I have a picture of my family, the five of us, front and center in the room I rent. I see it every day when I wake up and every night before I go to sleep. It holds a special place and a painful place in my heart since it was a family portrait that used to be up in our house. A friend that knew about my A held that picture up to me once and reminded me I was risking EVERYTHING with what I was doing.
Back in those days I really didn’t believe what I was doing would ever impact my family. The same old wayward crap reasoning, i.e.” as long as no one knows then no one gets hurt”. Not true then and certainly not true now that my BS knows every detail about my LTA.
So the photo came down from our house along with every other photo of me and my wife together. I repurposed this one to my new home (we’re separated) to remind myself of the damage I have done and the goal I am pursuing with every ounce of energy I have. My hope, the hope I pray for every day, is to get even the tiniest chance at R with my wife and to rebuild our family. I would NOT squander that gift and with the humility, remorse and new behaviors I have discovered over the last four months since DDay, I am ready, willing and able to be the selfless loving husband and father my family needs.
But it doesn’t matter.
I’m a wayward who has put in limbo by his BS and every day my hope dwindles. The photo seems more like a relic of a time gone by than anything that could exist in the future. I’m in the dark at all times, I have no idea what my wife is doing with her life, her health, her friends, her feelings, anything. Every day I get a little bit better at emotionally detaching from her, but it’s tough, SO TOUGH, as she is the only woman I have ever loved.
Our mutual friends that know don’t help at all. One will give me hope that “it just takes time, keep doing what I’m doing to protect my BS and take care of the kids” and 5 min later another one will put me in a complete panic by telling me “Your BS is preparing to make war with the bloodiest D you can imagine. So watch out and get ready with your own lawyers.” The emotional roller coaster of these friendships is also something I have to detach from – I can’t take the ups and downs of everyone voting about the future of my marriage and family.
So after 4 months we’re absolutely no where getting worse. My BS won’t talk to me, she can’t be in the same room with me, we have a single MC session once a month to check in, and I made the mistake of inviting her to something I was doing with the kids this weekend where she just killed me, reminding me she “has no interest in any outing that involves me”. This all makes sense of course as my actions in the LTA were horrific. The details she has access to (over a year of emails) are enough to emotionally kill a person 20 times over. Obviously she doesn’t want to “play family” in the state she is in.
But can I imagine that she will ever want to play family again? As the days roll on and we get farther and farther apart it’s getting harder and harder to imagine how she would ever be interested in R. I’m not dropping any balls mind you, my actions are rock solid consistent and every single promise I made to her (5 pages worth) during the separation are intact and will remain intact. However, at this stage in the game I find myself praying less and less for hope at R and more and more praying that when she finally decides to start the D, we can do it amicably and spare the kids the horrors of a bloody battle.
I’m NOT giving up – exactly the opposite as I reminded myself this morning that losing hope has nothing to do with my RESPONSIBILITIES to care for my children, my family and most of all, to keep my BS safe. I just needed to share that this feels like my darkest hour as nothing I do seems to make any difference to my BS and I really wonder how long the limbo will last.