I've been at it a little while. 9 months, to be precise. My wife and I are still relatively young. We had our first child in our teens. We've been together for nearly 10 years now. We've been through so much that the idea of her leaving kills every bit of me.
We have two beautiful children now. We moved from Michigan to Texas in July of 2012, in search of new careers and a better quality of life. But I was unable to find suitable work, and it ultimately forced us to move back and reclaim our previous occupations. However, when we left, things weren't the same.
After less than a week of being "home", she had been in contact with somebody she met at work in Texas. Somebody I'd never met before. Somebody she didn't tell me about. She would wait for me to go to work (I worked midnights, she was unemployed at the time), and then she would talk to him. I could only speculate upon the things they would say. But at some point, she decided it was him over me, and after a night out with friends, she told me she wanted to "experience other relationships", and that she "still loved me, but was no longer in love with me".
I was a wreck. I felt similarly at the time, bored, but didn't realize how this would affect me until it happened. I couldn't eat or sleep for nearly a week. I went to work and frightened my colleagues. Sullen. Suicidal. Vomiting in the parking lot. I hadn't been incredibly attentive over the last few years and I blamed myself. We had a brief discussion a couple days after the separation, in which I begged her not to go through with it. It was rather pathetic. And at some point I asked if there was someone else. Her response was "kind of". She paraphrased that she had been talking to some guy she met while we were in Texas, hours on end at night. The way we used to talk on the phone when we first met. I didn't want to hear the details at the time. I was so overcome with grief that I forgave her immediately, and continued to plea. After a few days, I couldn't wait any longer for something concrete, and I started staying with a friend. I swallowed my dignity and left her the option. A few more days had gone by, and after I had picked my daughter up from school and taken her home, she asked me to go grocery shopping with her. In the store, she said that she had made her decision and wanted to stay with me.
But get this. That very day she was still using this guy's birthday as her pass code to unlock her phone. I figured that out two weeks later, after she used it again to set up a PIN for an account for a job she'd just landed. I connected the dots between Facebook and our phone bill. She wouldn't tell me who he was for those first couple weeks. And for those first couple weeks, she'd led me to believe that she only wanted a sense of youth and freedom, like I'd taken her life from her. Suddenly the picture became much more clear. She wanted to leave me strictly for another guy. She wanted to abandon me, and her children, for a carefree life with someone else. I blew up. Threatened to leave. I don't know why I was so shocked by this. I should have see it in the first place. She caught up to me in the car. We had a long discussion. Crying, I punched the rear view mirror right off it's mounting. She begged me not to leave. And I related, because I had felt similarly at times. I related to her desire to care only about herself. She was my world, after all. Even if I'd previously forgotten. So I stayed. And I've tried so much harder to solidify our relationship since.
But as months have gone by, I don't feel the reciprocity that I had expected. I feel as though she isn't making an effort. As though she isn't even attracted to me anymore. I don't trust her, and the love that used to reside in her eyes has been replaced by a transparent sense of wonder. Like she's imagining what would have happened if things had gone the other way. A sense of regret.
I'm fucked up and torn at this point. I sometimes feel as though she's only staying with me for the sake of the kids, an ideology to which I don't subscribe. And the ambivalence is torture. I love her one minute, I can still see that sense of eternity, that unity. But the next, I can't get these ideas out of my head. This overwhelming notion that we were just too young, too naive, and that this is going to end badly. I love her to death, but I sometimes feel like I'm wasting my time on something doomed to fail.
And the triggers! Oh fuck, the triggers. This guy has a very, very common name. And every time I hear it, on TV, the radio, in a movie, walking down the street. It puts me back in that place. That hole I can't fully escape. I live with this murderous rage, this jealousy, this pain. I hide it so well, but I absolutely lose my shit inside.
And she seems so distant sometimes now. She barely touches me. I feel so hollow. All I want is that reassurance. I want her to return to form; the thoughtful, loving woman she used to be. I want to stop cutting myself and drinking myself stupid. I want the suicidal ideation to cease. But if none of this is ever going to get any better, I want to somehow know in advance, so that I can try to move on without utterly destroying myself.
I've been described as "severely codependent" by many psychiatric professionals. She used to be the same way. Maybe she grew up in ways I didn't. I don't know, but this shit is killing me, and even if I don't get any valid advice on this forum, it's good to simply get it out.
