I am so sad, lost, and heartbroken. My husband of four years, with whom I have a three year old son, told me he felt done with our marriage.
Prior to this last month, he had been very loving, devoted, showering me with love letters, even a CD of love songs. We've spent time together almost every day. Our relationship has had circular, unproductive fighting in it and both of us have trouble communicating in a way that we hear each other.
Still, when my husband expressed that he had "hit his limit", it felt sudden and out of the blue. He had never expressed a single doubt in the relationship, never seemed the slightest bit interested in giving up, and had never told me he was feeling negatively about us in general. When he said he felt this way, he became totally cold, withdrawn, cruel - a person I didn't know.
It wasn't the frustration he expressed with the relationship that I couldn't understand - it was how absolutely certain he seemed to be that there wasn't hope. At first he said he needed space, and so I wrote him one heartfelt love letter and then bowed out - spent the weekend minding my own business and trying to be as perfect a spouse as possible. At the end of the weekend, he still had made no progress in being ready to talk, so I left to take our son to visit my parents. In the week I was gone, he went from needing space, to saying he had no motivation to work on the relationship, to saying it was doomed, to actually signing a lease for a new apartment.
I was stunned by the haste and immediacy in needing to separate himself from me and could not for the life of me understand it. All the while I'd been pushing for couples counseling and he'd been agreeing to go. It happened so fast.
I rushed home to try to figure out finances (he signed a lease we couldn't afford without even discussing with me where I would live, my son would live, etc) and salvage the marriage. He insisted irritably a half dozen times throughout the course of this that there was no one else. But of course I found her.
Here is what happened:
Early on in the relationship - six months in perhaps - we talked about our boundaries with others. I expressed that I didn't feel comfortable with the maintaining of relationships with people who are old flames and with whom we don't have an active platonic friendship. He said this made sense to him, although I do recall some initial indignance at the concept. Eventually (and without a demand from me) he deleted a few exes from his Facebook, who I guess fit the bill. He told me about it later, but I didn't explicitly ask him to do so.
Cut to 4 years or so later, I notice that he has added one of his exes back on facebook. facebook lovingly informed me on my sidebar. I felt a little strange about it, but didn't say anything for several days. My husband seemed emotionally more distant and more irritable with me. I didn't necessarily connect the two things at the time, but I continued to feel nagging, so I VERY gently initiated a conversation with him about it. I said I'd noticed and was wondering why that happened, reminding him of our past talk about boundaries. He assured me that she had added him, he thought it was no big deal, and really didn't think much of it. He agreed he should have remembered that boundary. It felt like a nice, respectful conversation. It ended at that. I never told him to delete her; it felt good to talk about my feelings without it becoming an argument and my husband seemed to truly understand.
It was only 1-2 weeks later that he checked out.
Finally my son brought me a "receipt" from the floor of the room my husband has been sleeping in. On it was an obsessive sounding love note meant for another woman. I cried about it on the phone to my mom and good friend. They encouraged me to find proof. I took a shot in the dark at his facebook password (it was the same as a shared password of ours). It worked. As I was just getting on there, up pops a message from the same ex he had re-added (and re-deleted) last month.
I copy/pasted their entire correspondence to a document on my computer. Here is just a small bit of how it began (almost INSTANTLY upon the OW adding him on facebook - and initiated by HIM! Names changed by me of course) :
Jane,
Oops. How are you? What have you been up to the last few years? Hope all is well in your world.
*
Hey James,
I'm living in **** again and working at *****. I wasn't sure why you unfriended me, but I thought I'd give it a shot and re-friend request you. How's everything going?
*
Jane,
I'm doing alright. A lot to relay by means of a Facebook message. I have a son ****. He just turned three and is indescribable. I met his mother *** four years ago and she became pregnant three months later. It was very intense and scary but we decided to make a go of it. We got married when baby was 6 months old. I fully committed myself to our relationship and I'm sad to say it's not the healthiest. We recognized some compatibility issues early on that we still struggle with in one way or another. I started seeing a therapist once a month when I realized I was going to be a father because everything was moving so fast. I encouraged my wife to as well but she was not interested. I unfriended you (and one other previous girlfriend) at her general request that I delete old flames. It hurt to delete you but I thought that was all the more reason I should do it. My wife has yet to unfriend her ex-husband, although I have no problem with that because he's a decent guy.
I went into this an optimist and I never fully determined what my limits are. My wife has many wonderful qualities and at the same time seems to communicate that unless I do things a certain way she will never be happy. It's both a mind f*** and an exercise in empathy and giving. For a long time I've thought all this would help me grow and be a better parent but just a few months ago after almost four years of seeing my therapist he recommended I call it quits. Things are complicated by my desire for my son to have a secure home life and not wanting to be apart from him. In the aftermath of a negative feeling my wife has suggested break-up/divorce hundreds of times. This happened just yesterday when she also said she didn't love me. She took it all back by the end of the night but obviously it leaves me feeling…a little hopeless. I take responsibility for my share of our differences but I've never said those words to her. I've agreed three times that we should split and each time things got much nastier very quickly and then eventually sort of blew over. Deep breath...
I realize opening up to you like this may not be the most appropriate thing in the world but it feels good to be open and honest. I haven't talked about this much to anyone and I hope you're not too uncomfortable hearing it. I'm just in an awkward place right now.
So how about you? Have you shared your heart with anyone in the last few years? What are you doing with ** these days? What were you doing and what was that like? You must be a popular girl in **** these days. I don't remember many beautiful unattached women sticking around after college.
I was happy to see your request. Against my better judgement I'm sending you a song I wrote shortly after the last time we saw each other. No one has ever heard it before. I'll warn you it's a little sappy. Hope you and all you love are happy and healthy.
James
(here he attached a love song he had written her apparently long ago)
*
Then came lots of flirting, followed by pretty much "my wife doesn't want me to talk to you. while i find you hot/a million compliments and flirty statements, I need to focus on saving my marriage" . Which of course inspired more flirting and the whole "Oh, I don't want to be the other woman! Giggle giggle" vibe.
He did stop talking to her for a few days at a time but they continued to find excuses to check in over the next week or two, of course leading up to him checking out on me.
He then initiated a consistent correspondence as soon as he chose an apartment and planned to sign a lease. Since then they've written almost ten messages a day back and forth. He further bashes me, tells her he wants to divorce me, tells her he wants to see her and even that she would make an "amazing mother". He tells her about his adventures with our son, forgetting to include that I was there. He tells her tidbits we joked about or talked about that day or evening. I once suggested a personality test in hopes of finding a way to communicate to him. I was pleased when he went and took the test and came to tell me his personality type. Less pleased when I saw that the same night he asked her what HER type was and talked about how interesting the test was.
I confronted him about it. He denied denied denied until I told him exactly what I saw. Then came irrational yelling, telling me I was "sick" for logging into his facebook. He demanded to see the love note. I told him I was keeping it and he lunged at me to take it. When I refused he said "F*** you" during a time when our son was in the room. He lunged at me again, this time making physical contact and when I told him he could not have the love note back, he balled his fists up at me as if threatening to punch me. He has never, ever been violent. I wasn't threatened. But the person I've loved, who has written me the sweetest love letters and most beautiful love songs for years, the last one being days before he started to talking to the other woman, that person is gone. I don't recognize the person I see and my heart is just broken.
*One more note: obviously I don't need to defend myself against the way he described our marriage to the other woman, but I wanted to acknowledge that while there is some truth in things he said about our fights and problems, it's HEAVILY exaggerated and a few parts he straight out made up. As for his therapist suggesting he call it quits, he never ever came to me with any suggestions, talking, communicating or asking for counseling . No therapist would make that suggestion without suggesting lots of other things first so that is probably a lie too.
It's crazy that his talk with her didn't even have a build-up. They had maybe three lines of communication and then he dumped all of that flirting, love songs, and extreme attacking of the marriage to her... like out of the blue. It's so bizarre and so sad.
[This message edited by lamplighter at 4:30 PM, July 11th (Thursday)]
