Is my love lost? - LONG MESSAGE (SORRY)

[lovelost]

Hello, this is my first post after reading the forum for a while now. I have taken the decision to post as the forum seems such a comfortable place to discuss issues in incredibly uncomfortable times, that’s a credit to all the contributors.

So, my story. I have been married for 5 years, I have two fantastic daughters aged 4 and 1. My wife and I have known each others for around 9 years. I am 27, my wife is 33 (ps age gap has never been an issue for us, just thought it best to state there is one).

The start of our relationship and married life was quite simply amazing. We barely argued, spend time together and apart, valued & loved each other. My wife is beautiful, clever, had/has such a strong will, is very organised & always comes across as ultra-confident. My wife has always been the driven one in our relationship (taking control) where as I am much more laid back. My wife suffered from late onset post-natal depreciation about 14 months after our 1st was born, at a time when she lost her father (very traumatic for us all as it happened suddenly at the family dinner table day after her sisters wedding), had lots of problems at work and 1st born was poorly with suspected meningitis (thankfully proved not to be).

I found it quite difficult to support my wife, as she is very single minded and sets such high standards all the time, but I tried. She is very stubborn at relinquishing jobs and let me deal with things. After a while, things started to look brighter & we started enjoying life again.

Then along came our 2nd, and although I thought we could cope we can’t. Nobody told us that having a young family could be so hard. It really is, especially if you set such high standards of yourselves that you can not balance your life.

If I can say so I am a great dad (and modest eh!), I spend lots of time with them & do anything for them. Again thinking of that life balance, I have been happy to put other things to one side in sacrifise of spending time with our kids.

Over the passage of time though, this setting of standards has developed into practically an OCD, she has problems with her self-esteem & I have not helped by regressing into my shell. The more she has taken control of our lives (housework, bills, organisation etc) as these are things she can control, the more I have let her.

I have become very withdrawn from social interaction, which I am attempting to redress now. In my mind, I lived one day at a time & was happy to get stuck in the rut of same old same old, I thought that was a sacrifice everyone made with a young family.

Over the past 9 months, my wife has become more and more disillusioned with me. Over the same period, I have become more withdrawn & would shy away from doing the few things my wife actually had no control over, like claiming expenses etc. It got to the point she was constantly nagging me. I can see now, I have become such a passenger in our lives.

During this time, we had 3 very serious relationship talks where my wife expressed that she would leave if things did not change. That absolutely devastated me, as I felt we were just in a rut. For a while each time I changed, but always reverted to form. We find ourselves now on the verge of separation. This all started a month ago and in that time we have not hugged, kissed or held hands. I feel so conscious of it now, she feels like its been that way for a long time.

My wife is having problems at work again, her self-esteem is at an all time low & she puts that down to me. She is having counselling & is on medication as they suspect late onset PND again (again 14 months after birth).

So to get to now, our relationship is very strained. For a while now my wife has been friends with a man from her work, now I feel it may be growing into something else. They text all the time, and I have never before had any reason at all to suspect anything. But other people have. Other people (like my parents) are suspicious which I put down to just there nature that a man & women can have a platomic relationship. But having never done, nor considered before, I’m reading her text messages. Most with this man are trivia.

Before, her phone inbox would contain loads of old messages she has not deleted. Now, it will go off & then later the message has been deleted & most of the time her reply. Most of the time.

I have since seen two messages she has sent to him, one calling him her “sexy lover”, and yesterday a message reading “I can’t stop thinking about earlier, I love you so much”. Her signature x at the end of messages has turned into two xx for him. Just writing this down is so painful, as I am not foolish enough not to see something is going on.

Trouble is how do I address it? She has said she does not know if we have a future that she is not in the frame of mind to decide that. I now feel she might be prolonging the inevitable for convenience & seeing him behind my back. I love her so much, I want us to have a future together. I don’t know if her relationship with him is just a substitute for the care we have not shown each other & if we can ever get it back. I think that would be difficult in itself between us, but if there is another party involved then is it ever recoverable??

I would value anyones comments, I just need to know someone is listening I suppose. Thanks.

[jahdog]

not good. sounds like she is gone. i would file for divorce on grounds of adultery. get proof first that can be used in court. maybe talk to lawyer first. at least you know what is taking place and not just having to wonder. be strong. move on.

[32hh]

It is recoverable I think, even with a 3rd party involved, but it is not the easy option by any means. And you BOTH have to really want it. If she is not interested in saving the marriage then there is not a lot you can do. Is it possible that your passivity in the marriage (you describe your self as a passenger) has left her feeling alone and unloved though and perhaps if you were to fight for the marriage she might feel more positive about it. Do you still want to be there, given the other man though? It's hard, I really feel for you. Mobile phones have a lot to answer for!

[Helen_uk]

I agree wholeheartedly with 32...Mobile phones do have a lot to answer for, I learned to both hate and fear them during my ex partners affairs ( irrational I know as it isn't really the phone at fault ! )

The trouble is they give someone such ease of secrecy if they want it.

If your wife is going through PND again she really is not at her most rational , is she receiving treatment ? In this instance I think you may have to fight for your marriage by proving that you know you've made mistakes and are willing to put them right, and this time keep putting them right.

Do you think your W does want the marriage to work ? Would she be willing to fight along side you to get it back on track ? Does she know you're aware she's seeing this man ?

Lots of questions I know but valid ones as the answers have a bearing on how things will proceed.

Perhaps her low self esteem have culminated in her having an affair to prove to herself she's still desirable, not an excuse for an affair, but maybe a reason.

It does sound as though she has spent some time trying to get you to see that ( in her eyes at least ) the marriage was failing, maybe your lack of change has been proof to her that you don't value her or your marriage ? I'm just trying to see it through her eyes . As a sufferer of depression myself I know that you don't always think or act in a normal manner and tend to do anything ( usually the wrong things ) to try to make life bearable. She's gone from being the strong one, capable and confident to self doubt ..... again no excuse for an affair, but once depressed people do all sorts of things out of character.

You and she, if she's willing, have some serious talking to do to save your marriage , if she doesn't already know are you going to tell her you looked through her phone and now know of the affair ? That's a tough call , I've been there and I don't envy you that.

I can empathise, but I really feel you need to be pro active now.

Good luck

Helen

[Raymond]

I think Helen is right in that she will not be at her most rational because of the PND.

But also I think it is time you were a man and confronted her about this emotional affair before it gets out of hand. She probably thinks you do not know about it and she is safe to mess around. Bringing it out into the open will change things. Being a passenger now is not the tack to take. You have a marriage and a family to protect. Take a bit of control where it is needed and if you can also confront this chap all the better.

On the positive side try and express your love to her. Maybe you are not touching her in that. What is her love language whereby you can touch her. Is it words of Affirmation, Gifts, Quality Time, Act of Service or Touch (not talking about sex now). One of these will be her main love language. Is she trying to get it from him? You need to learn to reach her in this. It's all part of growing.

Raymond

[Johnee S]

Yup you need to confront her take an honest and supportive approach first to avoid getting bombed on, don't validate her actions but validate her low feelings of self esteem and depression. You may also want to get out a bit more in your own time socially to give her space to figure theings out once you've told her what your expectations for your marriage to work the right way as well as what you are prepared to do to make it work for the both of you. Do NOT be self rightous, needy, clingy, guilt tripy, that will only reinforce her to continue in the emotional affair.

Instead tell her what you think makes the relationship healthy and let her know you do love her and want to work together to resolve this serious problem, tell her you feel betrayed by her secrecy and lack of respect and honesty. Cyber whore may not be an appropriate choice of worlds but it is effective speaking from first hand expereince.

When your partner gets involved into an emotional affair this is due to your partner not feeling love, support, and repsect by you. If you are unhappy, miserable, not validating each others feelings, resentment builds and as such the disconnecting of the relationship happens. The emotional affair is a new fresh adventurous infatuation that sparks the in-love senstions and emotions which triggers that chemical balance of sexual attraction to spike (the attraction you both shared when you first got serious in your relationship). Somone can post the offical term please...

Anyways you should take a look at yourself and se what you may have contributed to the disconnect of your rleationship and make some decisions and changes for yourself personally nto for her but for you! If you have done things that has hurt her and she never got a chance to deal with it resentment and distrust happens. I can go on and on but these are just the tip of the ice berg and everyone's relationship ice berg is different. Just some food for though to consider considering my Wife did the same thing for 7.5 months before she made the decision to make change kill the affair and focus on our relationship.

My Wife has not opened up a lot unless I dug it out kindly with a bit of sterness in my voice never elittling or insulting. I told of what I felt in order to get her to relate to me what she was feeling in order to foster talking together. I will tell you this, things are shakey and you may need to prepare yourself to hear things that may sound hurtful or insulting just understand she will be communicating to you from her emotional content that has been bottled up for a long time, and her possible mental condition which I do not fully think as an actual fact for certain even if diagnosed, most head shrinkers want to load their pateints with meds to make a bit more $$$. However I am not dismissing the diagnosys either, I'm no doctor...

[lovelost]

Ok, I took the plunge and confronted her. I had agonised over it for so long, got to the point that I could not eat or sleep (…let alone in the bed next to her). She picked up on that, so I let it all out. It turns out (and I believe her) that her relationship with this other guy is purely friendship. I explained how it had got to this stage, how I could suspect anything going on despite the fact that I trust her. The constant text messages, the texts that I found, the different behaviour I notice when he is around etc. I had built myself up for this talk being the start of the end for good, but she accepted how I could see their relationship being that way.

It turns out the “sexy lover” comment is borne from work colleagues who tease her for the amount of time they spend together (at work and in public). The “can’t stop thinking about earlier, I love you so much” was in reference to a really bad day at work in which she had to tell her boss, on the verge of his own breakdown, some home truths to which he burst into tears. The other guy was then there to support her & what I thought was a declaration of love was never meant in that context – but for all the trauma that day she never breathed a word of it to me. I’ve told her how hurt that makes me feel.

I asked her to imagine the roles reversed. If I had a female friend at work who I have a deep friendship with, reacted differently in her company, sent messages like that, talked about constantly without knowing it - no matter how much she trusted me – what would she think? She accepts that her behaviour has been inappropriate, and was really apologetic.

However, now she has mixed emotions. She can see how I could feel the way I did, but does feel somewhat betrayed that I could read her messages or think that of her. I’ve asked her to keep in mind the context as to what led me to think that way. I won’t be punished for feeling the way I did, when you look at all the circumstances in black and white what else could I think?

And so now that is out the way, just the other issues in our relationship to deal with next!!!

BUT I am doing something about it. No longer the passenger (complacency was always my biggest annoyance in others, now look at me!!) I am taking back a level of control and input into our relationship. Let me tell you it is such hard work – but it’s breaking a habit nothing more. I’m looking into starting some life coaching, and she is going to see a specialist councillor. AND we are talking so much more now. I am taking the initiative to find interests and hobbies we can do together (and apart too for that matter).

We have both become so inward thinking, that we never do anything for ourselves. It’s a vicious cycle, the more each of us does for the family, the more the other feels they have to match that and feel guilty about doing something for ourselves. Having a young family is hard work, yes your lives revolve around them but it should not exclusively. You have to have time for yourself, or you are just “mum” or a work colleague 24/7.

And, I have realised I have focused so much on being a great dad that I took for granted that my wife might need some of that support & love too. She’s an adult who can care for herself whilst the kids are young right? WRONG. Note to self – put some effort into your marriage man!!!

Thank you all for your replies; it is a great comfort to feel ‘heard’!!

[Raymond]

Well done for confronting her Lovelost. It turns out it wasn't quite what you thought, but getting it in the open sorted it out. It's always better to share without letting things build up too much. You couldn't help how you felt, you just did.

I think it is great what you are doing. New habits are harder at first until they become good habits. Glad you're not just going to be the passenger any longer. Passivity can be a killer in a relationship.

As you say it's alright to have some interests on your own as well as together. It makes you a more interesting person.

Shouldn't you be changing your name now?

Raymond