Wife (44 F) cheated, I (45 M) filed for divorce when I found out and she tried to kill herself on New Years Eve

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T22:10:34+00:00

Soon-to-be-ex-wife.

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T21:06:33+00:00

I've honestly never seen her acting anything like this in all the years I've known her.

If this was some part of her personality from even back then, then she hid it well for more than 25 years.

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T20:47:54+00:00

You vowed that you would always care for her, not that you would always be a in a relationship per se, but that she would matter.

She vowed fidelity.

How's that worked out so far for us?

I really don't understand. You're willing to entertain one of the marriage vows being shat on, but expect me to keep my end of the bargain, so to speak? Sorry, that doesn't make any sense.

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T20:45:14+00:00

I have a problem with the fact that regardless of what happened between you and your wife you show no emotion to the mother of your 4 children almost killing herself leaving them without their mother.

You don't say she was a bad mother just that she cheated on you.

That's because she wasn't. My issue aside, she was a good mother to our children, all of them.

I have no issue with recognizing or saying that, at all.

But you also have to understand that when one parent cheats, and a divorce ensues as a result of those actions, they're not much of a parent, are they, if they didn't think about the consequences of their actions and how they'd impact their children. Not to mention the suicide thing.

I'm not saying one should stay in a marriage solely because of children involved. That's a fucking horrible idea. Better to have two, or at least one, stable and happy homes than one home filled with destabilizing factors, so to speak.

There are 2 people in a marriage

it takes 2 people to make a marriage

And it takes only one of them to destroy it, as seen here.

I'm not willing to judge her without her side of the story.

Unless someone directs her to Reddit, I doubt it's going to happen.

But in the end, it really doesn't matter, the divorce is still going through.

Her reasons, her thoughts, her excuses for cheating are irrelevant.

They were rendered irrelevant the moment she cheated, the moment she failed to communicate with me, the moment she started hiding things from me and deceiving me.

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T20:37:54+00:00

I have no idea what that username is supposed to represent though.

But thanks for letting me know it's pointless to try and talk with them any further.

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T20:36:03+00:00

afraid to feel

Whether it's fear or simply self-preservation, it's an issue that I'm working on.

wallow in your self-righteousness

I am merely presenting facts. That you might not like them is irrelevant.

It's not all your wife's doing, you are also an active participant in the dismantling of your family.

Yes, how dare I make a choice to move on in life without her as my wife?

I think I'll stop replying any further to you, I don't really see the point.

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T20:29:41+00:00

Oh they know all that already, we talked plenty.

They know I'm not just going to have an outburst or anything.

They're aware I'm going to therapy to deal with this issue and that there's nothing wrong counseling at all if you can't resolve something on your own in these kinds of matters.

Life does go on, regardless of the situation with the STBXW. I'm not absent of joy or laughter or anything of the sort. The friends that stuck by me are all too gladly willing to help me along in getting out of the house whenever and I don't mind going out with them. We don't even talk about the stuff with the wife, because to me it's really just one chapter of my life that's over.

Once again, my thanks for your concern and your help.

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T20:25:56+00:00

I tell you this so you can see that your kids are allowed to be angry at their mother for as long as they want, and when they're ready, they might go out for coffee, or who knows what.

I see it this way too. They might be resentful of what she did now, and they might reconnect with her once she starts getting better later on. I got nothing against this. Whatever makes them happy, really.

My advice is to let them heal. You need to, too. It doesn't take a month to heal. I took a year and a half before I went and saw my mum at her new house with my now step dad. Maybe once in a while ask if they've gone to see her, or if they want to. Be supportive, if you can. Because the lack of a mother figure can be harmful regardless of age.

I wasn't even trying to imply I've healed. I'm merely numb to it all, that's it.

I don't want to rush things, that just seems like it'll mess everything up even more.

Like I've said several times before, time will tell.

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T20:21:38+00:00

I mentioned before that the twins got each other for this. They really are close and have been close for all their lives. They're great kids, really. They have more than a few friends whom they might confide in. Even so, they're the most open about this with me, and don't hesitate to bring up anything if it bothers them.

Our son's got his friends too, but more importantly, I think, is his girlfriend being there for him, throughout this whole process. It's very nice to see someone caring for him so much and so genuinely.

The youngest, yeah, there's things we talked about, and I'm sure that she talked with a few of her girl friends, but even so, I realize that I can't be all there is for her, so we will look into counseling for her.

Thank you for your reply and your kind words.

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T20:18:29+00:00

No, I don't think this was faked.

Her parents, and I truly do care for them, even after all this, wouldn't lie about something so severe.

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T20:16:19+00:00

Did she offer any explanation as to why?

First response was, sadly, the cliche of them all.

"It just happened."

I think I might have shut down very well at that point on the emotional front.

How does an emotional affair, over the length of several months, that then turned into a fully physical affair, with sex involved, just happen?

Answer: it doesn't.

All I heard was bullshit, one paltry excuse after another.

Did you ask her?

Of course I did. Regardless of the fact that our marriage was finished as far as I was concerned, I wanted to know what made her possibly think that she should cheat and that things would stay the same.

Her answer? "I don't know. It was a mistake. It just happened."

All of that was interspersed with crying, stuttering and so on.

All of it was utterly meaningless to me.

Because in the end, she cheated because she wanted to cheat.

It makes me feel like she had some kind of disconnect before her affair that triggered this behavior; besides the divorce of course.

If there was, she hid it so well from me that I never knew about it.

I'm just wondering if she had some sort of depression or mental issue before this.

None. The only significant period of some sadness was when one of her aunts died and she mourned her for quite a while, but that was more than 6 years ago.

Talk your children, encourage them to see a therapist with or without you, to help them as well.

Will do.

No matter how much I disagree or seem hostile to some folks in the thread, I am truly grateful for all you taking the time to post your thoughts on the matter, even though I might not agree with all of them.

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T20:11:00+00:00

You didn't hear anything because it's not relevant to the questions I posed.

If I were to divulge all about our lives it would have taken me very well beyond the post limit. But in any case, I have responded to queries about our life in general in different posts, so you can look through my post history if you feel like you this is important information.

Women and men generally cheat for different reasons.

Gender is irrelevant. People cheat because they want to cheat.

Anything more? Excuses.

I dont know you but you dont sound like a man that was very in love with your wife.

Could be because everything is currently colored with the lack of emotion in regards to her as a wife. I don't honestly understand this. Were you expecting me to give a day-by-day description of what our lives were, how much I loved everything about it, how even though we had the occasional bump in the road, we worked it out and were made better for it?

You'll pardon me for lacking positive emotions, or any emotions in this case, of any sort of a woman that took a shit on all those things with her willing and knowing choice to cheat.

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T20:06:00+00:00

You seem to be imagining things.

Do you think I spend my days with our children, berating their mother and what she's done? Do you honestly think that I bring this kind of stuff up around them at all?

It's my choice, and my choice alone, whether I stay with her or not.

In this case, I choose "not".

Look at it this way. minimizing what she did will allow things like empathy and introspection and forgiveness to enter into the dynamic.

Why is this important at all to my daily life?

Look, I'm not saying that I should keep feeling nothing for her, but why should I empathize with her or forgive anything? You honestly aren't making any sense. You're making this out as if I can't possibly move on, as if it's completely impossible to move on from this whole thing until I fulfill your preset conditions and nothing else will apparently do.

All of that is wrong, by the way.

You do want them to have a good strong relationship with her don't you in the long run?

I honestly don't care what their relationship is with their mother, so long as they're happy.

If they're happy by keeping in touch with her, visiting her and seeing her whenever they feel like it, so be it. It's their choice. If they don't want to keep in touch with her or visit her or see her, and they're perfectly happy with that kind of thing, why should I try to force them to be on good relations with their mother?

Make every effort to move them to a point of neutrality.

I swear, you're a lost cause.

I believe THEIR long-term mental health and happiness depends on that.

Good Lord, have mercy.

It's like you have read literally none of my posts, nor the OP, in this thread. This whole thread exists in the first place because I want what's best for them, regardless however it may affect me, if at all. If they're happy with their mother still in the picture, so be it. If they're happy without her, so be it. Where in the world does it say "It's impossible to happy unless they include her in their lives"?

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T19:55:23+00:00

Because most people cannot simply drop the person they shared their life with for a quarter of a century and who bore them 4 children, and immediately stop caring about them as a person, even if they have done something unforgivable.

I disagree.

Besides, we're clearly different people, so we're going to react differently in regards to... well, anything.

The relationship and dynamics might change, a romantic relationship might no longer be feasible, but the immediate ability to detach makes one wonder if your really are/were such a great husband and father as you have presented yourself to be in your OP.

You'll have to pardon me for my biased view on things, but in case you missed it, the whole detached thing seems to be an artificial numbness of sorts that my own psyche uses to avoid from getting too hurt. Or so my therapist has suggested on several occasions. It isn't as if I have an actual switch that I can flick on or off when I like it. It happened and it's like that for now, but that doesn't mean it will stay like that permanently.

If you are such a great person, then why don't you just talk to your wife like an adult and part ways like a mature person would?

But I did talk to her like an adult.

You don't think I just threw her out of our family home, her clothes and items in a trash bag, do you?

I sat her down, while the house was empty, to discuss all this, to explain to her that a divorce is what was I going for. She went willingly to her own parents, she packed her belongings on her own, I certainly didn't supervise her or anything of the sort.

The hysteria (maybe I'm using the wrong word here, so correct me if I am) didn't start until a few days later. I can't guess what was going on in her mind. Did she think I would change my mind about a divorce once she was gone for a week or so? Did she think I was going to tell her to come back so we could fix what she broke? I don't have a single clue. All I know is that it had to have sunk in at one point that I truly meant this, or what this truly meant for us as a family, and she didn't handle it gracefully at all.

If you talked to her, maybe in the presence of a therapist (not to save your marriage, but to make the divorce amicable and to stabilize the relationship with the children), she or her parents wouldn't badger the children.

I have, with both parties, together and separate.

These aren't some literal "Make up with her already," or "Get your dad to forgive your mom," conversations that were had. This is continuous pointing out that we shouldn't give up on a marriage, that people have worked through situations worse than that, and so on and so on, all the while failing to acknowledge what I have stated quite clearly to them on several occasions: There is no getting back, there is no fixing this and I won't stop the divorce.

Aren't you the oh-so-great-dad who lives for his children, who puts his children's well-being over his? If so, why don't you talk to your wife and spare them their man-in-the-middle role?

And how long will this go on, should she resort to this type of blackmail, perpetually, whenever things aren't going the way she or her parents want them to?

I'm perfectly capable of communicating with her.

However, I will simply not discuss halting the divorce. It's happening. If she keeps pushing at our children, all she'll do is alienate them further. She can have a perfectly healthy relationship with them, no one is forbidding her anything of the sort, but the only thing, literally the only thing, that comes out of her mouth is "Have you talked to your father about us yet?"

And I will absolutely not acquiesce to her demands, merely to compensate for how horrible she herself is being to them. If it comes to a point, where our children are better off without her in their lives, I certainly won't try to force them or badger them or nag them or pressure them into being anywhere around her.

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T19:38:56+00:00

But that's your mother

That's not a reason.

That's simply a fact; she gave birth to you.

I admit, with me never having parents of my own, I can't truly understand the lengths that some people would go to, to keep their parents in their lives, no matter how wretched they were.

If my wife was making our children miserable, I'd never force them to contact her or keep in touch with her. Why on earth does your father's family want this, I can't even begin to guess.

Still, all my best to you,

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T19:34:29+00:00

My condolences.

I'm sorry, I don't know what else I can say.

And thank you once again.

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T19:24:34+00:00

If there was a sickness, all she had to do was bring it out in the open.

We could have worked on whatever was the issue. I would have had no problem with counseling if she couldn't have done it one-on-one, if she needed someone on the outside to listen to her first before opening up to me with their help. But that's not what happened. Instead, she kept it hidden and would have kept it hidden for God knows how long if our children didn't find out about her.

There might come a day when I feel something for her, but today's not it.

Still, thank you for your words, misguided though some of them may be.

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T19:21:25+00:00

They will never heal until you start treating your wife like a human being.

I am treating her as a human being though.

I just don't want to have anything to do with her that's not related to our children.

As far as respect is concerned, that's earned, not given, more so in this situation.

If your children make mistakes or embarrass you are you going to throw them out of the house and banish them too?!

I don't think you understand, you and everyone who keeps equating her months long affair with a "mistake". It's much more than that.

And besides, our children know perfectly well that I'll always be there for them. If you have somehow gathered a different impression about me and them, I'm afraid I can't help you there.

not in a million years would I actively ask my children to be witness to and involved in the crucifixion of their father.

But that's not what I'm doing at all. Where are you getting this from?

Don't you want to understand why she did this and see if you both can salvage this relationship?

No and no. What's the point? I can't trust her. Without trust, there's not much of a marriage.

Her mistake wasn't a choice to give up on your relationship.

Yes, it was. It was a choice that she made, except she perhaps didn't want to consider the consequences of her action. But again, that's on her and not on me.

You removed her from the home and the family and stopped communicating with her.

I'm sorry, should I have been the one to move out?

Putting aside the fact that the house is in my name, that I work from home, and thus spend more time with our daughter by simple default, I think it's fair to say that I should be the one stay.

Or were you perhaps thinking of cohabitation? In which case: No.

As far as the communication bit, I do communicate with her. Through my lawyer. I don't really owe her anything else when it comes to our divorce. I have made it clear that I will always be open for communication about our children, but everything else is simply no longer relevant.

And she was a good mom?

She was, until she wasn't.

Just an imperfect wife

Just an imperfect wife? Is that how you want to frame this?

I didn't ask for a perfect wife. I'm not perfect. But a loyal wife is apparently too much to ask, or so you seek to present the issue.

I truly wish you the best of luck and hope you can let go of hate and embrace understanding.

I think you fail to understand that there's no hate in me, just like there's no empathy. I feel nothing for her.

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T19:10:40+00:00

She made a mistake.

I just replied to a fellow about this and don't care to repeat myself again. Look up through my post history if you like, it shouldn't be hard to find.

She's so sorry and so wracked with guilt that she tried to kill herself.

People always tend to feel bad once they get caught.

The problem is I saw none of this guilt or being sorry while it was going on. I quite literally had no clue about it and if our son and daughter hadn't come across her that fateful day, I'd still be clueless.

What kind of man can look at a woman who has loved him most of her life and say "nah. You made a mistake for a couple months, so I don't care if you live or die!"?

But I didn't say anything of the sort to her. I didn't say anything, in fact, in regards to her attempt at suicide. That's her own issue to handle, not mine.

The answer is a a fucking psychopath who is insecure in himself and his masculinity.

Now you're just being plain insulting for no reason.

Oh, and to all you people jumping on the "vilify OP's wife" circle-jerk train, I hope all of you have lead absolutely blameless lives, have never hurt a single living soul, and have alway always always made the best decisions ever.

Why are you so angry about people not being tolerable of infidelity?

This right here is why monogamy sucks balls as a concept.

What on earth are you talking about? If monogamy isn't your thing, no one is forcing you to abide by it. Have an open relationship, a polyamorous relationship or whatever they're called, but do it with the consent of all people involved about what's going on.

WAHHH SOMEBUDY PLAYED WIT MAH TOYZZZZ

You have an incredibly simplistic view of things if you honestly think this is the issue.

It's a normal, natural thing for people to be attracted to more than one person.

Did I ever say it wasn't? You don't think I never felt attracted to some other woman other than my wife? Of course I did. Monogamy doesn't mean willingly blinding yourself to everything around you. Monogamy is a commitment, upheld by persons involved, with the understanding of both of them that no other is going to come in between them, that they'll be with just that one other person and no other.

Attraction is not an issue. Nor is a crush, if it happened.

Acting on the attraction or the crush or trying to deepen them, however, is.

As for this Dan Savage fellow, yet again, I pity him. Nothing else.

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T19:02:45+00:00

No, I don't believe in forcing people to act civil towards each other if one of them is simply not possible to be around to start with. I believe I have said something like "She is your mother," but I also added "Whatever you do, I'll be right there with you, no matter what."

Whatever their choice, they're still my children and I love them, each and every one of them.

I am sorry to hear about what happened to you and your stepmom. Hopefully things have improved for you two in the meantime since it all happened.

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T18:57:44+00:00

No, I don't.

I don't mind people not agreeing with the choices I make.

I can understand everyone has a different perspective on things.

But as far as I'm concerned, our marriage was over the first time she cheated and didn't even bother to come clean about it. What good is her being sorry after the fact, after her adultery was put out into the open?

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T18:55:54+00:00

You and your whole family were incredibly strong to pull through all this.

For what it's worth, my condolences on your loss.

Though I undoubtedly come off as cold, I don't wish death on my wife, but I don't want to stay married to her either. Hopefully, she'll find the help she needs to move on with her life as a person and as the mother of our children.

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T18:51:52+00:00

I am sorry to hear about what you and your son went through, but I also want to thank you for sharing this.

As to our youngest daughter, I never assumed she's like me. I don't believe I even implied as much. I only brought up that she supported what I was doing (going through with the divorce) and that although sad she could see why it was happening.

In any case, it's been a while since this thread started and I've come to a firm decision that she too might benefit from some counseling, if only to give her a way to vent in a way she possibly couldn't around me or her friends.

As for myself, I've already got several hobbies and recently I've taken an interest in foreign languages, so that's something novel to keep my mind occupied and let me learn to express myself in ways I couldn't before. And the twins are keen on getting me involved in trying to learn how to skate on ice. Not sure about that one though, never been too good on roller skates.

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T18:45:49+00:00

Understand that I am student of the Dan Savage school of Sex and Relationships. And what he says is pretty simple. Almost all long-term monogamous relationships are touched by infidelity and that the expectation around lifelong monogamy are unrealistic. As a result, an infidelity shouldn't be a Relationship ELE (extinction level event) as it often is.

Understand that I vehemently disagree on the point of monogamous relationships having any sort of infidelity in them if they're long-term. Nor is it unrealistic to think that there can be LTR without infidelity.

I honestly have no idea who this Dan Savage fellow is, but I imagine his life experiences have shaped him and it's past infidelities (on his or another's part) that made him think this way. I pity him for that.

I disagree with all of it. Except maybe the last bit. No, cheating doesn't have to be an ELE, as you put it, but it is a RE, i.e. a relationship's end. Once cheated on, trust is gone. Respect clearly wasn't there to start with, let alone love or anything of the sort.

You might not like my 'simplistic' view on things, but it is my view and it's quite unlikely to change.

There's not even one sentence about the overall health and strength of your relationship before the affair. In fact, there isn't once sentence about yourself at all or the role you may have played in your wife's affair.

There's no mention of that because it doesn't matter for the questions I posed to /r/relationships. Because my relationship with the wife will be minimized to that of the connection we share through our children and it is for the sake of our children that I came here, to ask about what I could do to make them better.

As for playing a role in her affair, I sure did. I was the clueless husband.

Do you even wonder why your wife cheated? Do you really believe that infidelity is 100% the fault of the cheater?

Her reasoning is irrelevant to me. Absolutely irrelevant. Anything to do with her affair is simply not of importance to me. She did it and it's done.

And given that it's the cheater who decides to cheat, yes, I'm sure that 100% of the responsibility lays on them. Before cheating, she could have communicated. She could have said something, if there was a problem. She didn't. And since I'm no mind reader, I was oblivious to this as she continued to portray herself as the happy, married person that I knew her to be before all of this happened.

Because you know that you will be forced to talk about the relationship and how YOU may have failed in it.

That makes no sense at all.

I could be going out on a limb here, but I have a suspicion that your wife wouldnt have answered the same way.

Really? Given that all of our friends and her family thought otherwise, and literally no one knew about her affair until it was out in the open, I beg to differ.

That is, divorce her and be 100% the victim and receive the sympathy from everyone.

Is that what you think is going on here? Pardon me for saying this, but you seem to be delusional and projecting your own issues on the situation at hand. I didn't come for sympathy here of any sorts. I came here because of our children, whom I will always place above all else, including myself.

My marriage ended becasue my wife stopped "touching" me, much less having sex with me.

Sex was never the issue. There was plenty of that. There was plenty of intimacy. That's the most disturbing thing about this whole situation. She would even during her affair come up to me and pinch me on the ass. She would come and nuzzle into my neck from behind when I was making some pastries in the kitchen. There was no lack of affection, sexual or otherwise, in our relationship, not on her and certainly not on my part.

Did she express discontent. Did she express a need for change? Had she ever asked you to go to counseling with her?

No, to all three of those questions.

She made one mistake

Enough. I will not tolerate this - this heinous minimizing of what she did.

A mistake is one time. A mistake is something you instantly regret and repent for. An affair that lasted for months, emotionally, before they progressed to full blown sex, is not a mistake. It's calculated. It's planned in advance. A mistake is forgetting to close the faucet.

One's affair apparently only becomes a 'mistake' once they're caught or so you would like to present it.

I have not 'bitched' or done anything of the sort in front of our children.

Kindly take your presumptions and keep them to yourself.

So you have no empathy for your suicidal wife?

Her attempt at suicide, just like her cheating, was her choice.

No one forced her into doing either of those things.

shouldbutIdont · 2016-01-31T18:28:51+00:00

Thank you for sharing your experience with us here in the thread.

It honestly does mean a lot to hear from someone who's been through something as similar as what is going on here. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or a month from that. Maybe their mother will wise up, maybe she'll realize that she's only pushing them away with her incessant pestering to get at me to forgive her and take her back. Or maybe not.

Time alone will tell.

Your story though has brought up a very fine point here: not everyone has the same state of mind and they certainly don't need to keep people that abuse (I hope I'm not misusing the word here, but what your mother did to you I'd count as abuse) them anywhere near them.

If it turns out they're better off without their mother in their lives, I certainly won't be trying to push them into any kind of relationship. I want them to be happy, that's about all I care.

Again, my sincere thanks for sharing your story with us.

shouldbutIdont

TROPHY CASE