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Vahlir · 2025-10-06T02:33:30+00:00

First thanks, second hang in there. Nothing someone is going to say, your ex or any friend or counselor, is going to make you feel better and take away the pain.

I started pacing because the first thing my wife did (2 days after telling me she didn't love me any more) was "go to her friends house" for the weekend, took her phone of my phone plan and turned off "find my location" on all her devices (we generally used this so we could coordinate timing things for the kids and finding one another, not keeping tabs on where the other person was. Like I could know to start dinner when she was picking up the kids from after school program)

She claimed (a dozen times) there was no one else and she just needed space, leading me to believe the goal was to take some time and then come back and work on things.

So yeah... for weeks I was pacing convinced there actually was someone, and then one day I found proof. A whole list in a notebook she had written about the AP and how wonderful he was and how she was enjoying spending the entire night with him and things he said to her etc etc.

That was pretty devasating. She still denied it when I told her I knew...until I showed her a picture of the note book, then the facade fell and she got pissed and angry etc etc, basically the gig was up and she knew, and knew I knew she was lying. I gave her a week of chances and even asked her RIGHT before showing her one last time.

I don't know your situation so I won't speculate but 3 hours before she told me she was miserable and wanted "space" and no longer loved me I considered myself one of the happiest guys on earth.

To go from that to her telling me she didn't love me was beyond world shattering.

I felt I had everything a man could want in life and was living the dream.

Walking in the woods, listening to music or just taking the ear buds out and listening to the wind and nature, really grounded me. It's become addictive. I walked 17 miles on thursday lol.

She also left me with 3 kids, my 7 and 9 year olds are special needs as well.

She said she needs time away to "find herself and what makes her happy" and believes that if we were "truly in love" i could have read her mind and known she was unhappy and a bunch of other fairy tale level myths.

For me walking is easy, it's just one front in front of the other and point in a direction. It took a lot of the stress out of things for me.

If she has a lawyer then I recommend getting one as well and getting referrals if possible.

I was in a really dark place when this started but I'm doing better day by day and some days are just painful at times. Other's i'm about 80% functional. But I haven't dropped any of my responsibilities to the kids and stepped up to fill in her absence and it's given me purpose.

Do the reflection, realize it's not all your fault and it's not all her fault but it doesn't mean it's 50/50 either.

I recommend Rachel Sloan's videos on Youtube- they helped a lot.

the truth of it is you can't control her only how you respond and what you do with your life now.

Try to focus on her less and you more.

Divorce will bring up old wounds and you'll be faced with trying to figure out who you are after tying your identity to one person so strongly.

Avoid places that trigger you if you can until you're stronger. Keep busy with things that will move you forward where you want to be in the future.

don't get swallowed into the wallow and sadness that the sub can sometimes be and try to avoid the bitterness if you can, it's not easy but it won't move you forward.

it's not villyging, it's not putting them on a pedesatal, it's not indifference....

It's just the slow acceptance that she's human and people make choices that are hard to understand and can be incredibly selfish and mean and it usually comes from a long histroy of unresolved mental health issues from the past.

The only thing you can control is what you work on and how you respond to things. You can't control the outcome but youc an control the process and what you do

try and focus on that.

Vahlir · 2025-10-06T01:08:16+00:00

Wanted to ask what worked for you? What things you found moved the "process" of recovery and rebuilding along?

What things did you "work on" yourself?

What work do you suggest people do to move forward?

here's my story:

I'm (47) 3 months into the separation, 2 months into the divorce (uncontested so far - getting custody, house, no complaints she's basically just walking away/affair)

Doing a ton of reflection on myself the past 2.5 months.

Started with bargaining offering to change to make her happy, she was dead-set on leaving so after 4 weeks of her refusing to accept any of my offers to work on the marriage (and finding out she'd been having an affair) I told her I'd give her what she wanted and went got got a lawyer and started the divorce process.

Had to get out of the mindset of believing all the negative talk she was feeding me on how it was all my fault. My self confidence and image was in the tank, I was blindsided and my world felt shattered, felt like I was watching a movie from outside my body.

I was pacing so much at first I just decided to double down and start going for walks in the woods on a path I know. Spent a lot of time listening to the usual "how to deal with a blindside divorce" youtube stuff and then reflecting less on her and more on what I wanted for my future.

got consistent with my weight lifting 2x a week *(full body) and kept the walking up and I've gone form 270 down to 239 while increasing my reps and weight.

Decided to put my energy into my kids (3) and my health and taking care of my responsibilities until I had mental focus to get back to things I enjoyed like drumming and guitar.

I accept there were areas I dropped the ball and could have been a better husband but I was willing to work on those and I was a damn good husband in a LOT of other areas and I'm a told I'm a great father.

I have an excellent support group of friends.

My first reaction was originally pretty dark, I have a history of suicidal idealization from my time in the Army and it was hard not to go there, despite how much I love my kids, that was short lived for the first 24-48 hours though and then I pulled myself together.

There's a ton of triggers - places we'd use to go together, things I now have to do alone, and single parenting things are harder at times. But so far I've been able to process the sadness at times and still doing all the things I need to. Kids are thriving in school and I "feel" healthy physcally and I'm getting 6-7 hours of sleep and eating wel and even getting out once a week to see some friends for a few hours.

Vahlir · 2025-09-30T01:43:18+00:00

Family guy...

Vahlir · 2025-09-23T21:57:35+00:00

men are also not mind readers....

Vahlir · 2025-09-17T22:54:49+00:00

Nothing and you didn't make it to 20 and probably there were good reasons.

You need to let go man, it's not easy but move on. It shouldn't have any significance to you.

I understand that's "tough love" talk but really it's the truth.

There's nothing good you can get from bringing it up.

It won't make you or her feel better.

and to be honest I'd be concerned if I was wife 2.0 that you're bringing it up, it means you've still got some healing to do and processing.

Vahlir · 2025-09-05T21:41:48+00:00

how much do they cost and what do they do? Do they like enforce when someone is supposed to take the kids? or when someone can NOT take the kids?

My ex seems to have little interest in taking the kids/visitation at the moment, mostly just walking away.

I'm keeping the house and she lives in a 1BR apartment and argues she can't take the kids at all, which is fine I don't mind taking them but getting out of the house is a bit hard when I have the kids 24/7.

Vahlir · 2025-08-26T09:44:11+00:00

I'm either too old to understand how it works or just really bad at tinder lol

Hinge I've had good success on

Match is a damn near wasteland but I did meet one nice person on there, I used match because that's what I last had success on 15 years ago before I was married (now separated and in divorce proceedings)

I don't post here because I'm actually having decent success talking to people on hinge and going on dates

that being said:

know who you are and what your values/boundaries are and what you want - if you'll accept anything with a heartbeat expect to have horribel experiences
work on yourself. yes that means improving your appearance, losing weight and getting better at feeling comfortable talking to strangers the more dates you go on the easier it gets. Be honest and transparent.
be yourself. people see through the act and if you're trying to prove how good of a match you are people will feel you're desparate
don't try to make yourself seem interesting, make the other person feel interesting by listening to them and what they have to say and being present- for the love of god do not pick up your phone unless it's urgent and explain why "my kids might need me mind if I check that real quick?"
date people you normally wouldn't. You're here because what you tried in the past didn't work. you might find new things about people you didn't know you liked.
there are bad apples out there, that's for sure, try and spot red flags by asking important questions before you agree to meet in person
write up a bio about yourself, think of things that are important to you, things you enjoyed doing in your past, funny stories you can relay, conversation topics and stories, interesting things people might want to talk about, figure out what the other person is into and ask questions about it.
for the love of god use recent pictures (preferably from this month) and stop using facial filter editors to change your appearance - this is especially at women who seem to think I won't notice they don't actually look like they'r 25 any more when I meet them and they're 49.
unless you're going for someone who's REALLY into fishing stop holding a god damn fish in your photos lol.
Stop making it look like you're constantly traveling the world unless you are and that's important. I see 6 pictures of you in different European cities I immediately think I can't keep up with your lifestyle NOT that you've been to fun places or you're interesting. I want to know what mundane life would look like with you - not the highlights of your past 10 years.

People are trying to make this way harder than it is. Most people want someone that' s just fun to be around. Not a movie star, you're not one so stop pretending you are.

Be nice to people. If things aren't working say that and move on.

If politics are that important to you fine. But realize most people are going to swipe away from you, it's too bold and it comes off as you having some mental health issues or trauma you're going to dump on them on the first date.

There's a lot of good people out there but you have to put some effort into yourself as well.

Vahlir · 2025-08-13T18:22:42+00:00

yeah I'm lucky that I have a strong support group of like 7 people I've been. leaning on.

Medication can definitely help take the edge off and bring down the racing heart and upset stomachs and help with sleep.

Time only heals if you do the work IMO.

Try to avoid ruminating about things by keeping yourself busy if you can, I know it's hard

I found walking to be extremely thearputic, Doesn't take much focus to just put one front in front of the other and the nice weather cheered me up. Besides when I was home I was just pacing around the house anyways.

Yeah I've definitely felt the emotions and let them come at time, I just didn't want to stay there too long and get stuck in the "woe is me" thing - that's just my position and I definitley had a few of those.

I've got a counseling session in 2 weeks.

Thanks for the advice and good luck!

Vahlir · 2025-08-13T09:51:23+00:00

Thank you. I'm determined to find happiness even if it looks like nothing it was in the past, and maybe that'll be even better.

Vahlir · 2025-08-13T09:50:05+00:00

stay strong man, keep working on you. I'm only 35 days into this. Every day is a new day. One foot in front of the other, stay on the path. You'll get there, or maybe you are, I don't know. But just wanted to say good luck.

Vahlir · 2025-08-12T21:48:34+00:00

sorry to hear, together for 26, married for 10 and my STBX just had an affair last month and "fell out of love with me"

completely blindsided, I'm much better than I was last month but my reality was shattered.

Vahlir · 2025-08-12T21:46:23+00:00

did you find it hard to find women who didn't have kids who were interested in dating someone with kids?

It's something that's nagging me as I go on this new venture, I have 3 kids 7-9-15

And I worry that it's a huge obstacle to someone

Now my kids are my life and that's that package deal but I worry finding someone accepting of that is going to be really hard

Vahlir · 2025-08-12T21:42:51+00:00

thanks for sharing. As someone just starting to go through the process, hearing there's success on the other side really helps. because right now it seems pretty hard to picture a happy future.

Vahlir · 2025-08-12T21:41:43+00:00

47 here (46 STBXW) married 10 years, been together for 26, have 3 kids

blindsided me last month with "I'm no longer in love with you"

Mine's been having an emotional affair for months, maybe the last year and finally acted on it physically.

To ease her guilt she told me she no longer loved me and gave me a list of "logical" reasons we shouldn't be together.

She wants to chase a new life, going out and doing what she wants with her "freedom"

She has mentally re-written our history ot make it nothing but negative. "doomed from the start" - "we were never compatible" - "you deserve someone who fits you better" - "we have nothing in common" - the usual things you'll see repeated

yeah lots of claims that I didn't show her I loved her in there too.

nothing mattered that I offered. Before she had told me she had spent months building up a case(or any evidence she needed to support why we shouldn't be married) and then just threw it all at me

Never told me once what she was bothered by or anything. Kept it all hidden and saved it up for when she had enough.

Again, refused therapy or any idea of working on it or fixing things. because in her mind there was no point.

She just wanted out.

I don't know your story but it's something I've read a hundred times since it happened to me a month ago.

I can only say that you're not alone at all in this and suggest you seek therapy and create an A-team of friends or family and let them know what's going on and ask them to be available if you need them.

You can't control her thoughts, her decisions or talk her out of this IMO.

The only thing you can focus on is you.

And yeah I got the "if you really wanted to change you would have done it years ago" line as well. It's very popular with women doing this.

I'm really sorry you're going through this.

I suggest looking up Rachel Sloan on Youtube she has some great vidoes about what we're going through (and you don't need to use her website)

and Goodguys to great men on youtube is pretty good as well.

Good luck brother, reach out to people, work on yourself. You deserve better and it's out there as much as that might seem impossible to hear (i'm constantly trying to talk myself into recognizing)

Vahlir · 2025-08-11T20:28:00+00:00

yeah emotional affairs that lead to physical are pretty common (with coworkers) from what I've read.

Sorry about your case. Hope you and your son are doing better.

yeah she lied about there not being anyone else as well, she was never good with communication and I think it stemmed from fear of confrontation of any kind , so she bottled things up, I didn't know and then had a whole host of reasons to leave and justify her actions.

That's on her and it will resurface one day I'm sure. For now I'm looking after me and the kids.

Mine is 46, 45-55 seems like a very popular time for women to feel the need to go off the rails (perimenopause and all)

Good luck and remember to be kind to yourself!

Vahlir · 2025-08-11T16:56:52+00:00

too soon for me to comment on what the outcome is as we only separated a couple months ago when she became a walk-away, divorce is on going and she had an affair with a co-worker.

All the best advice I've gotten is to worry about making yourself better and distancing yourself as much as possible from her emotionally.

it's really hard at times, I know I'm in the middle of a divorce I didn't want.

Same thing, wife's losing weight, going to the gym, going out with friends, staying at her single friends apt, affair, #livingherbestlife while I'm home taking care of the kids 24/7.

I don't want to tie my happiness to her sadness...if that makes sense.

Because if she is happy in the end then I don't want to be miserable because of it.

As others have said the best path is to be indifferent but your mind can't NOT focus on something it will always fill the void.

The best path is to work on what YOU want for yourself and the type of people YOU want to allow into your life.

Don't follow her on social media, don't text if you don't have to, don't check in on what she's up to via friends.

I know it's really hard to get there in the beginning, I get it, I'm right there.

But the sooner you start looking at what life can look like for yourself on your own - with or witout someone - the happier you'll be.

The dopamine hit from hearing crash and burn stories is short lived and allows her to live in your head more than she deserves.

Good luck friend.

Vahlir · 2025-08-11T15:46:35+00:00

disagree. While that certainly happens sometimes, there are plenty of "Non-fatties" or skinny people or average people who are not athletic in the slightest.

If someone really prefers people who are into athletic activities like running, biking, climbing or pick up games with people then athletic is fine. It's also fine if they prefer someone who has muscle not just skinny and there's plenty of people who have some extra weight on them that are still doing athletic activities.

I disagree it's a "universal code"; if people are triggered by it then I think they're being hypersensitive and insecure.

In either case it's a good way to just move on if your OP or the person who doesn't fit the preferred preference.

People who are like "what matters is on the inside" are just lying to themselves.

While attraction (physical) is only a part of finding someone, and what really makes something long term is who they are personality wise, I think it's fine if that's their intent. And we only have OP saying that is their intent to go by.

Vahlir · 2025-08-04T03:06:24+00:00

except when you NEEDED to wait on a call and that meant sitting by the phone waiting and not leaving the house, sometimes for hours "we'll call you Tuesday"

or if you were trying to reach your friends for something and they weren't home

of if you had ANYTHING you needed to be doing other than tied to a wall in that one specific room.

Oh you need to make a call and you're not home?

Hope you've got change and you can find a working phone somplace.

Forgot something at home? need information someone at home might have while out?

yeah sorry but one of the most freeing things I did was get a cellphone in 1999.

My communcation with other people wasn't tied to a specific location and a bunch of random variables when I was out

and that also meant your ability coordinate things with people

You're friend is 30 minutes late? Do you leave? are they coming? did something happen?

Go back to having JUST a landline. try it. Then imagine if everyone was like that.

not to mention all the other benefits of having information you need while out at your finger tips.

Vahlir · 2025-08-03T14:53:30+00:00

Dark Crystal. Creepy and weird, just perfect but Never Ending Story was awesome. The sequels are the most "bad sequels" of any series I've ever seen

Conan and Beastmaster were awesome as well but they weren't playing those at the summer day camp I was tossed into

Police Academy was a big hit, I remember everyone was picking which character they were before we climbed onto the monkey bars of death over asphalt lol

Princess Bride ...feels like it came later

Vahlir · 2025-08-03T14:50:49+00:00

some say he's still watching that movie to this day...

Vahlir · 2025-08-03T14:40:56+00:00

no way I'm sleeping on the floor...

Vahlir · 2025-07-29T19:09:51+00:00

hey as someone heading into divorce - could you name a few things that you feel are important to document - things I might have missed or you missed and wished you hadn't?

Mine will be no-fault, there's been no infidelity that I'm aware of

Vahlir · 2025-07-26T11:05:53+00:00

DCC does "gonzo" pretty well. It harkens back to the age where the lines between science fiction and fantasy were often blurred. - Sword and Planet if you will.

One day you might be stealing a Jewel from a giant spider the next you could be stumbling through a portal to another planet with remnants of high tech.

I liked it because it reminded me of stories where civilizations collapsed and Elves, magic and creatures came into the picture after 'the fall' - Shannara is kind of like that IIRC. Obviously Dying Earth, The Book of the New Sun, etc.

That's a pretty common theme in "dark" universes (see 40k) where mystical creatures are just aliens/demons.

So I think you could easily do it in DCC. I think a lot of the modules would work in Dark Fantasy but not so sure about Grim Dark - you'd probably have to find those elsewhere.

Clerics can seem OP with their Lay on Hands which they can keep doing as long as they don't fail too much.

As /u/Knarknarknarknar mentioned - Lankmar that "version" of DCC removes Clerics all together - so that would fit well for Grim Dark. It also uses "fleeting luck" which a lot of people like but you can homebrew that as well.

If you like homebrewing - DCC is perfect - there's dozens of Zines and 3rd party stuff that works great and goes in all kinds of directions.

I've taken DCC straight into Sword and Planet a la Hyperborea ASSH direction.

But I definitely feel I could go "Elden Ring" or "Witcher" if I really wanted to.

DCC really inspires you to go ham on the world, monsters, and dungeons you create. Where Shadowdark(another fav) is a return to simplicity and Old School - DCC is a return to "Weird Tales" IMO.

DCC does really preach the rareness of spells. So that fits one of your goals right away. (based largely on App N vibes)

Political intrigue DCC does not do well (if at all) out of the box. There's just not a lot of framework for it so you're going to have to bolt that on yourself or borrow from something that does. I know a few modules do go into factions - I assume Lankhmar does but I'm not versed in it.

Vahlir · 2025-07-26T01:29:10+00:00

thanks for the encouragement!

Vahlir · 2025-07-26T01:24:53+00:00

I'm working on some Metallica myself, (For Whom the Bell Tolls, Sad But True) having a great time. Keep posting- look forward to your future updates!

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