I'm only just now starting to put it all together.
About four months ago, my WW blindsided me by telling me that she was having doubts about our marriage and thought that we should go into counseling. From the very beginning, her language was laden with contradictions. She said that she wasn't sure if she could stay married to me, which implied that she was still at least partially open to being convinced otherwise, but yet she used shockingly strong language, saying from the very beginning that she no longer loved me, and that even if I changed in every way to become a perfect partner, she still wasn't sure she would want to be with me.
It wasn't until I discovered the affair that I learned that she had decided months ago to end the marriage, and was already making plans to ditch me and come out with the OM. All the talk about being on the fence was just smoke and mirrors. It was meant to ease me into the reality that she had already decided to impose on us, and to give the impression that she was doing things the "right way." She told me that she wanted a separation, implying that she just needed space, and even pointing to a couple she knew who had gotten back together after a separation. It wasn't permanent or irreversible, she said. She wanted to be separated by July 1st. I later learned that she had been planning on attending a friend's wedding on July 5th with the OM. The only thing that prevented that from happening was that it turned out that the scoundrel was seeing another woman at the same time, who, by a crazy coincidence, was going to be a bridesmaid in the same wedding (long story).
She was leading me on, trying to wean me off of my hope gradually. Meanwhile, she was engaging in some of the worst character assassination, defamation and degradation imaginable, whittling down my sense of self-worth to a nub, bringing me to my knees in the dirt, begging her for a second chance, declaring my love for her, feeding the same narcissistic sense of self-entitlement that had led her into an affair in the first place. And all the while, she had every intention of allowing me to live in this cage of illusions and lies in which she had imprisoned me while she sat back content in her smug sense of moral superiority, hiding behind a veil of deceit the horrible betrayal that she was carrying on without my knowledge.
But it gets worse. After I discovered the affair, she was ready to quit, but I managed to cajole her into giving us one month of marriage-saving efforts. I knew her heart wasn't totally in it, but even if we faked it for a month, there was a chance that we could discover some potential there, so I thought. She agreed to a month-long trial.
But something was terribly wrong, and I'm not just talking about the fact that this crazy last-ditch effort required us to sweep the affair under the rug temporarily. I tried to work out with her what our mutual expectations of each other should be for that month, what we were looking for the other person to do. And instead of talking about what I could do to meet her needs or show her love or anything like that, she demanded two things: That I get a job, and that I begin IC.
I had basically been a stay-at-home father for most of the previous year. When our marriage crisis began, out of the blue, my WW began talking to me like I was some kind of bum because of this. It was bizarre to hear her talk like this because previously, she would tell everyone how grateful she was for my support at home and how she never would have been able to do what she was doing (getting her doctorate) without me (Later, when I reminded her that she said this, she got resentful for me suggesting that she needed me. Oy!). Still, I assumed that this was something she had been dissatisfied with and hadn't communicated to me, so in the interests of meeting her requests, I began a new job search, and planned to enroll our daughter in preschool full-time in order to do it.
I found out later that the real reason she wanted me to get a job was because she was worried that if I was unemployed or underemployed, she would have to pay child support to me. As for IC, I'm pretty sure she wanted to make sure that she could count on me to be stable when she finally began divorce proceedings.
While I was desperately trying to save our marriage, putting on the line absolutely everything I had left, she was using that time to continue to maneuver me into a position more advantageous to her.
She was manipulating me at every turn. I'm seeing it all so much more clearly now, and it amazes and shocks me just how absolutely diabolical it all actually was. It's as if every time I look back and analyze the situation more, the more heinous it all becomes.
Being manipulated like this. Being used like this. Has anyone else experienced something similar? And what's more, she accused me of being manipulative of her, something that I can only see as some twisted form of projection. What does this say about her? Is this a feature of her personality, or just a product of the fact that for one reason or another, she stopped seeing me as a human being, and just a means to an end?
[This message edited by dbellanon at 9:52 AM, August 9th (Friday)]