Love, PAIN and the Whole Crazy Thing

[chocolateeyes]

mcol-

I hate to hijack your thread, but I was hoping I could convince ChocolateEyes to come over to mine. I've read your posts on Bombadiers thread and I'd like advice.

I'm here on Infidelity....Get Me on a Smoother Ride..Need Advice.

If you have time, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you-

Have a good day mcol.

SueS

Sue,

I tried, but I didn't realize that you have NINE loooong threads already going. My personal and work life is such right now that I really don't have time to try to go back and catch up on all of that. If there's a specific question you had, I'd be happy to try to answer it?

Sorry,

Choc.

[SueS]

Choc-

I understand. I'll try to get a couple brief questions for you. H is having an A (PA) and I haven't outed it to anyone yet. H denies it to me, but I've seen evidence. Just wanted your opinion on telling OW's H about it. He's getting suspicious, but I think I know A LOT more than he does!

Have a great holiday.

-SueS

[mcol]

mcol: That myspace message, and the video, is about as close to a "baby step" as you can come, being so far away.
You going dark, if nothing else, is keeping you from having to hear her sh!t. Accept the video/myspace message as a "God-wink," or a "baby step," or a small miracle. And don't ruin that for yourself by calling your W. Call your D when she's away from W to ask about the doc. appt.

That's just my .05 (inflation, ya know).

Keep it up.

Thanks..I was thinking that some kind of ice crystal (even the smallest one) in that section of her heart was melting as a result of that. Thank God to whatever person here either sent her that or if she surfed it herself. May have been the catalyst for her telling me about D3 appt.

I woke up in the middle of the night again, my dreams have been overflowing of W and kids. Tried to IM her but thankfully she was away. I will continue to stay dark for a while to stay away from her BS, however, with Christmas coming I know we will talk in the next few days. I will try to keep it light hearted although I know it will be very hard for W with her dad not being there. Compound that with the anniversary of his death 3 days later and I am sure the rage or deadness against me will return. Also, this will give OM a chance, once again, to be knight in shining armor and physically be there for her so she does not have to "cry alone"....effing Army.

[Burgbud]

Hey, Mcol!

What you're dealing with now is the reason I don't like the "my spouse has been taken over by aliens" line (though I used to ). An alien implies that she's somebody completely else from who she really is as a human. The reality is that she's very confused, she's occasionally/often under the influence of some very powerful brain chemicals, and she lost touch with or is mistrustful of her core values. She's not *all* different. She's not going to inhabit a consistent mindset; she'll vacillate, sometimes wildly. She doesn't have an easy life with her H gone, three young children to tend, the stress of the holidays and dealing with the anniversary of the untimely death of her father on top of it all. She deserves a lot of compassion and you're right to give it to her.

***HOWEVER!***

None of that justifies an affair and you can't give any indication that it does. She has appropriate people available to support her, including you. She doesn't get to have inappropriate support from inappropriate people because she's having a rough time. She's *creating* a rough time for others...I know you haven't enjoyed your recent lack of sleep and inability to focus (oh yes, I remember the bad old days).

While her thoughts and emotions are careening all over the place, yours need to be rock steady (in your interactions with her...of course your thoughts and emotions are going to be all over the place and that's why you have us as well as other parts of your support network). What's your cornerstone?

You love her. You want to remain married. You're willing to fight for your current marriage and you're willing to work to improve your future marriage.

You won't tolerate infidelity, physical or emotional. You won't remain in marriage with a third person involved. You have patience but your patience is not infinite. If she asks how much patience you have tell her, "I don't know but you don't want to push me that far." If she asks what that means you tell her, "I love you and I love our family. I want us all to be together. I won't tolerate infidelity. That's all I'm going to say about it."

I'd like input from the board on Mcol going dark. My feeling is that when he gets to the point where he can emotionally handle the mindset I've outlined and maintain it in the face of adversity from his W, there's no need to be dark. Going dark is to allow your wayward spouse to miss you and also to ensure you won't engage in needy, emotionally pushy conversations about the R. Since he's so far away, having the chance to miss him doesn't seem much of a factor and if he can be contained and confident, I think talking to her would mostly be beneficial. I'd also like to see him take advantage of any opportunity for her to see him as a warrior out in the field, even though she appears anti-Army at the moment. It may be emotionally disquieting to her, but it's also attractive and he's not going to be there forever.

Choc, what's a good plan for Mcol as far as handling the EA/PA? You've said before he probably needs more evidence before confronting her again, but confrontation seems like an important part of this process. Ideally he'd be in a position to observe her behavior himself and install a keylogger but that's not going to work where he's at. Does he need to again consider using a PI?

Mcol, let's see what we can do to get your head together. Remember when I mentioned your frame and detachment from outcome? Let's talk about frame for a bit.

Think about what your frame was like before this started going down. You probably saw you and your W raising a beautiful family, growing old together, retiring early, enjoying your grandchildren and reminiscing about the picture perfect, All American life the two of you had led. Or something like that. You had certain hopes, dreams and ambitions for yourself and your children. You had various plans festering in the back of your mind. Your frame consisted of all this stuff, much of it subconscious.

Then you got a couple of bombshells from your W and your frame was *severely* threatened. Your first reaction (like all of us, believe me) was to try and hold your frame together, whatever it took. It helps us to believe we have control so initially we love to take the blame. If the blame is ours and we fix our problem, then boom...our life is back on track and our frame remains intact. Some of us get stuck in that mode for a long time: "Yes, I was horrible! No wonder you're having an affair; I don't blame you at all! I'd be having an affair, too, if I was you and was married to me! But check this out...I'm working on myself, I'm fixing my issues, soon I'll be cured! Then you'll have no need for this wonderful OP who has shown me the error of my ways and we can be together forever with our children! Won't life be perfect again?!"

All that is rationalization to try and hold our precarious frame together. Of course, our frame never did reflect actual reality (don't make me get philosophical) and it sure as hell doesn't reflect the current reality. The sooner you can reframe your sitch and the more closely you can make it reflect reality, the more you'll be able to detach from outcome and the more you'll increase your chance of success. And the calmer you'll be. That's always nice.

So what should your new frame look like? Well, what are the facts on the ground and what can we reasonably or usefully assume from them? Your W has asked for a divorce and wanted the separation backdated (if I get a fact wrong, feel free to straighten me out). You can safely assume that there's a possibility you'll be divorced in a year. Put that in your frame. There are a lot of downsides to being divorced, especially when you have children. But it's survivable. Lesser men than you have survived and thrived after a divorce. Start saying this to yourself a lot: "I can handle it." Your thoughts will throw all kinds of negative possibilities at you because our thoughts are wusses and detest uncertainty. They want us to take the course that's safest *for the immediate moment* at all times. The more you tell yourself you can handle whatever comes and the more you believe it (because it's true...the great majority of the time, people handle whatever comes at them, even people the rest of us don't think much of), the quieter your Chicken Little thoughts will become. There was a time in my sitch when my thoughts were screaming at me in the middle of the night, "YOU'RE GOING TO BE BANKRUPT AND IN PRISON!!! AND SHE DID THIS TO YOU!!!" As long as I tried to figure out how I was going to avoid those unpleasantries, I tossed and turned. When I finally told myself, "You know, if that happens, you'll survive. Eventually you'll be free and you'll have a job. But she'll still be her." I still didn't get much sleep that night but I was calmer and felt much better the next day, and from then on. (The part about her still being her was gratuitous, I admit, but it helped. )

(I'm going to post this so I don't accidentally lose it, and continue subsequently.)

[Burgbud]

(continuing on...)

So part of your frame is that you might be divorced. You'll be with your kids only some of the time and a lot of things that you take for granted now will become a pain in the butt. Sucks, but survivable. You can still make a great life out of that for yourself and your children. Don't fight the possibility. Accept it as part of your frame.

Another possibility is that your W gives up her affair (sooner or later) and your family reunites. That's great, especially for your kids, but you and your W will have to do a lot of work to repair the damage that's accumulated in your M and to strengthen your M going into the future. Your new frame doesn't get to have an easy path. If tomorrow your W renounced her affair and the Army let you out and flew you home, your life would still be harder than it looked in the frame you used to have. That's not fair nor is it unfair; that's just life. It's only good or bad to the extent that you make it good or bad.

If you can reframe your sitch like that, you can detach from outcome. Sure, you still have a preference of how you'd like things to go but whatever happens, you can handle it. When you're detached from outcome you can act without fear of any particular outcome which maximizes your chances of obtaining the outcome you prefer. "Maximizes your chances of" is a long way from "guarantees". Acting from fear, though, is almost always the road to disaster. When your W is threatening to leave you, you fear upsetting her because that will want to make her leave you more. And it probably does in the moment. In the long run, upsetting her in order to be your authentic self ("I will not tolerate infidelity") increases the chance she'll return.

Detach from outcome. No panicking. You can handle it. There's a way you want to live your life in the future with your family and you believe it's a good way. You would like your wife to join your in your vision and you'll give her every opportunity to do that. But you can't require her to and you don't *want* to require her to. You want her to join you willingly. Maybe she's too confused right now to make that choice. Maybe she's not confused and that's not the choice she wants to make. Maybe she's confused but so stubborn that she won't change her mind when she gets unconfused. *You have no idea what's going on in her head.* Don't try to guess. Note what she does and says with interest. Do more of what works. If it stops working, do something else. Detach from outcome.

As much as you can, look on this process like a science experiment. You'd like the experiment to result in her return to your family. You're going to do the things that maximize that possibility. If she doesn't take that path, that's still good information. It means she wasn't suitable for you. Doesn't make her bad, just unsuitable. Your life will still succeed.

I know thinking like that is a tall order. Do your best and don't beat yourself up if you slip; you need that energy to get back on the path as quickly as possible.

You can do it. You have it in you.

[mcol]

Ok...so I came out of the dark long enough to IM my W and ask about D appointment with the doctor.

She said it went terribly but it is over. I have to tell you that my daughter has one of the loudest cries known to man so I am sure that squirming, squealing and crying were the order of the afternoon. Given my W emotional state, I am sure she was freaking out as well, probably hollering at D which did nothing to help the sitch at the doctor's office. They had to freeze the roots on D's toenail...poor thing. Like father, Like Daughter. S8 has to get the same thing done shortly so I am sure that will go equally as well.

Rest of the IM was small talk and I asked her a simple are you OK. W said she was fine and that was the end of it. A pretty uneventful and limp IM session but at least she knows I am still alive (although not sure she cared much tonight).

Oh well friends, back to darkness for a while. I will call on Christmas, which is sure to be a trying time for all of them without her dad or me there. If you have not done so already...looks a couple of posts up and check out the you tube link that was on W my space page...holy tearjerker Batman.

Rest well friends...tis the season!

[chocolateeyes]

Choc-

I understand. I'll try to get a couple brief questions for you. H is having an A (PA) and I haven't outed it to anyone yet. H denies it to me, but I've seen evidence. Just wanted your opinion on telling OW's H about it. He's getting suspicious, but I think I know A LOT more than he does!

Have a great holiday.

-SueS

Sue,

Absolutely, expose to the OW's husband. Don't you think he deserves to know?

a) He deserves to know.
b) It will help put pressure on the affair.
c) It will show your husband you're fighting for the marriage.
d) It's the right thing to do.

If you want, post your e-mail address, and we can e-mail about my experiences with confrontation and exposure.

Choc.

[FA]

Hey mcol.....how long you deployed for? I am in the Stan Land also....The Kyrgi type. I've got 10 and a wake up to go and I'm done here.....4 months finally over.....

How are you holding up?

[FA]

We call this place......MAN ASS....heard of it?

[mcol]

FA...great to hear from you brother. I have just under 100. I have been through Man A$$ and you can keep it. Throw a snow ball at some wiley person up there. I have to say I wish I were in the AF sometimes...you guys know just how long to deploy for. When I am done I will have tripled the length of your deployment.

Just a quick update for everyone...

Christmas has come and gone and this one has been crappier than any other. Not only am I have issues in my marriage, but I am deployed. I ate Christmas lunch alone, watched White Christmas (tradition) in my room and pretty much just prayed for the day to push on so I could go back to a normal schedule.

W and I are trying to work through our issues. We IM each other frequently but there is still the uncomfortable air of everything going on. Not sure what is going to happen when I get back but I know that I must keep S,D,S in the forefront so that I do not go out of my flipping mind.

Not sure if you all can relate but the worst times for me are when I am trying to fall asleep or in a light sleep. It seems that everything that I have repressed or manage to push into my subconsious (fear, anger, dread etc) all come back like a tidal wave. Sometimes I am almost forced into the fetal position with these feelings, it is dumb and awful all at the same time. Then as if I am pulled out of everything, I am able to regain control and it all goes away.

Trying to keep W engaged on the IM, although I am not pushy, clingy or anything...just talking about stuff.

Struggling with trying not to project but also trying to plan ahead for the future outside of the green suit. Holy mind wrecking batman. The military sure is a cushy job for those who don't mind getting deployed or all the other stupid crap we go through. However, in the best interest of my family and myself I am separating. We will see how it goes.

Hope you guys are rounding out a good Christmas break and you are somewhere between sugar plums dancing in your head and watching reindeer leap over fences. That means, I hope you are all sleeping well.

I will admit, I am confused about my sitch and not sure what is going to happen, but I know it will not get better unless I choose to do something about it.