The way he "jumps right into divorce" when you stand your ground makes me think it is a threat, I'm not sure how serious he is. So tell me this: does he pretty much know you want to save the MR? B/c if so, he might be playing the divorce threat to keep you right where he wants you, a meek little mouse cowering in the corner. The hard part is that you have to face your fear here, at some point. You're going to have to look down the barrel of the gun and say "do your worst, but I'll still be standing". And it's true, you will survive this. You may even thrive b/c of this situation, as dire as it looks right now.
I guarantee he knows this is super hard for you, but probably he doesn't care enough to change.
You keeping your word isn't and him not keeping his word isn't going to remove the emotional fog. It's going to be your detachment that makes that happen. If he isn't thinking clearly, all the more reason to remove the pressure and back off so he does have time to think and figure this out.
H 34 W 29 BD 3/12/18 Divorce Busted Spring 19
It is not things that bother us, but the stories we tell ourselves about things.
He does know I would like to save the marriage, and that I have wanted to all along. My fear is that out of anger and pride he will just go file and not even think about it. Leaving me to continuously be the level headed one who takes her time. And then he can get even MORE angry saying I wont sign, etc.
And youre right that he doesnt care enough to change. Which still blows my mind because I used to truly be the only thing he TRULY TRULY cared about.
Until I am detached, how do I fake it? How can I react to all of these things he is saying as if I am already detached. I want him to see clearly and see this for what it is. I need to fake it til I make it, but I dont really know how a detached person would react to things, because I am not at all detached.
I am VERY much still in love with him and would love nothing more than to save our marriage. But he is in a totally different place. He seems like he cant wait to cut me loose.Although I do think deep down he is still unsure and he fears letting go completely.
I do not think he has anything drawn up. But he seems to think it will be a very easy process to get divorced. He says it is something we can do on our own without lawyers because he doesnt want anything from me etc. I just know his pride and i know he will go forward with this without a second thought because I am not giving into his texts and giving him a reaction.
We have promised eachother so many times we werent going to take this road, and everytime he gets mad its RIGHT where he goes. Divorce & custody, immediately. And yet I have every reason in the world to be mad and I never bring the 2 up because we have always said we would figure it out amongst ourselves.
I hate that I am the only one being loyal and fighting for us even after ive been cheated on and lied to. I am not sure what I am doing, but I love him and I feel like he is a little lost right now. I cannot control what move he makes next, I just know it will devastate me
All you can do is control how you respond. He is predictable. We have seen it all before. You need to catch up and pass him. He had a huge head start. You have a huge support team.
Can you compartmentalize:
1) Legal 2) Parent 3) Wife 4) YOU
Last edited by Cadet; 08/30/1805:18 PM. Reason: combine posts
"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
This is so not what I wanted. Now I am heading towards divorce when an hour ago we were happily feeding her bananas for the first time.
kech, I need to start getting blunt with you. So brace yourself because I know you are hurting right now, but you need to come out of denial on a few things.
First, YOUR MARRIAGE WAS OVER. What happened yesterday was not what ended your marriage. Even if he follows through today, goes to a lawyer, draws up papers and has you served. All of that is a formality. Your marriage has been over for a longtime. Guy dropped the bomb on you when you were 5 weeks pregnant. Your D is 6 months old now. That is 9 months of limbo, and he had checked out long before BD. August 29, 2018 was a stone on the path. The path to D started 9 months ago, or longer. So the above quote CANNOT be your thinking. The guy has been BUNKING at your house. Nothing more.
Second, you still take your H's words for gospel truth. STOP THAT. He is a liar and a cheater. Period. You cannot believe anything liars and cheaters say. They will lie and cheat for any reason, but for trying to save face and money are their biggest reasons for lying. This is why the custody talk is a bunch of horse manure. His true colors about why he was still with you came out in his statement about "you'll get your money" and "I want 50/50 custody". Trust me on this, guys facing D go for 50/50 to cut down on support. Especially an absent father like he has been. That leads me to point three.
Third, HE IS A TERRIBLE FATHER. You responded to me yesterday "that you really think he is worried about seeing his D". HORSE PUCKY! He hasn't been seeing his daughter as it was! You told us in your threads that he goes to work, work's late. Goes straight to the bar. And is there until late. Comes home, expects that you've made a 6 month old stay awake until he gets home so he can kiss her goodnight with alcohol breathe, and OW's bodily fluids all over him. SORRY, that is not a father. That is a bedtime visitor. So ask yourself this: if he has literally zero custody now, why would he go after full custody after D?!? $$$$$$$$$$$$$
Fourth, he is still with OW. You have been in denial about this for 9 months. Affairs usually die eventually. Either one of the APs are still too attached to their family to ever really leave, or the newness wears off, or the fact that it started in evil, immoral, disgusting fashion means it is built on a rotten foundation that cannot last, or one of them realizes it is all based on sex and nothing more and pulls back. But the point is that this death is a slow process. Most of the affairs I've known about have lasted about 2 years. Some a little less, some a lot more. But the point I am making is in 9-12 months it likely hadn't finished its course.
So what happened yesterday? I'll tell you. Since Mr. Cheaterpants has been absent as a H and father, you finally called him out on it on Tuesday. Mr. Cheaterpants realized that his cake and eat it too was in jeopardy based on what you said to him. So Mr. Cheaterpants decided to throw you a bone. "I will descend down from my mountaintop of inflated self-worth and pure selfishness tomorrow after work long enough to spend some time with you mere commoners in order to smooth things over for another few weeks". But Mrs. Cheaterpants (OW) couldn't handle that. After all she has been receiving the bulk of his attention and free time for months now, and she is uneasy with this "I am going right home after work tomorrow so that I can get W to think I am making progress so she'll back off of this edict of not wanting to be with a cheating, lying, terrible father of a H." So she started blowing up his phone.
Now Mr. Cheaterpants is stuck in a sitcom! You know the storyline, where the character has made a date to the dance with 2 girls, and now he is splitting his time between each of them at the dance to try to appease both of them! So he is at home, but he is also texting OW to calm her down. "I'll see you tomorrow." "Its only one night." "This doesn't mean I am not Ding her, this is just to buy more time." Etc.
And then you blow it all up by standing up for yourself. GOOD FOR YOU. This needed to happened. Ask yourself honestly kech how much longer could you have lived the way you were? You don't want D, but you were living as if D'd! You don't want to be a single mother, but that is exactly what you were/are!
And Mr. Cheaterpant's reaction is classic "I AM GUILTY" reaction. Waywards are like teenagers: they don't like to get caught! He was less concerned with anything else last night except getting caught! He didn't care about spending time with D, that was to play on your heartstrings. You told us something in your recent posts very telling: We promised each other we wouldn't fight for custody in court. So what is the first thing he does when you confront him about texting OW? HE THREATENS LAWYERS AND A CUSTODY FIGHT. ROFL Again, he hasn't even been seeing or spending time with D (based on what you've told us) anyway! So why would he be fighting for custody except to hurt you. To scare you. To make you start begging for forgiveness and ask him to come back. Quite frankly it is disgusting and someone like you deserves better. I don't know how you could even want to be with someone that could stoop that low.
Okay, I have a lot more to say. But I've said enough already. Please read this with the understanding that I am trying to get you to see his true colors. You've got your "I love my H and I want to save my marriage" glasses on. But that thinking will trip you up. Believe it or not you have a better chance of saving your marriage now than you did before yesterday. He isn't going to talk to lawyers. He isn't going to draw up papers, He isn't going to follow through on these threats. He is trying to manipulate you and blame shift. That is all. (Note, I could be wrong about all of this, but we've seen this bluster before. Most people that do this don't send a flurry of warning texts, they simply go and do it.) Mr. Cheaterpants is all talk and no action, I'd bet money on it.
Finally, where do you think he slept last night? And with whom? Have you considered that? While painful to face, the truth that he ran straight to OW should tell you what kind of a man you are dealing with right now. And should give you the comfort in that you did the right thing, stood up for yourself, and took his cake away.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
I do hope you are right about him sending threats and not filing. I truly truly hope youre right. But knowing him, he is so angry right now, he would go today and file just to prove his point.
I am not sure where he slept last night honestly. As ive said the original OW lives 4 hours away. So unless there is someone else or he drove down to her, he probably went to the bar and slept at a friends. I know he cares more about our daughter than anything else, but youre right, as of lately he has not been home to spend time with her often etc.
I also hope that you are right in saying I have a better chance now of saving my marriage than I did before. That is ALL I want. I want him to realize he wants to be here with us and not this other life he has been living, but at this point I just cant see him feeling that way. He is SO angry. SO angry right now. He clearly did not want to be called out and he is now making me out to be the bad guy for doing it while he was spending time with the baby, saying it could have waited until later. Which I guess is true, but it wasnt a blow up or anything like that.
I hate how easily he flips things. I feel like he is going to manipulate this thing into me being the bad guy, and im just going to be here with my hands up like, this isnt even what I want! I love my husband, and I know right now this isnt my husband, and im starting to wonder if he is just this changed person for good. It is so crazy to me.
All he has to do right now is calm down so we could just discuss this all ourselves and I just do not at all see him doing that. He will keep this anger up and hope I will back down and apologize or something I think which I have no plans of doing. I simply stated if he wont let me see his phone, then he is talking to other women and he cant live here.
I feel very helpless, I feel very much like he is going to make this such an awful sitch, even more than it already is. I have no idea if he is going to watch our D tonight like he was supposed to. He says he doesnt want to come here at all and then says im playing games when I offer to help him see her some other way. I dont feel like I have a leg to stand on, he will not listen to me and just says whatever he wants.
This is going to be a very long and hard day, as I do not feel comfortable leaving D tonight just for my own sanity, but know I cannot say no and just want this to all get better
All of that understandable. Most of us on this forum have been through similar things. When I confronted my W after finding her chatting with her OM on FB messenger, she reacted similarly. Though she wasn't so angry, she turned everything around on me. It was all my fault.
I've learned so much since then. That no matter how bad of a H I was at the time that didn't give her the right to step outside the marriage, have sexual text exchanges, and send nude pictures to another man. But on BD she was able to divert the attention away from that with talk of me being mean and controlling, and her wanting a D. Looking back it was a lot of bluster on her part. It was to divert attention away from her EA.
He is doing the same thing. You were right to stand up for yourself. Yes he may try to make you out to be the bad guy, but are you? No you are not. That is the truth. And no matter what anyone else says or thinks, the truth is that YOU ARE NOT the bad guy. Remember that. You can't control what he or anyone else says or thinks, but you do know the truth.
Who is worse? The person that texts his AP while spending time with his D, or the person that call him out on it? See how twisted the waywards mind works? They make the right action (calling him out) worse than the wrong action (texting OW when you are supposed to be spending time with D). In fact, he wasn't spending time with D at all!! His body was there but his mind was far away.
So who cares if he thinks you are the bad guy?!? HE IS THE BAD GUY.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
You are right. He definitely is. I think my biggest fear is the custody talks now that he is throwing at me. And I havent heard from him at all today, which really just makes me think he is going to go file and and make a rash decision and then I will hear from him.
I am terrified. This is so not the man I fell in love with and married. He would have calmed down by now and apologized and come home and never been talking to any other women in the first place.
This man is nothing like that. Its like he hates me and the minute I do something he doesnt like, that hate shows. And for some reason no matter WHAT I do over the last year, he continues to hate me in a way. And he swears he doesnt, but his anger towards me when i bring things up shows otherwise.
My main concern at this point is our child. 6 months old is extremely young, and she is primarily in my care, and now I have to think about the fact that that is going to change and it is honestly enough to make me lose my mind. A lot of the time he doesnt follow through on things he says, but this time feels VERY different. And he may be getting advice from people telling him to go to a lawyer and get this all handled. I never thought we could be here, ever.
I want to text him and ask him if he is really planning to speak to a lawyer and if I should as well. Should I text that or should I wait and see if i hear from him?
