or so years. But the goal should be to be happy (or ‘joyful,’ as I would tell my students) and fulfilled no matter what.
and had even bought a house together before we finally got married. We were both quite successful in our fields and we had some beautiful children. Throughout our 20 year M we were very happy with each other and had a great sex life. So what went wrong? I have no idea. All she ever said was she changed her mind about wanting to be married. I hope everyone here will take this lesson away from my sitch- people change. They can change slowly over time, or they can change so rapidly it leaves your head spinning. Sometimes it has something to do with you and sometimes it doesn't. But here's the thing- pretty much every long-term M goes through a major upheaval like this. I'e spoken to elderly couples that have been married 40+ years and they've all told me at some point they went through something similar and went through an in-house or out-of-house S. So you ask if it would have happened with someone other than your W? Yes. Maybe sooner than 7 years, or maybe much later. But yes, it's pretty much inevitable.
I bought a house for W and I to live in before we married, back when we lived in Middle America before moving out West. She lived there for 3 months or so, and while I moved in my stuff during our engagement, my first night sleeping in the bed with her was our wedding night. Looking back, I also know how that totally could have blown up in my face.
But yes, people change—and W admitted to me that she has changed a lot. And in certain respects, I do see those changes. I guess it’s heartening to know that most (or at least a lot of) couples go through something like this.
But you are losing sight of WHY she is unhappy. She THINKS it's the M, but chances are it's not. So you've got to give her time and space to figure that out.
In the OP, or back in original thread, I explained that she has laid a lot of the blame on me and the pregnancy—me for certain flaws (though she is flawed, too), but also for me insisting on us doing NFP which resulted in her getting pregnant and costing her a promotion. I’ll continue to give her the time and space to figure it out, but it sounds like she blames me a TON, even though it takes two to get pregnant, and I’m pretty sure she enjoyed getting to that point.
Now you are engaging in a WAS fantasy.
Yeah, probably—and I shouldn’t. I know I should keep centered and be the lighthouse and all that, but my mind does race. It is probably also poorly-executed self-talk on convincing myself that I am worthy of better—from her, or someone else down the road.
My hope, but this is not totally up to me, is that perhaps she will in time realize that the time being angry with me or the time withdrawing from me / MR is time that she will never get back.
n my darker moments (like 10 minutes ago), I sometimes run through the what-ifs....
Maybe I shouldn’t have married W? What if I married someone else—why did I pass up all those other women at various points in my life? God how F-ing stupid I was not to see that that girl was into me and I couldn’t or wouldn’t cash it in. Would this still be happening to me? Maybe, maybe not.
Bo, this is the same thing I've gone through. Both pre-BD and after.
When I was single, I had to find someone I was taken with. This led to one huge on-again, off-again relationship with one girl that last 16 years prior to meeting my W. She was gorgeous, sweet, perfect.....except she wasn't that into me. So she controlled the relationship. Even when she was dating someone else she knew she just had to wiggle her nose and I'd leap. I was just finally breaking that cycle when I met my W. In fact, just 3-4 months before that this girl called me and wanted to come to my apartment. Her (now H, then) BF was out of town hunting. I blew her off, told her I had things to do. She said "Well call me when you get done, no matter what time." I said "yeah ok" and hung up. Never called her. I guess she waited all day. She even told me years later that "she shaved her legs". If you know what that means.
I dated a lot of girls during that 16 years, and even a couple in the 3-4 months after breaking the cycle with, we'll call her NTIM#1 (Not That Into Me). Several girls that were head over heels, but I just didn't feel it for them. Then I met my W. The first 2 months the dynamic with her was very similar to the dynamic with NTIM#1. So essentially I was dealing with NTIM#2. My W still was hung up on a guy she had dated for short time before we met. Apparently his ExGF came back and said she was pregnant with his kid. My W told him to go deal with that, if she was still single when he figured everything out and wasn't with her, she'd be there. Then her and I met. 6 weeks in he told her that he was staying with his Ex to raise the baby. My W decided to try with me after that, and within a couple of weeks fell for me.
However, now looking back I wonder if I was plan B. She was 28, going on 29. Desperately wanted to be married and have kids. She even told me at one point that if she wasn't married in the next couple of years she would have a kid out of wedlock because she wanted to be a mom. What if Plan A (Mr. "My ExGF is pregnant with my kid") had stuck around? Am I now with someone that never wanted to be with me?
In the meantime, there were some great girls I didn't give a chance because of NTIM#1 and NTIM#2. One girl in particular I think we could have been very happy together. I didn't give her a chance initially because of NTIM#1. And then she started calling me again after I was with NTIM#2. Asked if I was seeing anyone. Of course I told her yes. This was the last time she tried. I often wonder what my life might be like if I had told NTIM#1 and #2 to get bent and tried with this girl. Very attractive, sweet. She just had one fatal flaw.....she actually was really into me. Not sure why that was such a turnoff to me back then.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
