neffer my mind goes through this process to try and answer why. AS has spoken with me about it in the past as both his ex and mine basically went ghost without a word to us on what happened. if i get the why and it's EA/PA/OM then that is the end for me. if i reach "the end" then all hope leaves, if all hope leaves, then i am free as she was a bad person.
once i knew my 1st W was that way at BD, i never shed a tear, dropped her completely and no one knock on my self esteem. betrayal in a marriage, vows to lies, no quarter of forgiveness can i give to that. if i establish that with my W now, too late i've already shed a ton of tears, BUT i will drop her and hope completely. there will be no light for her in the storm. and i will HATE myself for that, but will have no choice.
i'm a Christian...i am to forgive those who "trespass against us" and yet for the person i vowed to love the most, i can't. that dichotomy...it rages in me and pulls me apart. many times i feel this whole ordeal is actually more about me and God and my W is just the pawn piece he uses to challenge me. he is forging/testing me somehow i don't understand and yes, perhaps i'm fighting him. i read where this whole thing tests us emotionally, physically and spiritually...for sure that is true.
hope that makes some sense and doesn't make me sound as pathetic as i feel in describing it.
rightly or wrongly through what i know of my sitch, my gut feeling GUESS is that W has had an affair of some kind/duration. i spent a good bit of time reading up on the why's of affairs and learned a great deal. the need for validation of looks, feeling alone, being resentful, lots of sex, etc many reasons that i could see in my W. and then, more importantly i could see how what i did not provide could have brought about those feelings in my w. not getting away from the tv, basically just not giving to her the level of attention she may have needed. i know to separate the issues of the marriage from W having an affair IF she did, but i did and can see how the discontent from the MR could enable W to have an OM.
Ballast, you're telling yourself stories, then getting spun up about the stories you're telling yourself.
You don't know if W had an affair.
To spend so much mental energy playing the "let's assume that W *did* have an affair, and then explain why she chose to do that, and compare it to my reasons for why I didn't do that" game has no value other than torturing yourself with useless speculation.
There are facts, and then there are the stories we tell ourselves, which are not facts.
The fact is that your W decided she wanted out of the relationship, and another fact is that since doing so, she has not been communicative.
The "why" behind her actions is likely forever out of reach. Even if she eventually tries to explain to you why she did what she did, it probably won't be accurate because it will be clouded by how she later comes to look at her past, which is often inaccurate, its a narrative that fits prior behaviors, but isn't the real explanation for them.
I would submit that this ---^ is the real problem that you're having. You can't explain W's "big why" and because you can't, you feel terrified that you won't be able to prevent it from happening again, or predict if it might.
Coming to terms with this -- the fact that you can't predict, anticipate, or control what other people decide and that the rug can get yanked at any time is a major thing to comes to terms with. It's a stressful process of acceptance. Once you get there, you realize that all you can do is control your own behavior and live with integrity. If you do that, you'll come to a "if someone wrongs me it is their loss" philosophy which will give you great comfort.
Regarding your hypothesized affair, the counterargument to that would be that someone with generalized anxiety disorder lives in constant fear of what could go wrong. Their anxiety leads them to be distrustful of others and standoffish. Someone who is suffering in that way would be unlikely to want to add the additional stress of deception and ultimate risk of being found out and humiliated. If anything, your wife's exit from the relationship may have been an attempt to have "less to worry about" which would be a rejection of relationships in general in order to ease her anxiety disorder.
I'm not saying that's what happened, and maybe she *did* have an affair, I'm only suggesting that her behavior can as easily be explained by a "no affair theory" as it can be by and "affair theory" so its not really worth your time to play out and dissect either one.
Acc
Married 18, Together 20, Now Divorced M: 48, W: 50, D: 18, S: 16, D: 12 Bomb Dropped (EA, D): 7/13/11 Start Reconcile: 8/15/11 Bomb Dropped (EA, D): 5/1/2014 (Divorced) In a New Relationship: 3/2015
i'm a Christian...i am to forgive those who "trespass against us" and yet for the person i vowed to love the most, i can't. that dichotomy...it rages in me and pulls me apart. many times i feel this whole ordeal is actually more about me and God and my W is just the pawn piece he uses to challenge me. he is forging/testing me somehow i don't understand and yes, perhaps i'm fighting him. i read where this whole thing tests us emotionally, physically and spiritually...for sure that is true.
-B
I'd like to challenge this a bit. And say that God doesn't test us. But he allows us to be tested. But NEVER above that we are able. I can back all of that up with scripture if you'd like, but it is all in there. The story of Job paints a picture of this where Satan did the testing, but God put parameters on how far Satan could go. You aren't fighting him. You are fighting yourself! Job could have cursed God and died. In fact, we all can take that route. But it isn't God we are fighting, but ourselves. And our patience. And our longsuffering. And our ability to trust Him. And the depths of our faith.
B, you are going to be okay....NO MATTER WHAT. You have to put your faith and trust in that. It may not feel that way now, but at some point you will look back and realize this.
Last edited by Steve85; 11/26/1805:16 PM.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
ACC you are right of course on everything...just pointless speculative crazy on my part. my mind looking for a way out of pain, nothing more, nothing less. i'm tired man and i loved her so much, but all i can do is take care of me and keep going forward i know that. god help me someday that this make sense. long way to go for me i know. i just want free of her.
My pleasure -- I heard a radio show talking about families coping with incurable, terminal diseases. In those situations, a member of the family is going to die, and there's nothing that can be done to change that outcome.
In those scenarios, its very common for people in the family to become experts in the disease -- to understand all the possible treatment paths, all the risks, all the prior outcomes, all the holistic treatment methods, etc. In effect they get a PhD in the disease.
Why do they do this when the outcome is inevitable?
Because humans have a terrible time with feeling a lack of control. An attempt to "become an expert" is an attempt to gain control over something that is uncontrollable.
That explains why LBS seek to do so much relationship reading, study affairs, read about mental illness, infidelity, etc. Its a desperate bid for control in an environment where control is not available to us.
Acc
Married 18, Together 20, Now Divorced M: 48, W: 50, D: 18, S: 16, D: 12 Bomb Dropped (EA, D): 7/13/11 Start Reconcile: 8/15/11 Bomb Dropped (EA, D): 5/1/2014 (Divorced) In a New Relationship: 3/2015
My pleasure -- I heard a radio show talking about families coping with incurable, terminal diseases. In those situations, a member of the family is going to die, and there's nothing that can be done to change that outcome.
In those scenarios, its very common for people in the family to become experts in the disease -- to understand all the possible treatment paths, all the risks, all the prior outcomes, all the holistic treatment methods, etc. In effect they get a PhD in the disease.
Why do they do this when the outcome is inevitable?
Because humans have a terrible time with feeling a lack of control. An attempt to "become an expert" is an attempt to gain control over something that is uncontrollable.
That explains why LBS seek to do so much relationship reading, study affairs, read about mental illness, infidelity, etc. Its a desperate bid for control in an environment where control is not available to us.
Acc
So true. In fact, I came to this board looking for information on how anti-depressants can cause people to become wayward. I thought if I could get her off the meds I could fix the sitch. CONTROL
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
AS has spoken with me about it in the past as both his ex and mine basically went ghost without a word to us on what happened.
And 6-1/2 years later I still know no more than I did the day after BD. The difference is I no longer feel the need to know.
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if i get the why and it's EA/PA/OM then that is the end for me. if i reach "the end" then all hope leaves, if all hope leaves, then i am free as she was a bad person.
But is it really so cut and dried? You won't think that you played some part in it? I mean you did, women don't leave perfect marriages with fantastic husbands. Most of the time when they leave, it's their "last resort". They do it out of desperation. Something is terribly wrong and they want out so bad that they're willing to give up everything- to sacrifice their home, their family and their future to try and grasp something better. When I read Sandi's posts about what she went through as a WAS, sure she was wayward and selfish but at the same time she was in a terrible place and was scared and desperate. Reading what she went through really tugs at your heart strings and helps put things in perspective as to what our own wives must have been going through (or are going through). If an A is a deal-killer for you then so be it. But 6-1/2 years post-BD I still don't know if my ex had an A or not, so you may never know either.
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i'm a Christian...i am to forgive those who "trespass against us" and yet for the person i vowed to love the most, i can't.
Forgiveness isn't for her, it's for YOU. You'll never drop the rope if you never forgive. My brother has never forgiven his ex and 8+ years post-D he's still bitter, angry and blames her for every bad thing in his life. You can make that choice too, but it's no way to live!
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many times i feel this whole ordeal is actually more about me and God and my W is just the pawn piece he uses to challenge me. he is forging/testing me somehow i don't understand and yes, perhaps i'm fighting him. i read where this whole thing tests us emotionally, physically and spiritually...for sure that is true.
Yeah I hear you, I went on that journey too. See where it takes you. Be open-minded. Is he really testing us? Or do these things just happen not because there's a God or devil pulling the strings, but just because that is the random draw of life? I'm not saying there is no God, but personally I believe he is utterly beyond our understanding, and all of our talk of him testing us and such and deciding whether we go to heaven or hell or whatever is just our meager attempt to understand and define something that cannot be understood. We're trying to take some incredible power and humanize it. But regardless of where that journey takes you, you've got to come to peace with it all and move forward with acceptance in your heart.
Thanks for keeping me in your prayers, I really do appreciate that.
Kind of in the line of thinking about what the other people are saying. Don't put any mental effort into when or if your W has an EA/PA with OM. Its just a mental mind trap you will get into, and you will be just thinking in circles. An "alpha" or "man's man" or AMOAFWL isn't going to get into that type of circular thinking. Be that man.
If W comes back to you down the road and is fully repentant for her actions and wants to recon with you (whether there is an A or not) then cross that bridge when you get there.
BTW I read all your posts and while we have different sitch I do find myself in a similar mindset that you have wrt to modern women and modern relationships. My world and some of my core has been rocked. I am at the point now that once D is official and if down the road W wanted to remarry me I would consider it only with her. Otherwise, I just can't see myself getting M again. LTR yes, but M no. Maybe that will change, but for now I don't see it that way.
H(37) W(35) D8, D5, S3 T20, M13 BD 8/31/18 EA Discovered 9/13/18 Mediation 10/3/18 W files for D 10/12/18 W moves out 11/10/18 EA confirmed 12/25/18 D Final 1/10/19
