We have entered A season, and we are also approaching the due date for what would have been our fourth child. BW is understandably becoming depressed, angry, frustrated... The whole gamut of emotions you would expect. She is also often withdrawing from me, communicating very little. Again, understandable. When she withdraws from me, she spends more time talking with her friends, mostly through text messages and facebook chats, so I don't even hear her voice.
I work long hours, especially this time of year, and when I get home from work, the kids are not awake for very long. So I don't see them very much. I don't hang out with friends because of work. Through our years together, BW and I have become each other's only close friends. With her needing her space, I feel very alone. I'm just looking for input or experiences other WSes may have had similar to this.
I am in no way angry at BW for how she feels or how she is handling things, I understand it is natural and necessary. She has no time or concern for my feelings at this point of R, and I respect that. I'm not asking what SHOULD I do, just curious what others who have been there, done that, DID do. Thanks for listening.
How are things going now, and has your frame of mind gotten any better/worse since posting this a few days ago?
I felt tired, like REALLY TIRED all day. I had an overall "gray" mood, as I described it to BW today. I had to work today, and while Sunday is double-time, I really prefer to avoid weekend work. Things didn't really go as planned, and even though there was no particular time pressure to get things done, I still had a "fuck this place" kind of attitude all day. When things with myself and TCD are not good, I feel wrong focusing on anything else. If she's hurting or angry, I struggle to keep my head wrapped around what I'm doing. When I got home, things seemed a bit better, but it's hard to shake that "blah" feeling, and the lethargy isn't just going to go away.
Another thing that's been bothering me, as I stated, is that isolated feeling. Back in May, I deactivated my facebook account. BW didn't ask for it, I just felt it was more trouble than it was worth, and it would be one less potential cause of pain or sadness for TCD. But as I said, I work a lot, so I don't regularly see friends. I have friends who were in our wedding party that live five minutes away and can go over a year without seeing them! Without facebook, I feel like they don't even exist sometimes. Now really, I don't miss it all that much. It's just its contribution to the isolated feeling that I'm talking about.
When we are at our daughter's hockey games/practices, I feeluneasy talking to other parents, specifically the women. I just don't feel comfortable talking to women anymore. I was always awkward, but no I'm just plain scared of what TCD would think. Regardless, I don't really feel like we fit in with the other parents altogether. We are always the youngest parents, since we started pretty young by today's standards. We live in a pretty blue collar town. Hockey is a pretty expensive sport, and I'm fortunate to have a good-paying blue collar job that supports these hobbies. But it also means I don't really relate to the other fathers very well. So TCD and I tend to keep to ourselves a lot.
Throw on top of the fact that I don't really have an outlet other than SI to share my feelings. I used to talk to friends about things, but that makes TCD uncomfortable so I stopped. She doesn't want to hear my feelings, really, so this is my outlet. And I really am just not even sure what is OK to feel anymore. I feel like anything that isn't directly in support of TCD and her healing is selfish and wrong. I just don't know. Thank you for your concern and dor bumping my post. Like I said, tonight has been better than earlier today and last night, I just haven't quite shaken off the morose feeling it brought up in me yet.
It sounds like you had a good few days, so that is definitely something to be thankful for. Last night may have been rough, but that is expected from time to time. The key is to learn from the experience, get up, wipe the dust off, and get back in the fight. Each and every time.
I can relate to some of the other things you addressed in your reply. Your schedule sounds a bit fuller than mine, but still, mine is pretty robust as well. I have a lifelong friend who lives about five miles down the road from me, and we rarely see each other. Part of that is because he is busy, too.
I am at the opposite end of the spectrum than you when it comes to interacting with parents at my kiddo's school. It seems like most of the parents at his school started having kids in their early 20's, whereas we were in our early 30's. Don't let the age gap keep you from talking to other dads when the opportunity arises. I love talking to the other dads at my kid's school. Yeah it's a bit awkward at first because of the age gap sometimes, but once the ice is broken it's all cool. It really is.
I've had brief conversations with some of the moms, but it's usually something like, "Are they out of school on both Monday and Tuesday of next week?", and that's about as far as it goes. When I talk to the other dads, they are doing a lot of the same things that I am doing... working, bbq'ing on the weekends, doing activities with the kids, and we talk about it whenever we see each other. I really enjoy that camaraderie, even though it is for extremely brief and fleeting moments throughout the week.
Another thing I can relate to is expressing most of my innermost feelings out here on SI. Very, very few people IRL know about the situation between my wife and I. They think our life is pretty much perfect. On the rare occasions when I do get together with a friend, none of this infidelity stuff is discussed. Please keep in mind that no matter what, your feelings are your feelings. That's not an entitlement, it's just a fact.
Seeing as how you are both members out here, you definitely need to agree upon how much you share out here as well. From what I can gather, it sounds like what you are sharing right now fits within the realm of what is acceptable... as far as I can tell, anyway. I can't speak for your wife.
Anyway, it's good to see you out here having some dialog and interaction with the people of SI. Hopefully some of the things I've been able to relate to with you makes you feel a bit less isolated and lonely. Take care, and keep up the good fight.
