Antidepressant Crisis?

[Rick1963]

Hi buck1....Stop chasing her. Stop trying to make her love you again. Start loving yourself and your life. Let her be.. Stop trying to make sense because it will not...

[Kind18]

We had an interesting conversation today so I'm posting for feedback.

But first:

You are likely on the emotional roller coaster that has its highs and lows.

So true!

Yesterday I was feeling that maybe there was hope, since she seemed to almost enjoy be being around me and I felt a slight glimmer of appreciation or admiration as I followed through on a promise I made a while back to install an accessory on her car.

But today I'm back to "there's no hope".

She knows I watched our pastor's sermon online last night in my "man cave", which (unknown to me in advance) happened to be about divorce and saving a marriage with commitment and prayer, regardless of "feelings".

So today she asked that even if we could save our marriage, would I be OK with living the rest of my life with a wife that was completely unattracted to me physically?

So I said "no, I couldn't live with that".

She told me, "I know I'm all messed up, this is all because of me, there's nothing wrong with you, you're just the way you are".

But she said she lost attraction for me long ago and gave me a long list of "icks" as examples, starting from 35 years ago:
>I allowed myself to slouch too much when sitting or standing which she found extremely unattractive, and I kept "forgetting" to change that.
>I didn't keep my breath fresh in spite of her frequent reminders (they became rare so I assumed things were OK; now I know. I brush my teeth 2X/day but her nose is hypersensitive).
>I'm too bound to routine by default, with insufficient spontaneity (of course some of this "routine" has been beneficial to her and our family)

Here's the shocker for me though:
I've been severely lacking in passion and excitement in the bedroom department for years.

My nature is toward being "aggressive" sexually in that I would've loved for us to "do it" different times of the day, and have tried to gently get something started out of our norm, or try different positions or toys in bed or whatever. However she has always shut down my every attempt to be "adventurous" the point of her maybe allowing an “adventure” once a week as a "favor" if I'm lucky.

I love to "make love" and actually engage in foreplay with her but she hasn't allowed either of those for as long as I can remember. She just wants me to jump right in so we can both be "serviced" and be done with it.

Yet she cites my "lack of sexual adventure" as the main reason she's done with me. When I mentioned I've been trying to jump-start our sex life for years, she said she resisted my attempts BECAUSE she's not attracted to me. So it feels like a "Catch-22".

In spite of the attraction-killing issues mentioned above of posture and fresh breath, over the years she always said I was handsome, sometimes she said I looked "F-able", and I'm pretty fit for my age. I lift weights and run regularly, but have never been able to grow much muscle. But did have a six-pack before Covid a few years ago. I'm trying to get that back now.

That's enough rambling! I just received my book but haven't started reading. Any comments are appreciated!

What a load of BS. This is what she is saying:

“Here’s a list of minor things that I am using to avoid personal guilt.”

This is a super common play book. Woman decides to leave, husband wants to save marriage and is open to self improvement/counselling/fixing problems, woman then dredges up a ridiculous list of things that quite often they never brought up - and then says it’s too late.

The rub here is that fixing those things won’t save your marriage. If brushing, flossing and gargling every day with the Karma Sutra on the night stand was all it was going to take, she’d be on board with trying to fix it.

She has checked out.

Fix those things you’ve listed above and there will be one of two outcomes:
- she will add lots more things to the list
- she will say that because you didn’t fix them earlier it destroyed her love for you and it’s now too late.

The only way to potentially win this woman back is to fix those things, but silently. If you try to show her you’ve changed them, she’ll default to the ever popular “you’ve just changed them to win me back short term”.

Best thing you can do - fix all those things in silence and without her knowing, and get off your butt and become an exciting, fun, sexy man without showing any interest in her whatsoever.

Your conversations should go like this:

HER - YOU
“You look nice!” - “Jane from the gym came shopping with me.”
“Is that new aftershave?” - “Everyone at work noticed it too.”
“Where are you going?” - “Out!”
“Have you had your teeth whitened?” - “Nope, my teeth are gross remember.”
“You’re standing up straighter.” - “Perhaps the burden of marriage is a weight off my shoulders now 😉”

Don’t do these things to manipulate her or make her jealous. But be mysterious and cheeky and elusive.

[Thornton]

Kind18 nailed it.

This is the recipe. You have to get to the point where she starts to questions herself and begin to think she is going to lose you, perhaps to a better woman.

You do this all silently, without peacocking and looking back to see if she's noticing. In essence, you start to truly move on with your life. If there's a chance this thing will turn around, this is usually when it will happen.

[buck1]

Just taking a moment to say "thanks" to all of you who have responded on my thread. I read every post thoroughly and take what you're saying to heart. I really appreciate you taking the time to offer your perspective here.

[buck1]

Hi again; I see my post is very long. I find it therapeutic to write out my thoughts so I'm posting to hopefully keep from going insane with stress here :-)

To recap, my original post about my wife quitting antidepressants before BD. I had mentioned I felt that her going on antidepressants years ago saved our marriage because these explosive tantrums stopped after that. Lately she quit antidepressants again because she was tired of being medicated and the side-effects, which might be a contributor to the return of her outbursts.

I firmly believe my wife has unresolved attachment issues. The emotional trauma and abuse she received as a child cause her to occasionally have a crisis if she feels her kids aren't showing her proper respect and attention. If they don't step up enough for Mother's Day (even as adults), my wife blames me. During a FaceTime call, one time my wife's camera wasn't being shown for some reason so the kids didn't think she was still connected, and didn't engage her in the conversation. So she was mad at her whole family for the disrespect. She doesn't really care about keeping my adoration because I've always given it; she told me after BD that "she knew I'd do anything to get her back".

In a nutshell, our relationship was basically peaceful until about 10 days ago, then things went to hell after our three adult children came to town.

Since my last post, we decided to continue on our plan to file for legal separation. The plan was to continue to live and sleep together, to formalize our intent to "take a break" from our normal marriage relationship, and give ourselves the freedom to date other people if we want.

My wife has an extremely close relationship with her sister and told her first about our separation. She was very upset and cried because our marriage had always been a source of inspiration and strength to her. Her sister has always been a good friend to me and has sometimes let my wife know when she thought I was being treated unfairly in some area.

We told our two sons (without our daughter) about our separation and they weren't thrilled of course but took it with grace and maturity (as we expected) and said they actually weren't surprised. They said they had a feeling something was up between us.

A couple days later we told our daughter (late 20's) by herself, and she took it harder than we expected. But she still seemed to be accepting it OK. However my wife made a public announcement about our separation a couple hours later, which was the catalyst for a huge conflict between my wife, our daughter, and myself.

I agreed with (and supported) my wife making the public separation announcement. Our attitude was that it was best to "rip the band-aid off" and get it out there to beat the rumors flowing from the few people that already knew.

However my daughter said she didn't have time to mentally prepare for the onslaught of messages she was receiving from her friends asking about her parents.

My wife says she would have waited to post and even would've taken it down if she knew how much it was bothering our daughter. I believe her on that, but our daughter doesn't believe it. Clearly there was a communication breakdown.

Here's where things really fell apart:
We took our daughter out for a going-away lunch before she flew home. I was hoping it would be a nice, pleasant, loving lunch even if the three of us didn't agree on everything.

During lunch, my wife insisted on bringing up to our daughter how her reaction to my wife's announcement bothered her. This terrified me, knowing my wife. My daughter is a lot like her mom in that she's very opinionated and doesn't like to back down; she insists on being heard to her satisfaction.

My daughter expressed her feelings to my wife and I was thinking, "I wish we weren't talking about this now but we need to calmly listen to everyone's viewpoint as adults to hopefully mend relationships", etc.

I didn't actually hear anything disrespectful in my daughter's dialog but my wife disagreed. My wife started becoming angrier and angrier (she has a huge voice), started leaning across the table and shaking her finger at my daughter in a physically aggressive manner. I was afraid she was going to make a public scene and possibly throw something. So I physically leaned across the table between them and said we needed to de-escalate and have this discussion later.

It was at this moment when I decided I was no longer interested in saving my marriage, no matter what.

My wife wouldn't back down and continued. I leaned across the table a second time and insisted we table the discussion for later. But my wife wanted to continue the heated discussion about how our daughter was trying to focus on her own needs instead of her mom's.

Our daughter said, "You've already lost dad, you're about to lose the rest of us kids too if you continue on like this!". My wife took this as the lowest-possible blow when she was feeling down -- as a threat that our daughter was going to try to turn her brothers against their mom and split our family.

I didn't feel that's what our daughter meant. I was thinking our daughter should've left off the part about "You've already lost dad" but in my head I silently agreed with my daughter about driving our other kids away with this kind of anger and insecurity. So I didn't say anything to "defend" my wife against this statement. Our daughter then stormed out of the restaurant.

So now I was alone with my wife, and she was telling me again how nobody lets her be herself. I've never understood this statement because she's always being herself in every area. But I told her I thought that sometimes "being herself" included being emotionally abusive like what just happened with our daughter.

As I expected, my wife was furious with me about not sternly calling out our daughter after the "You've already lost dad" statement, and calling me spineless, wanting an immediate divorce, insisting I was a coward because I'm not standing up to our daughter and "teaching her proper respect", etc. However I felt that telling my wife that she was abusive was an act of courage on my part because I knew I'd catch hell (which I did).

Things eventually calmed down between my wife and I over the next few days and she apologized for all the insults and character assassinations she gave me after the restaurant disaster. However I had to endure continuous complaints about how evil our daughter is for about two days, and how I'm being her "friend" instead of her father.

I don't think our daughter is totally right in her responses to her mom but I'm trying not to destroy my relationship with her in an attempt to appease my estranged wife. I feel my marriage is already over so I need to at least maintain a good relationship with our kids.

I hate being in the middle of those two. They've had a rocky relationship at times but in general have been extremely close, which I thought was awesome.

Right now my daughter and my wife aren't speaking. I spoke to my daughter the day after the restaurant incident and I tried to be somewhat vague about our conversation but at least passing on what's important. My wife kept pressing me for details and criticizing me for what she thought I did or did not say to "teach" our daughter, etc. I gave her some info but still had to endure my wife complaining to me for hours about my lack of fatherly leadership.

My daughter called me a couple days ago to see how I was doing. I will never disparage my wife to our kids (I actually expressed my love for her mom) but the two of us did discuss how my wife's anger and emotional abuse has affected both of us. My daughter said she's still traumatized by how her mom would set the mood at home and sometimes get angry and throw things to make holes in the walls. I don't believe she ever physically abused our kids though. She saved the hitting for me (as I mentioned before but never hard enough to actually injure me). My daughter mentioned she felt her mom has disrespected me since she became "aware" at about age 15.

I didn't tell my wife that my daughter called me because I didn't want to deal with more drama and answer questions. Plus I justified to myself, "can't I just have a private conversation with our daughter without reporting it?" But my wife asked me the day after if I'd heard from her so I honestly said "yes". This made my wife furious with me for not telling her right after it happened. I eventually apologized to her for not telling her immediately because I know my wife cares about our daughter and she would've wanted to know she was doing OK. It might've helped ease my wife's emotional trauma to know our daughter was "emotionally safe".

My wife has an appointment with a counselor next week, which I'm wholeheartedly supportive of and excited about (she's supposed to be excellent). My wife suggested that I could start coming to counseling too, which I agreed to (in fact couples' counseling is the first thing I suggested on BD last month when I found out our marriage was going down in flames). I don't have any hopes of saving our marriage but maybe we can learn to be separated in a civil, peaceful manner.

Another bombshell is that after the restaurant disaster, my wife voluntarily admitted to a recent second affair (but wouldn't give any details about who it was, etc.). She broke down in tears with self-hate and self-deprecating language and said she was terrified to tell me. I actually took it pretty stoically because it wasn't as big of a shock as the first affair many years go. So I hugged her and gave her all the forgiveness I could because I appreciated her telling me and I didn't want to see her beat herself up. I was hopefully giving her the peace she was seeking from her guilt. As I mentioned, my marriage is already over in my mind and we were already planning on dating others at this point.

After telling me about that second affair, she also told me she broke it off. However I do all the financial stuff for our family and frequently use her email account to make sure her medical bills are paid - which is what I was doing this morning. I saw some personal emails arrive from a man's name I didn't recognize. The preview line showed he was offering sympathy about her family troubles. I didn't want to read them but now I'm pretty sure this is the affair guy, and she's leaning on him for emotional support. I can guess it's about my perceived unwillingness to "have her back" against our daughter.

After my wife admitted the affair to me, she also mentioned she couldn't guarantee there wouldn't be another affair if we were to stay together. She said it's just the way she's wired; she has a weakness to suffer from temptation and engage in flirtation. She's always loved attention, especially from other men, and gets it easily. Attention from me hasn't meant that much to her.

I'm honestly much more concerned about her mental health than our relationship because I've already decided not to continue "us". We were married for over 35 years and had so many great times and adventures, and she's the mother of my children. So I still love her and want her at peace, even without me.

But I want peace for myself too. My stress is off-the-charts. If I could just move out, I would do it, but it would cost at least $1K/month for my own apartment. We recently obtained an expensive car loan so that doesn't help. I'm going to try to work with her so we can at least live together in a civil manner for now. Given past experiences, there's a good chance she will calm down enough in a few days so we can have a "détente".

[DnJ]

Good Morning buck

I’m glad you posted. Get those thoughts and feelings out, let them go. The situation, W’s behaviour, is crazy making. You’ll go bonkers keeping all that bottled up.

Since my last post, we decided to continue on our plan to file for legal separation. The plan was to continue to live and sleep together, to formalize our intent to "take a break" from our normal marriage relationship, and give ourselves the freedom to date other people if we want.

Is this something you actually are in agreement with? Or did you get talked into it? Or are you just being nice? You cannot nice her back. Although, that has been the norm over the years, which has reinforced and furthered the dysfunction of your relationship.

Her allowing you to date other people is purely for her selfish intent. Also she is trying to assuage her own guilt. Then, later, a confession for her recent ongoing affair.

The telling the adult kids of the pending divorce likely went as smoothly as it could. I do agree with your daughter’s assessment that W/Mom could have, should have, waited more than two hours after informing daughter before posting on social media. And who does that anyway? Posting like it’s a sunset or birthday party photo. W seemed rather eager to make this “joint” decisions public. Oh, right, she’s embroiled in current ongoing cheating (still hidden at this point).

The quicker W gets this divorce news out, and especially if you two “publicly” agree things just aren’t working, the better it serves her. She won’t be the bad guy. After all you all agreed to date other people.

You didn’t have an open marriage. Don’t start now. Martial strife never gets better bringing a third, or more, person(s) into the mix.

The restaurant lunch with daughter certainly did bring some of the tension between W and daughter out into the open.

My daughter expressed her feelings to my wife and I was thinking, "I wish we weren't talking about this now but we need to calmly listen to everyone's viewpoint as adults to hopefully mend relationships", etc.

Was that the purpose of this lunch? Not likely. To sit down and rationally listen and hear everyone’s viewpoint doesn’t just happen. It takes a purposeful effort and direction and instruction to lay down the ground rules and requirements to keep the discussion respectful, constructive, and civil.

By the way, it’s not your job to mend or maintain any relationships except those you are part of! Do not step into, nor continue, the role of facilitator here. Daughter and sons, are all well into their adulthood. They can all decide how and when and why and where they interact with Mom.

My wife wouldn't back down and continued. I leaned across the table a second time and insisted we table the discussion for later.

You insisted and W ignored you.

You can only control you. Your thoughts, actions, and reactions.

But my wife wanted to continue the heated discussion about how our daughter was trying to focus on her own needs instead of her mom's.

Yep, W needs to make this about her. Make herself the victim. Daughter wisely is having no part of it. Unfortunately, Mom’s attacking demeanour frustrated daughter to the point she stormed out of the restaurant. However, like you said, daughter and mother are quite alike, and neither is going to back down.

Our daughter said, "You've already lost dad, you're about to lose the rest of us kids too if you continue on like this!". My wife took this as the lowest-possible blow when she was feeling down -- as a threat that our daughter was going to try to turn her brothers against their mom and split our family.

I think your daughter is correct and stated quite a truth dart. Of course, W is trying to deflect any kind of blame in this loss or potential thereof. Even to the point of now blaming daughter for breaking up the family?!? W needs to look into a mirror and see her actions.

I didn't feel that's what our daughter meant. I was thinking our daughter should've left off the part about "You've already lost dad" but in my head I silently agreed with my daughter about driving our other kids away with this kind of anger and insecurity. So I didn't say anything to "defend" my wife against this statement. Our daughter then stormed out of the restaurant.

I think that is exactly what your daughter meant. Stop sugar coating and trying to facilitate “their” relationship(s). Your only job is just to not destroy those relationships.

By the way, W fired, or is firing you, as husband. You no longer are her emotional support person, nor need to defend her “honour”. W wants out. Let her feel the weight of her decision.

As I expected, my wife was furious with me about not sternly calling out our daughter after the "You've already lost dad" statement, and calling me spineless, wanting an immediate divorce, insisting I was a coward because I'm not standing up to our daughter and "teaching her proper respect", etc. However I felt that telling my wife that she was abusive was an act of courage on my part because I knew I'd catch hell (which I did).

Things eventually calmed down between my wife and I over the next few days and she apologized for all the insults and character assassinations she gave me after the restaurant disaster. However I had to endure continuous complaints about how evil our daughter is for about two days, and how I'm being her "friend" instead of her father.

As expected, W was disrespectful and blasted you. Do a 180!

[W] doesn't really care about keeping my adoration because I've always given it; she told me after BD that "she knew I'd do anything to get her back".

Flip that script. Let W feel the loss of you. Let her feel and see that her predicted behaviour from you is incorrect. Instead of doing anything to get her back, do not do anything to get her back. Focus on you and the kids! Live your life!

Let W feel her choices and then perhaps she starts to realize she is still unhappy even though buck hasn’t been involved in the her life for a while. So she thinks maybe it’s not buck’s fault after all. And maybe she starts to look inward.

I’d also craft and enforce some boundaries on disrespectful behaviour. You can only control you. And people (W) will treat you as you let them.

Also:

to formalize our intent to "take a break" from our normal marriage relationship

Code speak for trying on divorce for size. Let her. Of course she’s going to anyhow, so this is more about you and your mindset. Just like all the advice and suggestions here.

Let her feel and experience her wishes for divorce. As in:

Things eventually calmed down between my wife and I over the next few days and she apologized for all the insults and character assassinations she gave me after the restaurant disaster. However I had to endure continuous complaints about how evil our daughter is for about two days, and how I'm being her "friend" instead of her father.

Nope. Let go of W.

A couple of days and W calms down and needs to play nice again. Go dim.

She insisted you’re spineless and wanted an immediate divorce. Give her plenty of time and space to consider her actions and choices. Have no relationship talks. Keep things short and simple, kind and cordial, like a cashier at the grocery store. Demonstrate how wrong she is about your strength of spine and character.

I don't think our daughter is totally right in her responses to her mom but I'm trying not to destroy my relationship with her in an attempt to appease my estranged wife. I feel my marriage is already over so I need to at least maintain a good relationship with our kids.

I hate being in the middle of those two. They've had a rocky relationship at times but in general have been extremely close, which I thought was awesome.

You hate being in the middle of W and daughter, so extract yourself.

Do not hurt your relationship / interactions with your kids to attempt any appeasement of W. Things would go so very disastrously. Let them figure out their relationship.

I didn't tell my wife that my daughter called me because I didn't want to deal with more drama and answer questions. Plus I justified to myself, "can't I just have a private conversation with our daughter without reporting it?" But my wife asked me the day after if I'd heard from her so I honestly said "yes". This made my wife furious with me for not telling her right after it happened. I eventually apologized to her for not telling her immediately because I know my wife cares about our daughter and she would've wanted to know she was doing OK. It might've helped ease my wife's emotional trauma to know our daughter was "emotionally safe".

Yes, you do not need to report back to W on every conversation. And of course, like you thought, there was drama and more attacks. Pretty normal pattern of behaviour from W. You are daughter just shared/discussed that fact.

My daughter said she's still traumatized by how her mom would set the mood at home and sometimes get angry and throw things to make holes in the walls.

Not sure what you mean by “emotionally safe”. Daughter told you how traumatic Mom’s behaviour was and is. Placating W, especially in non-congruence of events, is not helpful.

Another bombshell is that after the restaurant disaster, my wife voluntarily admitted to a recent second affair (but wouldn't give any details about who it was, etc.). She broke down in tears with self-hate and self-deprecating language and said she was terrified to tell me. I actually took it pretty stoically because it wasn't as big of a shock as the first affair many years go. So I hugged her and gave her all the forgiveness I could because I appreciated her telling me and I didn't want to see her beat herself up. I was hopefully giving her the peace she was seeking from her guilt. As I mentioned, my marriage is already over in my mind and we were already planning on dating others at this point.

Whether your marriage is over or not, depriving W of her guilt is not a kindness or compassionate. True peace comes from within. W has to feel her guilt, shame, regret, and remorse; and then decide and enact true behavioural deep changes to her core self. You cannot bestow absolution upon her. You can forgive her behaviours, which really only frees you. W has to forgive herself and that is a journey for her.

After telling me about that second affair, she also told me she broke it off. However I do all the financial stuff for our family and frequently use her email account to make sure her medical bills are paid - which is what I was doing this morning. I saw some personal emails arrive from a man's name I didn't recognize. The preview line showed he was offering sympathy about her family troubles. I didn't want to read them but now I'm pretty sure this is the affair guy, and she's leaning on him for emotional support. I can guess it's about my perceived unwillingness to "have her back" against our daughter.

So W lied. Or charitably, did break it off and then started up again. At any rate, she’s not coming clean with this contact though, is she.

After my wife admitted the affair to me, she also mentioned she couldn't guarantee there wouldn't be another affair if we were to stay together. She said it's just the way she's wired; she has a weakness to suffer from temptation and engage in flirtation.

Boy the red flags just keep coming, don’t they. W is a pretty trouble soul, IMHO.

Hopefully, her upcoming IC appointment goes well and she’ll continue with them. In time, and only if she is truly willingly and wanting, she could alter her course.

I'm honestly much more concerned about her mental health than our relationship because I've already decided not to continue "us". We were married for over 35 years and had so many great times and adventures, and she's the mother of my children. So I still love her and want her at peace, even without me.

Having an XW rather on the extreme end of the mental turmoil - yes, it would be nice if she could/can find peace. That peace doesn’t come from divorce, affairs, or other behaviours/actions. It comes from how you live. Life provides plenty of feedback, and for those that are willing to, and do, listen and live accordingly peace is quite obtainable. For others, it’s a fight to find. And fighting begets fighting. Peace and fighting, like oil and water.

But I want peace for myself too. My stress is off-the-charts. If I could just move out, I would do it, but it would cost at least $1K/month for my own apartment. We recently obtained an expensive car loan so that doesn't help. I'm going to try to work with her so we can at least live together in a civil manner for now. Given past experiences, there's a good chance she will calm down enough in a few days so we can have a "détente".

I want peace for you too. Life is providing feedback.

Be patient, answers will present themselves when you are calm.

Focus on you and the kids. DB. GAL. No more R-talks. And maybe not throw in the towel just yet.

You do have the gift of time. Use it wisely. Become the best version of you.

D

[Mach1]

B1...

Not much time here this morning....

Just something to think about until I can get back....

But I want peace for myself too. My stress is off-the-charts. If I could just move out, I would do it, but it would cost at least $1K/month for my own apartment. We recently obtained an expensive car loan so that doesn't help. I'm going to try to work with her so we can at least live together in a civil manner for now. Given past experiences, there's a good chance she will calm down enough in a few days so we can have a "détente".

What does "peace" look like for you ?

Remove "her"...

Remove "if"...

Remove "marriage"...



What does peace really look like to you ???

[buck1]

Good Morning buck

I’m glad you posted. Get those thoughts and feelings out, let them go. The situation, W’s behaviour, is crazy making. You’ll go bonkers keeping all that bottled up.

Since my last post, we decided to continue on our plan to file for legal separation. The plan was to continue to live and sleep together, to formalize our intent to "take a break" from our normal marriage relationship, and give ourselves the freedom to date other people if we want.

Is this something you actually are in agreement with? Or did you get talked into it? Or are you just being nice? You cannot nice her back. Although, that has been the norm over the years, which has reinforced and furthered the dysfunction of your relationship.

Thank you DnJ for taking the time to read my huge post and taking the time to respond to all those points. I read your every word carefully and it's already helping me immensely.

Actually I was in agreement with this plan to separate while living together on friendly terms. At the time I was slowly coming to the decision that I didn't want to repair our marriage, but now I'm sure I want to let her go. Yes, we've had many good times, raised three awesome kids together, and we used to proclaim our undying love for each other. But just thinking about all the disrespect she's showed me over the years makes me realize I don't want to live with that any longer. I'm looking forward to a life of freedom in my retirement, hopefully with lots more great outdoor adventures with my kids and with the new friends I plan on making.

I'd rather not feel compelled to move out of our apartment to physically separate to keep my sanity, because the view is beautiful and I love it here. I'm hoping my wife and I can at least live together on friendly terms as we had originally planned (we'll see how that goes when she returns Friday from her visit to her best [female] friend). If that doesn't work, I'm hoping she moves in with her "boyfriend" if they're actually still an item, but I think he might be married so that may not happen.

Thanks again!

[buck1]

Hi Mach1,

But I want peace for myself too. My stress is off-the-charts. If I could just move out, I would do it, but it would cost at least $1K/month for my own apartment. We recently obtained an expensive car loan so that doesn't help. I'm going to try to work with her so we can at least live together in a civil manner for now. Given past experiences, there's a good chance she will calm down enough in a few days so we can have a "détente".

What does "peace" look like for you ?

Remove "her"...

Remove "if"...

Remove "marriage"...



What does peace really look like to you ???

Peace in the short-term would be to co-exist in a calm and friendly manner at home together for now, since our finances and living arrangements are tied together. I'm hoping that after my wife returns from her trip to visit her best girlfriend and starts seeing a reportedly-awesome therapist, she might be able to dial down her mental "demons" and stop trying to engage me in discussions that I don't want to engage in.

Until our daughter's visit recently, we were actually doing extremely well together as a separated but friendly and even loving couple on some levels. She even posted a picture in social media of us holding hands, to show we didn't have animosity toward each other.

The conflict between my wife, daughter, and myself was a huge catalyst in destroying whatever progress we've made. I'm not saying it was my daughter's fault at all; I think the problem is more about the "baggage" between my daughter and her mom that I became involved with.

My wife and I talked on the phone today as she's away, and it was actually pretty calm. She said "I love you" before she hung up. She certainly seems to have conflicting feelings toward me.

My eventual goal is to physically move somewhere else and fully live my own life independently, but as I mentioned that's financially difficult right now. We have a lease on our apartment for another 11 months. If I could afford it I'd move out right now. It would be helpful if she decides to be with her "boyfriend" and moves in with him, but I think she said he's married so that probably won't happen.

I'm working on an extra income stream to help me retire, but the past couple of months have been so distracting I haven't done much lately. Time to get back to it with a vengeance!

We're both in our early 60's so I wonder if she could start withdrawing Social Security herself even though I'm still working (and making too much) to possibly afford either one of us moving out. I will look into that.

[Mach1]

Just a quick question...

I see that you linked up SM34's thread at the start of this one...

Did you read all of his threads ?

Or just that one ?