Bewildered

[PAUL C]

I have been married for 25 years to the most wonderful wife and mother. I thought I had a marriage made in heaven and so did all that knew us.
In January of this year I lost my senior executive position and I have been finding it difficult to get a new job. I won a case and substantial damages for wrongful dismissal but the company I was working for put the subsidiary I was working for into liquidation so that they would not have to pay me.
Over tha past six months our youngest son 19 has been uncontrolable. He is selfish self centred argumentative and threatening. I wanted to put him out of the house as I felt the tension he was causing would come between my wife and myself. My wife would not hear of it and I relented and put up with it.
At this time my wife was promoted at work. She is 44 and has lost a bit of weight and was looking great. Her job had a lot of stress attached to it and with the promotion she was spending a lot of time in the office managing the imput of a new computer system. She then got to travel all around Europe where she was being wined and dined by clients.
We celebrated our 25 th wedding anniversary in April and I got the most wonderful and loving anniversary card with a lot of personal message in it saying what a wonderful 25 years together and she wanted the next 25 years to be just the same.
Three months later she left the house with no explanation. She admitted to having a brief fling with someone in June and that she could not forgive herself and she did not believe that I could forgive her. I love my wife so much I would forgive her anything and asked her to come home. She is staying with her Mum.
She then said she did not know if she loved me and she wanted her own space. I told her I would give it to her. She then told me she wants a divorce and that she does not love me anymore. I am devestated. I have lost weight dramatically, I cannot sleep, I pray constantly but to no avail. My two elder sons have cut their Mum of despite me telling them otherwise.
On August 6th my eldest son and wife had our first grandson and I asked my wife to come and see him. She told me that my son did not want to see her. I said I would fix it and my son e-mailed my wife saying he would like her to come and see the baby. She did not come and she has never seen the baby yet. She never phoned my son or wife or sent a present. She sent a card only saying Thinking of you. My middle son in the States who has always been close to his Mum cannot recognise the woman his Mum has become and now refuses to speak to her. My youngest son is mixed up. His Mum speaks to him on the phone daily but has made it clear to me that her future plans do not include him. I cannot tell him this.
I have met my wife on a couple of occassions and do not recognise the woman she has become. She has always been vibrant, loving,and would die for our Kids now she is cold and heartless. After five weeks all she wants is the matrimonial asset broken up and for me to sell our house although I have nowhere else to live. I am even having to threaten her with legal action for alimony. She has closed all the bank accounts and I have had to rely on money from my family to keep going. What has happenned? I have asked her and she said she has been feeling this way for a couple of years. She said there were plenty of things but when I ask she cannot give me any reasons. She tells me I was a good husband and that it is her she wants her space. I am sorry but my wife wears her heart on her sleeve and I am not stupid. We were a lovely loving couple with a fullfiled marriage and then out of the blue with no warning she leaves. Nobody knew not her family nor her closest friends.
I am devestated. I have asked her to go to councelling but she will not entertain this. I don't know what to do. I want her back so much. I want to repair our family but I don't know what to do? Can anybody help? I am a practising catholic and take my vows very seriously

[Jacks]

Hi,

really sorry to hear that you are going threw this, I know it is hard, as I don't understand why my H left me and the boys! I thought we are made to last, we had our ups and downs, but I thought that is part of a relationship, if we would agree on everything and do the same things all the time, then surely there would be something wrong! My H left nearly 10 weeks ago, at first he just wanted a 2 week break, he told me that he doesn't love me anymore and that his feelings had changed! After the 2 weeks he told me and the boys that he is not coming back at all, he found something better and wants to go a different direction in life and that doesn't include me! We have been in touch and I am trying to stay friends with him, it is very difficult, because when I do see him, I just want to hug him and tell him that I love and need him, but that is the worthed thing to do, as it will push him away even further!

You will have no choice, but to give her space and let her work things out on her own, to me it sounds she is going either threw a Midlife crisis or depression, how else would someone change like that and not even want to see there grandchild? Try to read up on the Midlife crisis on the internet, as it helped me to understand a little better! I do think that my H is going threw some sort of MLC as he has changed so much!

Try to read threw some of our threads, you might be able to get some advice out of it!

Hugs
Jacks

x

[gymbunny]

Dear P

I'm so sorry this has happened to you. Have you read the thread on depression? There are many points of similarity. Pesonally, I've found it very interesting.

It is terrible to say it, but have you got yourself a lawyer etc? I mention this purely because the economic situation could do with some clarifying. A lawyer will tell you, for example, if your wife really can order you to divide the property of the marriage at this stage. (If you have no income yourself, you may find you are eligible for legal aid. Just ask at the solicitor's enquiry desk.)

Of course you take your vows seriously, try not to be too alarmed at asking these serious questions as they are merely matters of fact and oblige you to take no action whatsoever. You just need to know where you stand financially.

(For example, I was surprised in my own case to find that my solicitor immediately suggested not a divorce, but a new will. She pointed out that with the existing arrangements, if I died my property would transfer to my spouse and if their current behavour was anything to go by, I would not necessarily feel confident of their judgement towards our child! It was horrible to hear, but I would never have thought of it myself and it did need thinking about.)

Your wife is 44 and this is a long-standing marriage; 25 years of life does not go in to a box and get thrown away no matter how much an individual may think they can do it. The cold person who is currently inhabiting your wife's body is simply, observably, factually, objectively wrong about this.

Your wife does have a coherence problem which she will eventually have to deal with. Question- if the woman who wrote the silver wedding card was not her, who was it? If that woman's words were not to be taken seriously, why should you take any more seriously the current words apparently from the same mouth?

Modern identity theorists (an intriguing sub-branch of philosophy) spend a fair time trying to pin down the definition of identity. It sounds stupid, a bit like trickery and indulgent posturing, but as soon as you run in to a situation like this you can see why it is philosophy rather than psychology.

For practical purposes they tend to fall back on the coherence theory of identity - that the present self has to have some consistency with the previous self or else we would all be popping in to and out of existence every moment and making ourselves up as we go along.

To some extent we do, indeed, make ourselves up as we go along. You, for example, are a Catholic but if that is to mean anything you have to be Catholic for at least a reasonable length of time. You probably wouldn't want to, but you could decide to be a Bhuddist for the next decade. However, if your identity and beliefs are to be taken seriously, we ought to be able to get a sensible answer to the question "why have you changed and what is your purpose in doing so?"

We might not think much of the answer when you give it, but it definitely ought to be more than "Because I just did" or "no reason, I just felt like it" or "I'm not going to tell you". All of these responses would have to make us wonder how seriously to take your protestations of change to a new relgion.

Go down the library and try some philosophy. Who knows, it might help.