Wow, what a weekend. Turns out I am diabetic...had no clue. Was with my 18 year old son saturday and started slurring my words and having difficulty both driving and walking. Had my son drive us home at which point I passed out in the car.
Got home, tried to eat lunch, passed out in my chair. At that time my WAW got home and argued/insisted I go to the hospital. They thought I was having a stroke, just turns out my sugar level was 466 when it is supposed to be below 120. Doctors tell me I could have slipped into a coma and possibly died.
Don't think it had much effect on my marital situation all though pretty sure it shook up the wife. Hopefully i can learn from this and be the better man for it.
me 41 w43 married 20 years BD 10/10/13 ILYBNILWY.... 4 kids, 21,18,8,6
hmmm, perhaps this post will show up twice....says i posted this morning but not showing. Anyway, little update.
So Saturday I start stumbling around and slurring my words. Older kids are freaking out telling me i need to go to hospital but i am arguing with them. Decide I just need a nap....wife comes home, tries to wake me up, second time is successful, takes me to ER. Turns out I am diabetic. What a great suprise!
Better than the diabetic coma/death I could have entered without their intervention. Wife hung with me at the hospital most of Saturday and then some Sunday when I was released. She even checked up on me via a phone call and several texts during the day. Most we have communicated about 'non essentials' in the past few weeks.
Don't thing it changes the situation at all but I did get to sleep the whole weekend! Part of me wishes it would have given her a wake up call but I am ruthlessly squashing that idea. Suprise suprise that a LBS would try to take a near death experience and twist it into some sort of R situation
I wonder though how much that has affected my attitude and actions these last few months. I know I feel a hell of a lot better and am not so bitter/angry feeling. Perhaps all LBS aught to get their blood checked....hell, send in the WAS as well.
me 41 w43 married 20 years BD 10/10/13 ILYBNILWY.... 4 kids, 21,18,8,6
Well we had an R talk. Not sure who brought it up. But it was a good 20 minutes or so of clearing the air. Things have changed a little between us since my stay in the hospital. I had requested earlier of her a list of things she may see in me that she saw as character defects. This list I explained to her would be shared with my counselor.
I don' know about you folks but I have had conversations before with people and then later remembered a detail that was monstrously important that I forgot to bring up. This list from her, as she is the one who knows me best, I thought would be a useful tool. Eg. perhaps she saw things that would never occur to me to bring up in counseling.
At first she refused. Stated that that wasn't how counseling was supposed to work. I told her it was my counseling and it came down to me asking her for help. She refused. However, after my stay in the hospital, she did come up with a small list, some things i knew, some things hadn't occured to me.
I don't know how much I have detached, how much I have GAL, how much I have worked on me/changed in me. I do know I have made efforts, done 180's, things that haven't appeared to have an affect. It seems like while I believe in the basics of DB'ing, the wall around my wife is so tall and strong that they just aren't working.
I continue to work on me but I get absolutely no input, no feedback, no notice from my wife. I think I could continue to do db'ing to the letter and it wouldn't make a difference. For good or for bad, I am modifying my behavior to stray from the db path. It is possible that many have felt this way before and because they stray, they fail.
But on the other hand, I am sure that there have been a lot of db'ers that followed the book to the letter and the situation didn't work out. I surrended a couple of weeks ago to the fact that this marriage cannot be saved. My wife is too closed minded to the idea of R.
So it boils down to, 'what do i have to lose'. Against, 'continue to do db'ing, all through the process of divorce, and maybe it will work, maybe it wont'. My actions got my marriage into this situation, so one could argue that my own advice shouldn't be followed if I want the M to succeed. However, my advice to myself now is modified by several self help books, individual counseling, going back to AA meetings, the DB book, and all the wonderful stuff I read on these forums.
Maybe it is a control issue, me not being able to just let stuff be, to see how it will work out by itself. Maybe it is just too important of an issue to me to just let go and see what happens.
I know I agree with a lot of the tenants of the DB book. I know I also don't agree with some of them as well. I don't really know the answers but I think I would feel better if the marriage fails and I tried not only the DB'ing approach but everything else I could possibly do as well.
me 41 w43 married 20 years BD 10/10/13 ILYBNILWY.... 4 kids, 21,18,8,6
sigh. I wish I knew what the heck I was doing. One minute detached, the next trying to figure it all out. When I surrender to the idea that whatever will happen will happen, my level of peace is so much greater.
Then I take the problem back into myself and try to figure out all the angles. In AA there is an expression called 'terminal uniqueness'. It is an expression used towards people who think they suffer more than most, that for some reasons their sitch is different then everyone else's, that the rules don't neccessarily fully apply to them. Perhaps I am suffering from terminal uniqueness concerning db'ing.
me 41 w43 married 20 years BD 10/10/13 ILYBNILWY.... 4 kids, 21,18,8,6
sigh. I wish I knew what the heck I was doing. One minute detached, the next trying to figure it all out. When I surrender to the idea that whatever will happen will happen, my level of peace is so much greater.
Then I take the problem back into myself and try to figure out all the angles.
This sounds just like me! Its very hard isn't it, some days I feel really detached and at peace with the way things are and other days I cant stop thinking about it all and trying to figure out where things are going and what will happen next.
I suppose it takes practice to stay detached. If your anything like me you probably beat yourself up if you say/do anything that wasnt ideal instead of getting back to DB and putting it down as experience, this is something i'm working on at the moment.
Divorce Final: Oct 2014
Your struggles today, develop strength for tomorrow...
This Thursday my wife will be going to a lawyer. I assume to put him on retainer, to start our divorce case. Time is running out and the sense of dread mounts.
I can't quite believe that this is happening. To say it makes me feel awful would be a vast understatment. Loss, fear, sadness, anger, resentment, all rolled into one big ball of uncertainty and remorse.
I struggle to accept that this is the direction my life is going. Me, me, me, me, me. I had the gift of time and tried quite a few things. Most likely I could have done better, I am sure of it actually. Perhaps like above it was too much about me and not enough about her. Sorry for the self pity party venting......
me 41 w43 married 20 years BD 10/10/13 ILYBNILWY.... 4 kids, 21,18,8,6
The waiting has been hard these past few days. Had to break out some extra help by talking to some friends and my sister. Nerve wracking. My wife says she is just going to 'get some questions answered'. I think those questions are all obviously around 'how did I get divorced'.
However, at least maybe by the end of tomorrow I will have an answer of sorts. Some sort of plan of action rather than just kind of wondering what will happen and when. Of course tomorrow with those answers, I could be freaking out and wishing I was back again to not knowing
It does help reading others' stories. Sometimes posting even. Helps me get out of myself meanwhile potentially helping bring some semblance of peace to others.
me 41 w43 married 20 years BD 10/10/13 ILYBNILWY.... 4 kids, 21,18,8,6
So my wife went to the lawyer today. Put the kids to bed 15 minutes ago.....she is hiding in her sewing room and hasn't come out yet.
Must be she really doesn't want to talk about it/possibly avoiding the situation. Suspense is killing me but I think I am well grounded enough I can out wait her on this one.....
Tick Tock Tick Tock
me 41 w43 married 20 years BD 10/10/13 ILYBNILWY.... 4 kids, 21,18,8,6
Well we had a two hour conversation. Some about the details of divorcing, finances, she is now fessing up to the concept of 50/50 physical custody doesn't feel right to her. She thinks it would be better for the kids to be with her for school days, alomst all. I disagree.
I listened though, truly listened. She is so closed to an R. I argued quite eloquantily I think about how where she is in life, where I am in life, how could a future marriage not be soooo much better than our previous marriage. I mentioned that if our marriage would be the same in the future that I myself would file for divorce.
There was no holding back on this last ditch effort. I hope that the space I have given her has cracked the wall a bit so that she can at least envision a possibility of us working things out.
She agrees that she has issues, I stated I had issues, and if we both worked on them how couldn't our marriage be better? Round and around, same things, refined/stated a different way.
Not sure of the results.....she said she had to have a break and go to bed as her head was spinning. She asked how i could have anything to do with her, knowing that she had no inclination to put forth one iota of effort into repairing our marriage.
I stated that 'i loved her, coupled with the fact that I think she is incorrect, I can only have hope and faith that I can reach her'. IDK. Better and a deeper conversation than any we have had so far. I feel somewhat drained as if I poured out all my emotion and used up my listening skills for the day
me 41 w43 married 20 years BD 10/10/13 ILYBNILWY.... 4 kids, 21,18,8,6
Upon reflection of our discussion last night I am starting to change my opinion of the outcome. At first I was hopeful. Hopeful that we conversed at a much deeper and more honest level then we have in a long time and maybe the wall cracked a bit.
But I really think my wife despises me. I am blown away by this potential revelation. I think she really almost hates me on some level. Just little things she said, the way she said them. If this is true than I have been blind for a long time.
And if it is true, I have no idea how it developed. I mean, I understand where/what went wrong in the marriage, what I was responsible for etc, but this is something that has been growing these past months as we have discussed the option of divorce.
While I have been thinking she was just closed to the idea of a R, I think she has come to the point where the idea of that is abhorrent to her. This person is not my wife that I have known for 20 years.
Where this hate comes from I do not know. I have given her space, let her do her own thing, the rare R talk that she has initiated there hasn't even been a raised voice. I could see if we were constantly fighting or something but I have never been so civil in my life. Sigh..........
me 41 w43 married 20 years BD 10/10/13 ILYBNILWY.... 4 kids, 21,18,8,6
