Loose string or the thread I cling to...
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| Thu, 04-27-2006 - 11:14pm |
I am new to this board so please bare with me. I am nine months into a one-year required separation and I have lost everything I have ever cared about. This divorce comes only after I have truly exhausted every effort to repair our relationship. I love my wife but she replaced me with her family, her pets and her expectations of the man I should be ... but never was.
I took the high road. She turned my children against me.
Today, I listened to both of my girls tell me that all they really want from me is either money or help bypassing their mother. I have spent the better part of the evening wondering what I did wrong. How could I have been so blind to what was going on around me?
I do not claim to be perfect. I have suffered financially and struggled in my career. But I did so because I tried to stay in this small community while my wife's father suffered from a long, debilitating illness. After he died, she withdrew emotionally and physically. Five years later, I reached a point where I simply could not continue.
I have no girlfriend waiting in the wings. The last nine months have been the loneliest I have ever endured. And yet I get accused and my children believe the worst about me.
I have always been there for my girls. And now… in my darkest hour… I am alone.
How do you simply get through the next day?

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hi there and hugs....
i am very sorry for your pain. it sounds like your wife is in some kind of depression or somwthing, and that you did whatever you could do to save things, and now you are paying the price for her problems.
i don't really have alot of advice for you. but when you have problems it helps to talk to professionals. i think tht therapy was a god-send to me, i dn't know how i would've gotten thru my divorce without the therapy - in fact, i dn't know how i would've had the guts to get up and leave my abusisve ex-husband if i hadn't gone to therapy. also i think you REALLY need help working with your dd's.
also - having friends and being able to be open and honest with them, listening to them when they give you advise.
forcing yourself to do things that are good for you. even when you don't want to or feel bad or down - you go, make friends, talk to people, go to the gym, take a walk.... etc.
and coming here is great, too.
You can get through this one day at a time. I agree that therapy is great and moving on and enjoying life is very helpful. I spent a lot of time dwelling on the "what if's" and trying to over analyze everything and with I hadn't.
I feel that if you continue to be there for your kids and do what you know to be best for them they will see you for the true you in due time. My father spent a lot of time trying to explain how innocent he was and justifying anything that was true and I just wish he would have spent time with me and had fun with me. Those problems were between him and my mother...I wasn't the one divorcing, and I wasn't the adult...it was to heavy of a burden for me as a kid, teen and even as a young adult to try to understand the divorce. I just wished I could have both parents love me and spend time with me and be there for me. I always felt that they were selfish and only cared about themselves and their problems.
Not sure if this helps but I wanted to share this with you.
Take one day at a time and try to enjoy each day, even a little bit at first will lead to a fuller life eventually.
Thank you for your kind words. I am also a firm believer in therapy. However, it has failed me or I have failed it. I have seen my share of adversity in the last year... bankruptcy, foreclosure, career crisis... now divorce and estrangement from my children.
And since I refuse to even begin to look to fill the void in my life with a new romantic relationship until after the divorce is final I know I am looking at least at another 9 months are more of "alone time." I've tried starting new friendships (male only), new hobbies, new activities... but nothing seems to take.
I think I just need time. The bankruptcy has been discharged. We dodged foreclosure by the thinest of margins and the house is now sold. In time... my job will settle down or change... the divorce will become final... and hopefully my children will come back to me.
The trick seems to be surviving these days. Right now life sucks. It's getting better... slowly with each step.
I miss being connected to someone.
I guess I just need time.
geez louize - you've really been thru a lot. i don't think that therapy is some kind of magic pill, nor do i think that you can fail at it. it's possible that in your previous attempt at therapy you simply weren't ready/able/willing to 'do the work'. because that's what therapy is, really - its WORK, its YOU digging thru your very soul until you get thru all the 'stuff', until you can be really honest with yourself, and a good therapist simply helps you thru it, holds your hand and encourages you. However, its not that 'simple' and having tried it without therapy (with dr phil's book) and with therapy - i find that therapy works better.
I hope that you can find some peace. you are on the right track.
Welcome to our board. I wish I had more advice for you, but the thing that I really want to stress to you is to always be there for your kids no matter what. Dont' get frustrated and play the game of not calling or seeing them. They may not understand what happened in your/their life right now but one day their eyes will be open and you want to make sure you still have a bond with them - even if it seems they are pushing you away now. I wish deeply that my ex would make more of an effort to maintain contact with our children. He calls on average, less than once a week and sees them about twice a year. Little things like phone calls, e-mails, letter, and care packages would mean so much to the kids. For now my kids idolize him but I know that as they get older they will realize how much he chose to give up. Good luck.
Melanie
Well first of all I would suggest counseling. You sound very depressed. And if your daughters really basically told you that all you were good for was bypassing their mother and finances, then I'd make it abundently clear to their spoiled rearends that they better look elsewhere.
Don't think that catering to your daughters every whims will make them love you. Don't allow them to use you becuase they know you are hurting and want to get everything they can from you.
Please seek counseling. Thats the only way you will come out of the darkness. I'm sorry you are so down.
You hit the nail on the head. I'm not sure there is anything in your comments that I don't confess to or agree with. And much of what you suggest I have recently implemented... especially when it comes to spoiled rear ends.
As to counseling, I am no stranger to it and a very big supporter of the service. I am the one that not only urged but arranged for multiple counseling sessions to try and save my marriage. I put myself into counseling when I turned to alcohol to escape the same loveless relationship. I also started counseling again shortly after my wife and I separated and did so for about three months.
But I soon learned that this time, counseling was not going to help me. And I have also reached the point after my bankruptcy if I cannot afford something I will not do it... regardless of what "it" is.
I am depressed. I am lonely. I know that pills could help. I have had my fair share of attempts with Zoloft and host of other anti-depressants.
But I have reached the point where I believe that there is simply some "pain" that I must go through if I ever want to be whole again.
Yes you will have to deal with the pain. Its one of the main reasons I chose not to go on antidepressants. I was still pretty much functioning, I managed to get myself out of bed at least 4 days a week if not 5 during my divorce, I had a really forgiving work, that bless them didn't fire me when I had to call out or leave early at the beginning when I just couldn't bear to be there, but going to counseling every two weeks really helped me, and truth be known counseling works on a sliding scale, so don't be too sure you can't afford it.
My primary care doctor wanted to put me on Paxil for a while and I told her I preferred not too, I wasn't so bad that I wasn't getting out of bed, so until that moment came I wanted to feel the pain and work through it, because I had to keep going, I had to work, I had nobody to help me pay the bills except for me, myself and I, I didn't have any alimony coming my way, if I failed to get out of bed and go to work I'd lose my apartment and I'd be homeless, so I had to get up. So I kept trudging along, it was rough, I'm not going to lie, but the counseling really helped, and I cried, I screamed, I beat pillows, I drove at night with music blaring and the wind blowing in my hair, I wrote poetry and I went back to college and started a new dream of mine to get a degree...
Divorce is a really difficult thing to go through, and its not easy and its especially horrific when you feel like nobody is there to help, I know there are people that have a whole lot of support around by way of friends and family its hard when you don't...My family lived a state away, close enough to drive (2 hours), but far enough away that it wasn't so easy, some of my closest friends disappeared when I needed them the most and some of the people I didn't even know were my "friends" came out of the woodwork for me.
Hang in there...you'll make it through you just have to believe in YOU.
Your comments overwhelm me.
The truth is that I am in many ways the exact opposite of you. I have spent the last 25 years living the middle class dream spoiling a wife and two daughters. Three horrific economic events wiped out everything I have spent my adult life "obtaining" and building. My wife and kids have seen me only as their provider... the girls taking the cue from their Mom.
Part of my counseling is what led me away from counseling. There was a realization... a mini epiphany if you will... that told me I could no longer accept the gifts and generosity of others. It was time for me to stand on my own.
Men... like me... tie so much of who they are into their ability to provide for their family. I'm not going to do that any more.
It means if my kids want to go to college, they will have to get loans, scholarships and jobs... like a lot of good honest people do. It means I will not borrow from family or go into debt to do "anything" including counseling. And it was the counseling that led me to this.
I am broke. I am alone. But I have a better understanding of who I am and what I am willing to do than I have ever had before. I need this pain to help me find my way back to a relationship that will be healthy and loving. Each passing second puts me that much closer.
Its always best when we stand on our own.
Its not easy, its very difficult trust me when I say, I lived in a rinky dink town, where everyone knew my last name because my inlaws were well known, everyone knew my business, and my husband was running around town with his mistress flaunting her left and right. I'd go into the CVS to pick up a prescription and some girl I met once when I was 19 who was the pharmacy technician says "I'm sorry about you and Mike" I had to read her name tag and put her name to my memory to just remember who she was because I had no clue. It was humiliating. So believe me, most of us here on this board have been through equally terrifying, horrific and humiliating experiences.
While you filed bankruptcy. My husband left me with an equally huge debt that has taken me 8 years to climb out of, which I have finally paid off this past january by pretty much depleting my entire 401k except for about 7k that remains in it.
Trust me you are not alone in the world.
Edited 4/30/2006 5:39 pm ET by sniffle_sally
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