Allow me to introduce myself. I'm a 41 year old male. I have, as of yesterday, initiated divorce proceedings. Although this was not my first longterm relationship, it was my first marriage. I am going through all the things one would expect: heartbreak, depression, anxiety, despair, loneliness, disbelief. But I want to tell my tale. Somehow that seems to help a little. Read along, if you dare...
In 2004 I met the future Mrs. Sacrimosa. She was a mere 23 to my 33, but very mature for her age. She didn't live with her parents, she had a full-time job, she was a college graduate, she had savings in the bank, etc. Didn't drink or do drugs. Didn't do the bar scene. Car was paid off. She spent most of her free time reading sci-fi books. She had never had a boyfriend, because she had been fat in high school. She lost the weight after high school, but being a bit of a homebody, chances for meeting new guys were slim. Enter me. We clicked, one thing lead to another and a year and a half later we were married.
There's a whole middle section I'll spare you; suffice to say things were usually good. The relationship progressed like they do - the "honeymoon" phase ended and we settled into a more routine life. She struggled with this more than I did, but it is what happened. We ended up in marriage counseling primarily over this. The counselor shot down a lot of theories from my wife and her best friend (who lives several states away and has spent all of ten minutes talking to me in my life), and basically told my wife that our relationship was pretty typical, we didn't have huge problems, and that this is just another phase of what happens in the long haul.
Fast forward a few years.
My wife started acting a bit...odd. Now, I've never been the jealous/suspicious type. But I have watched enough episodes of Cheaters (I'm not proud of that btw) to know what the signs of an affair are. But surely, I thought, I'm just misinterpreting this. I mean, this girl who has never shown any signs of doing anything immoral/unethical like that. This girl who has always talked bad about other people who would cheat. Surely this girl was not up to that. Surely not my wife. Yet the signs were unmistakable.
I'm fairly tech savvy, so I installed some spyware on her computer. On October 1st 2012, which just so happened to be her birthday, I culled the results. I thought I'd find something upsetting, but I thought it would fall short of anything too bad. Instead, what I found was a full-blown online emotional affair, complete with sex messages, her sneaking around behind my back to call him on the phone, etc. Everything that they could do without physically being in the same room, that's pretty much what they did.
To boot, I found that this "best friend" of my wife's had introduced the two and encouraged their relationship, going so far as to give my wife tips for how to talk to him on the phone to make herself sound more interesting, etc. Ugh.
I asked for a divorce immediately. She didn't deny any of it. She said she'd been unhappy and things just got out of control with this guy. Two days later she came to me in tears, saying she's sorry, she screwed up everything and she wants to make it work. Against my better judgment, I decided to give us another chance. We started marriage counseling with a new counselor.
He was not great, but I won't get into that here.
The past year has been like 12 straight months of crisis mode. We worked a lot to try to make things better. Many many tearful conversations. Many hours of therapy. Three different therapists. Lots and lots of work thrown at our issues.
At one point she told me, "If I had a list of everything I wanted you to do, you're doing all of it. Every box is checked. But I'm stil not happy."
Sex became infrequent, eventually stopping altogether. No kissing. Very rarely even holding hands or hugging.
Then she took up drinking. Met some new friends, most of them young, single, or having relationship problems of their own. She started staying out late 4 or 5 nights a week, out past 1 a.m. I did everything but beg her to spend more time with me so we could work this out. She refused, saying the mood in the house was too "down." I explained that it's down because I'm lonely and upset that she's gone so often. Vicious circle.
She decided to move out, to get some space and perspective. A "six month trial separation" is what she asked for. OK, fine. I mean, I definitely protested. But whatever. I can't chain her up in the basement. Six months. We don't see other people, we just live apart and gain some space. Take a month off, then we'll meet once a week for a last-ditch effort to try to get back on the same page.
A month into it, I find out she's back in touch with her affair partner. She did not even have the decency to break it off with me before bringing him back into her life. After all the therapy, the conversations, everything else in the past year, she has no excuse for not knowing what this would do to me and still did not have the maturity or just plain old human compassion to end things with me before starting them again with him. So it's over.
I feel horribly broken. I'm appalled and disgusted. I'm in shock that this woman - this woman who was so mature and kind and loving and considerate and selfless at 23 - is now 32 and is way less mature and completely careless and callous toward me. I didn't do anything to deserve this. Who IS this woman?!?
So that's the short-ish version of my story. I know I could've done some things differently. If I hadn't gained weight, she would've preferred that. If I'd paid more attention to her at times, she would've preferred that. I wasn't perfect. But I don't know where in the world she finds it OK to turn so harshly. She still doesn't think she's done anything wrong by contacting him again, and has no shame over the whole thing. I don't get that. I never thought her capable of this sort of thing, but I guess one never knows.
Anyway, that's my story. If you've read this far, thank you.
TLDR; My wife's a cheating whore and matured backwards, like Benjamin Button. Divorcing her now.
[This message edited by Sacrimosa at 10:41 AM, October 18th (Friday)]
