Rob. Since you asked for advice, comments, I will give you mine.
Let her go, move on, go forward with the divorce. Not for her; to force changes in her. But for you.
You see yourself. You are not the same person you were 2-3 years ago. You are more confident, self-respecting, thoughtful. But you never actually moved on with your life. pseudo-moved-on. Your wife, your marriage, your issues were always still there. They have guided you along this path you have taken. (I have read your posts; you have given us a very interesting autobiography of a man who has learned a lesson from being walked upon.) But you have yet to experience life without them.
Do you really know yourself?
You still think about your wife; you still question in your mind about her; you still wonder if I do this or that what will she do. Will she become the woman I want her to be? (or something similiar) Magic eight ball says, none of them will ever be forever. They all fart, and have periods, talk on the phone, leave their bras laying around, and get sick of us from time to time all the same. Time to stop considering your wife completely. It is an important step forward in your growth as a person.
pseudo-moved-on. You have yet to experience love after your wife. Finding that special person that completely turns your world upside down with emotions. Infatuation. It is a powerful change of thinking. Infatuation that turns into love. You talk about that so often in your posts, but do you really know what it feels like. What it does to Robx?
Experience that Rob, before getting back together with your wife. You will view your entire world differently after that. That I can promise you. The rest is just speculation.
Ditto.
Ditto.
"What is best for my kids is best for me" Amor Fati Link to quotes: https://www.divorcebusting.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2879712
Actually, Ditto minus the part about moving forward with the divorce. You and you alone know what you want; don't be ashamed to ask for what you want. If your W complies, you win. If she is doesn't, you move on and you win.
Seems to me the only way you lose is by taking her back without getting what you really want (Honesty and an end to the lies).
Me40 WAW37 M18 T20 S18,14 D13 EA Bomb 6/08 Sep 11/20/08 Ret 08/09 Sep/Filed 11/09
Maybe it is a woman thing but I dont understand :"move on before you go back with your wife". Huh? SO, rob will not know himself unless he meets someone special (who wont be special because THEY are all the same anyway) other than his wife? Dont get it. Maybe because I am lacking testosterone...
For the record, I like gucci's approach. You cant force anyone to be honest, I tried that all last year. (I like gucci). Let her go thru the crisis. (Maybe I should have let H go thru it a while longer, more than 2-2,5 months, but our sitch was a bit different). K
PS rob, what the h$ll is a "european triple whatever". I live in Europe, where can I get it? LOLOL!!!
There is enough info in this few pages of posts to digest from so many of you this should become a sticky thread at some point.
Robx, I agree completely with Gucci, he nailed it. Minus 1 aspect that I am not convinced of yet..
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And do NOT forget about dating. It is a must. Kitty cats compete
I understand completely why you would do this, and believe it can be to your benefit, especially where you are in the DB process, but for those out there that are not at your level....
I found out as recently as last night, that this also can be a dangerous game, if you are not very, very careful. Be up front with where you are, what you are looking for.
M: 41 STBXW: 41 D: 9 Bomb: 4/26/09
On board the D train now..
"Suffering is when we try to change what we cannot."
I just had a thought while writing down my own update, and after reading Kalni's post, wanted to pass my thought along for consideration here.
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Maybe it is a woman thing but I dont understand :"move on before you go back with your wife". Huh? SO, rob will not know himself unless he meets someone special (who wont be special because THEY are all the same anyway) other than his wife? Dont get it. Maybe because I am lacking testosterone...
Are you ready for a long term committed relationship with anyone at the present time?
If your not, and I know that I am not, then you have to include your Ex in that as well!
If we have not moved on to a healthy place being alone, finding ourselves, and are not ready ourselves to commit to what a long term relationship would be, then if you got back together with your Ex, how can you expect it to work out?
M: 41 STBXW: 41 D: 9 Bomb: 4/26/09
On board the D train now..
"Suffering is when we try to change what we cannot."
I "WON'T" allow lies and dishonesty back in my life.
There is your answer. She REPRESENTS the lies and dishonesty. Your answer is to let her go through the crisis. Right now you CAN'T take her back. MUST not take her back. That means no casual or sex with benefits or whatever else you have been having with her. NONE, zilch. Let her FEEL and see that you are SERIOUS (or are you?)
By your own words you say she has lied for a long long time. There is your evidence of lies and dishonsetly being part of her. You can't get her true true respect until you FINALLY back up what you keep saying you mean UNLESS you follow through with those words with some action.
I am glad to finally see you take some action. She is finally getting a clue that you may just be serious. I believe you need to put her through a crisis of at least 6 months or more and gauge her reactions and actions from a distance.
Now for the part about needing to know what happened and details of the past... You are going about it the wrong way..
You PRESSURED her. Pressure doesn't work. Don't do that. You won't get the truth from her until she feels you are totally done and let her know that it is too LATE for the truth and you could care less anymore. However you don't think about taking her back unless she does come clean. She will when you take off the pressure by keeping on the path you are on. It will be the CRISIS that will get her to tell you the truth. Not pressure, but the crisis.
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I even told her to spill the beans on the guys that I know that she had affairs with and she still couldn't spill the beans, she had to hold on to those lies, telling me it wasn't as bad as I assumed it was (how bad does it have to be?!) and she told me that even if she told me the details, how would she know for certain I would take her back - my reply was pretty much "Well you know for certain that I'm not taking back someone who is dishonest & lying to my face, you have my 100% guarantee on that", the conversation continued for a bit like this and I told her that she was just repeating the same thing over & over again and lying to me was just her attempt to control me and my reactions to what she had done and I wouldn't put up with that anymore.
This was all pressure. That doesn't work. You are trying to make a liar be an honest person. You first have to completely reject the liar and then put her in a crisis to WANT to be an honest person because she see that YOU are only "attracted" to honest women. She has to be in the kind of crisis that people are in on this site. The kind of crisis where she is asking others HOW to win you back and they tell her to work on herself and learn to be honest. She will then do it all on her own...
Face the reality Rob. She is a liar. Move away from liars. Stop trying to make a liar an honest person. The only way you can get them to change is for them to go through a major crisis that puts them in such panic that they do WHATEVER it takes. You have never gotten her to that point. Now is you opportunity. Don't waste it.
And do NOT forget about dating. It is a must. Kitty cats compete...
Gucci, I know it was pressure, maybe it was a reflex, maybe I do have some repressed anger still left inside of me, being lied to for so long, I just wanted to hear some truth for once. Yes she's afraid, you can totally see it in her face, her body language, the way she talks, the tears, the constant reaching out and touching and wanting to be held, etc.
And honestly, call me a bad person if you want to, I was beginning to be repelled by it all. It's not that I was uncomfortable because I was totally comfortable with myself during the conversations, I was really getting sick of hearing her excuses, she is still trying to protect her secrets and herself, she still doesn't want to take responsibility and give up the secrets and I just looked at her and shook my head, as in she just doesn't get it, I'm not the old me, I'm not going to settle for less, why would I, why would anyone?
As for her getting a clue, she's been experiencing the "clue" for the past 2 months after I deemed that regular casual sex was no longer doing it for me (I told her it was boring): - limiting contact, ie. no calling, no texting, no emailing, and when she calls, I never pick up, I let her call several times before I pick up, sometimes waiting a day or two or more and it frustrates the heck out of her - packed up her things - put her things in boxes and placed them outside the home and told her to pick up her stuff - had her mail forwarded to her parent's address - there's a ton of other stuff but you get the idea
I could be wrong but I think the thing that ultimately did it was stopping the sex. My wife is very attractive physically and when I finally rejected the sex it did something that I wasn't expecting. Maybe she thought I would always want the sex from her, I just told her if all we had was casual sex, I could have that kind of sex with any other woman, why was I holding myself back just for her?
As far her spilling the beans when she feels I'm totally done, I think that was part of the exchange yesterday. I didn't show any emotion whatsoever during our conversation, I didn't argue, I was pretty much like "are we done yet?" "I'm busy," "I have to get back to work" "plus I don't like talking about this with the kids in the other room, etc." "No I won't have time later to talk about this, I'm tired of you saying the same old same old, what's the point of that" "You had your chance to talk and be honest about what you did for 2 years, why is it so important to speak about this now?"
She stopped by again last night (wow what a surprise), the same old routine followed along with "how do I know you'll forgive me if I tell you everything", i just replied telling her that she doesn't know, that wasn't an option, that part was up to me IF I CHOSE to forgive her, no one has to make me forgive her and if she was expecting forgiveness on the spot after spilling her guts out, that she was mistaken, I'm not that easy, who could be? If you're that easy, they would just do the same thing again as there was no consequence for their crappy actions.
For everyone reading this, I'm not so naive to think that hearing the truth isn't going to affect me, I would never say that or believe that. And I'll be honest, until I hear everything, I don't know what my reaction will be. I'm a single dad with 2 young children so I'm going to go all crazy & berzerk, she is the mother of my kids after all plus i'm not a crazy lunatic. I do know that I don't have to guarantee anything to her, she was supposed to be faithful to me and she never stuck to that agreement, no one says I have to stay with her just because she finally admits the details of what she has done and who she has done IT with. Part of her being an adult is taking responsibility for what she's done and knowing there are consequences for her actions, one of those consequences include losing me.
Gucci I have faced the reality that my wife is a liar for quite some time already, that's the part that bothers me. I know I can't be with a dishonest person anymore thats why I rarely give her the time of day, yesterday was the first time in 2 months that I spoke with her as long as I did.
Another thing I realized a long time is that someone who has to lie regularly, someone who has to be dishonest & deceitful on a regular basis has very low self-esteem. You would have to have low self-esteem to lie regularly. I have to assume she can't just be lying to me but pretty much anyone in her life. She has to lie about herself, who she is, what she does, what her value is because she believes that people won't accept her as she is - this is the life she designed for herself a few years ago and it never worked out according to her plan and she has to live with this person that she sees every time she looks in a mirror and she knows it.
She enjoys the attention from other men when she goes out with her friends to the clubs but when she realized that none of them wanted anything more than a piece of ass, that attention & validation she got from these other men was a like a sugar high, a quick buzz to begin with but then she crashed hard when that attention wasn't around.
Maybe she looked down on me for wanting her the way I did for such a long time, I was supposed to be this strong, cool, confident, smart guy and I was wasting my time on someone who would reject me and maybe she couldn't respect that on some level (regardless if I was her husband or not) and when I stopped and wouldn't waste my energy, time or attention on her, she noticed it was real, I wasn't joking this time.
I cut off pretty much all contact 2 months ago but I had actually started in July/August of this year, you reach a personal limit when living in limbo, you know you've had enough and you slowly start to shift towards a direction to make your way out of limbo.
And you're right, maybe I was inadvertently trying to make an honest person out of a liar and that isn't my job, it's actually controlling on my part to do that. She knows that I want honesty, if she can't admit the details of what happened and with who, it's no longer my concern and in the end I just view it as her loss like I currently do.
My value is too high to allow myself to settle for this crap.
And Gucci, the dating is good, I never expected it to be THIS GOOD, it's quite possible she's caught wind of that as well, if so it wasn't intentional, I'm not hiding my tracks but I'm also not blatantly putting them out there on display either.
Maybe it is a woman thing but I dont understand :"move on before you go back with your wife". Huh?
I dont know, maybe she just needs a good spanking. As a man, I fail to understand why some woman get off being spanked.
- it was part of our new sex life, she enjoyed being smacked on the ass, she loves hair pulling, forceful, not violent, she enjoys the dirty talk, the xxx rated stuff, she likes being pulled into positions during sex, she likes it when the guy is in control, she enjoys being man-handled in bed, she doesn't mind the slow passionate love making but she prefers a good long pounding - truth be told, I pretty much enjoyed all of this stuff to, I'm young, I'm healthy, I'm GAME!
There is enough info in this few pages of posts to digest from so many of you this should become a sticky thread at some point.
Robx, I agree completely with Gucci, he nailed it. Minus 1 aspect that I am not convinced of yet..
Quote:
And do NOT forget about dating. It is a must. Kitty cats compete
I understand completely why you would do this, and believe it can be to your benefit, especially where you are in the DB process, but for those out there that are not at your level....
I found out as recently as last night, that this also can be a dangerous game, if you are not very, very careful. Be up front with where you are, what you are looking for.
I have been dating, I'm being careful, no sex, no kissing, just a ton of first & second dates and then I usually end it at that point, regardless if women agree on keeping it on a friendly level, after a few dates, they all want more so ending it at that point usually keeps things safe for everyone without it getting emotional.
