Let's see, where to start.

We married in 2000. He had custody of his two children (D 10, S 11). I had custody of my son, 10. Hubby moved here from another state with his two children. We both sold our homes and bought a new one for a fresh start. At the time I was 50 and he was 45.

For the first two years Hubby worked, earned a good living, but traveled a lot. This left me alone to care for his two kids, my son and work a full time job. Then in late 2002, the company he worked for had a layoff because it was badly affected by the 9/11 attack. They laid off thousands of people in the USA. Hubby was one of them.

He got a new job about 1 year later, worked for about 3 months. Then that company had a lay off and all of the new hires were let go. Since then he�s worked about 5 contractor jobs that went for about 2 months each. Last year he worked for the census.

We tried to start a business building web sites and doing computer consulting since he�s a web developer and I�m a software engineer. I still have my full time job. But the idea was that he would be the primary in the business. Once he got it running I could retire and work with him. Well, this has not worked well. He never finishes a project. It was very embarrassing with a few customers to put it mildly. I have put out a lot of money to invest in equipment, software, etc. All of it wasted.

So we come to today. Almost 10 years after his first layoff. I�ve been driven to the poor house being the sole support of him and his children. His children had special needs and big medical bills. I paid that as well. So I�m now financially devastated.

All 3 of the kid are over 20 now. His kids are a mess, into drugs. His daughter is using meth and his son is addicted to heroin. They are both married to some pretty sleazy people. I�ve told them both that they are no longer welcome in my home. My son is 22, in his junior year at college with a 3.8 GPA in Physics and Engineering. He lives at home because I cannot afford to pay for him to live on campus. The campus is about 4 miles from our house so it�s not bad at all. Thank goodness my ex pays for our son�s college tuition and books.

Hubby still does not work or bring in an income. Over the years he�s turned to the computer. His day consists of waking up, signing onto the computer, reading news & sports. He then starts playing games. Sometimes he writes. He has about 4 books partially written. He�s a brilliant writer but again never finishes anything. He does not come to bed until about 2 a.m. In the last two months I have been having him drive me to work and picking me up at the end of the work day. It makes him get out of the house. Otherwise he just sits there all day mostly playing games. I have no doubt that when I�m at work he goes online and has an entire life there that I know little about.

A few months ago I caught him on one of those virtual worlds that is heavily geared towards sex. He had an account there for at least 2 years. Had made up a complete story about himself that was not true. Had friends, a �lover�, etc. He was apparently involved on a daily basis on this site. In the past I have caught him several times doing stuff like this. When he was working, before being laid off, I found that he had several female friends on the internet who he communicated with since before our marriage. He did not tell them when we got married.

When he traveled he had dates with a couple of them when he was in their cities. And yes he had a fling with one of them when he was on travel over a weekend. That�s a whole other story.

So he�s home all day, on the computer, doing who knows what when I�m not here. After years of prodding, and clearly telling him what I need in the way of help around the house if he is not going to work� . in the last few months he has started to do the dishes some and cooks meals a few times a week. He does most of the grocery shopping.. but spends way too much so I�m going to have to take that chore over again. Oh, and he makes sure the dogs have water, food and go out when they want to play and do their business.

A few months ago I took him to a psychologist. No one in their right mind would live the way he does. It�s like he�s afraid to be away from the computer. For example it takes days of prodding to get him to go to the grocery store. I spoke with the doc and explained what is going on. After talking to hubby, the doc came to the conclusion that he has depression, ADD and probably bi-polar. He�s on meds now. They help some. But, except for him doing dishes and cooking a few times a week nothing has really changed.

I�ve read some about computer and internet addiction. My conclusion is that he does have problems like ADD and bi-polar. In talking to his family, the ADD and bi-polar symptoms have always been there. These make the computer/internet addiction very easy to get sucked into. My understanding is that people can get to the point that they live so much in the virtual world that they cannot handle the real world anymore.

Basically I have not had a real marriage for a long time. All of this is draining me financially.

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I want a divorce. I have divorce papers typed up with plans to file after the New Year.

Clearly your marriage has disintegrated into a parent/child relationship, and you really resent him for having to carry the load financially, and it doesn't sound like you're even willing to briefly entertain the possibility of staying married, so - why wait? And why come to a Marriage Building website? Usually the Divorce Board is populated for those whose efforts to recover their marriages were futile because their spouses were never interested or onboard with the program here.

I will assume that you do understand that there's a chance that you may be liable for support, right? You said you are waiting to file the papers, you do have an attorney, yes?

I am sorry to hear of your situation. It takes two actively committed partners to make a marriage work. Please know that you are not responsible for his actions - only your responses. If he is making a pattern of stepping out on you - you are within your rights to end the marriage. (I only caught a glimpse that he might be doing that from what you wrote.)

As you can, learn to forgive him but do not accept his behavior. Through forgiveness we allow God to work on him and through tough love we give him no choice but to listen to God.

Hang in there.

The issue is not just about finances. I have had to have almost 100% responsibility for raising his children from the time they came to live with me; all housework; yard work; bill paying; etc. I listed in the OP the only things I have been able to get him to take responsibility for � and he does those only on a limited basis. Yes it is a parent/child relationship.

The only reason that he is still here is that I have spent several years trying to save this marriage. I�ve used MB for quite some time� Plan A, Plan B, etc. When I found out about his infidelity we read the MB material together and were working on the marriage. But over time he quit participating. So also went to Marriage Encounters to supplement our working on the marriage. If I thought for a minute that there was a way to save the marriage and get him productive again I�d try it. But nothing has worked.

I am at the point now that I strongly believe that he has serious mental health issues that he is not going to get through.

I even tried posting on the main board here for those trying to save their marriage. I thought maybe I could get some help there. Maybe some there had some ideas that could help me save my marriage and get things back on track. Instead I was attacked by the posters on that board. I was told to dump him. I was told that I am a doormat and a lot of other unpleasant things. There was no help or support from them. I was quite honestly shocked since I�ve read the boards a lot over the years. So I abandoned getting any kind of support from the folks on that board. {I posted under a different name which I do not recall now. When I signed on last night the sign-on did not recognize my email address so I guess the account has been deleted.}

I need support. One of the things that have happened with this marriage is that I have lost contact with all of my friends. There has been a rift in my family (siblings) so there is no support there. I came here as a last ditch effort to get some support through this.

In coming here last night I was hoping that I would find a different experience on this divorce board then on the other. I that I would get some support and not mean spirited attacks.
In his state there is a very thin to no chance of him getting support from me. As for an attorney I�m going to try to just get him to sign the papers first. I think he will.

Again I hope I can get support and not hostile responses.

Yes it does. As I mention in the response above, I have tried about everything I can find to get thing back on track. Hubby is just so much in his own world that he does not seem to have any interest. As long as he can live in this little computer world undisturbed his life is fine according to him.

He does recognize that our marriage is totally destroyed and says he wants to fix it. But he does nothing. Just like he says he wants to build our business, but he does nothing to do that. I could go on and on about the things he says he wants to do but does not do.


This I know. For some time I was looking to myself, to fix myself. But have come to realize that he is living in this world he has created and really does not respond to much outside of it.


I did not go into this much in the OP. But yes in the past he did step out quite a bit. But now, again, everything is on the computer. He does not leave the house usually for anything except an occasional trip the grocery store and to drive me to work.

For a long time we had a radical honesty policy and I had the password to his computer, could access it across our home network, etc. But in more recent years he has stopped cooperating with that. For example we no longer have a home network. He always has an excuse as to why he cannot set it up anymore. He keeps saying he will give me his computer password but does not.

I do think that he is continuing to doing things on the computer, over the internet, that amount to online affairs. I have caught him over and over when I check his computer� the few times he forgets to lock his screen.

I have contemplated getting something that captures what he is doing so I can verify. He keeps his system password protected. I cannot put a key stroke monitor on his computer because of this. I cannot use one of the hardware (USB) key stroke monitors on his computer because he keeps it on his desk where he can see the entire thing. He used to build computers from scratch, so he knows everything on his computer and would notice something different.

I have forgiven him for a lot, I�m really at the point of not accepting the behavior. What he does is between him and God.

Thanks.

You said you tried Plan B.

What happened when you did that?

Em

That's a nasty thing to say: that people who took the time to try and help you with your situation "attacked" you! I think your post is horribly ungrateful. I very much doubt that you were attacked by the kind people here. You FELT attacked because you were told that your situation was dire and that you should get out.

If people used the word "doormat", it was to urge you not to be one. It was to tell you that you should be seeking a higher standard of behaviour than you were getting from your H, and that if he did not see that he was unworthy of you. People here were trying to get the best for you, which you would probably see if you read through their posts today, with the benefit of distance.

Dr Harley advises people to leave their marriages when they are being ill-treated continuously. MB is not a "marriage at all costs" programme and people will try to wake you up when they see that staying in the marriage is only prolonging the ill-treatment. That is not "attacking" you. You should take that back.

I�m sorry if you think it�s a nasty thing to say that they attacked me. I posted when I was very vulnerable. The responses I got were far from helpful. They served only to chase me away. Sometimes people can be very harsh on forums, not realizing how harsh they are being.

I would love to find that thread today to show what was said to me. It was not helpful. It was actually extremely hurtful and drove me away. It has taken me about 3 years to even try to post here again. When I posted last night I did so with great reservations, concerned that I would again get that sort of reply.

Of course I should seek a higher standard of behavior from my husband. I have been seeking that. But if he chooses to not behave better there is nothing I can do about that. No one can make another person do anything.

And then what do I do to get him to leave when he refuses? When he has no income and nowhere to go? I could throw his stuff out the window, push him out the door and lock it. Then what? He calls the police and tell them that I will not permit him into his residence? They will tell me that I have to let him back in. Yes they will. If he goes to the court they will tell me I have to let him back in and support him. This is not an easy thing.


I am very much aware of everything Dr. Harley has written and this point you make.

You did not see the post so you have no way of judging what was and was not said. The net result was I felt that I could not get any support or help of any kind from the board.

I believe that I have mentally ill husband. It is not the same as a person who is willfully being abusive. There are different considerations when this is the case. I have watched him disintegrate over the years to a man who is afraid to leave the house� he apparently only feels safe when he�s on the computer. I have hardly even touched on the things that he does that make his mental illness clear. This is not a �normal� situation.

Dealing with a mentally ill person is not the same as being a doormat. There are specific difficulties in a case where mental illness is a primary factor.

Good luck with that attitude towards other posters, Gabby.

Can you remember any specifics from your previous posts that can be searched? A particular unique phrase?

You siad dealing with a mentally ill person is not the same as being a doormat. I don't think anyone disagrees with you.

Would you answer the question about your Plan B, and how it went, since you said you did it?

What was your posting name? I have been here for 10 years and the only times I have seen BS's "attacked" was when I was new to the board and we were routinely attacked by OW and WW's. I was attacked in a call out thread by a foggy OW my first week here. We were torn apart if we dared say anything derogotory about adultery. The board has changed dramatically since then, though. But if someone told you that you were being a "doormat", I don't consider that an "attack," but just constructive advice that you probably needed to hear but didn't WANT to hear.

What was your posting name?

Gabby, sometimes posters don't want to hear what they're being told. You came here once before and received advice. You're saying you didn't get the help you thought you would. So you disregarded it and called it an attack. And now you find yourself back here, again. What does that tell you? Maybe you should have listened to the 'attacks'? That maybe they weren't attacks, after all?

Is that your own personal theory or has he really been diagnosed as such? What is his "mental illness?"

I've been trying to do that. If I come up with it i'll post the link.

I have to take care of something around here and then I can come back and response to the Plan B question.

Gabby, I think I found your old thread. Is this it? my marriage/life is a mess

In what way? Does he hear voices? Is he physically abusive to you, your children or himself? Have you helped him get to a doctor? Have you made any arrangements to protect your children from this mentally ill man?

I did Plan A/B in late 2001 when I found out about the affair. Since this was some time ago, I�m trying to remember what all went on.

He was not having the kind of affair where there was someone living in our town. It was over the internet with one encounter in a town he traveled to on business.

He did not move out. He had to go on an extended business trip. I told him that when the trip was over he could not come home unless he agreed to do certain things� ending all contact with the woman he had the fling with, and ending all on-line relationships with anyone, never going into chat again without my knowledge, giving me the passwords to every account he had on line and on his computer, and us working through the MB material together and agreeing to live by those concepts.

He agreed to do all of it.

When he came home from the trip, we worked the plan. He wrote letters, one to the woman he had the fling with and another to send to the women he had chat friendships with.

He gave me all of his passwords, monitored his accounts and his computer for a long time. At that time we still had a network in our home so I was able to do it whenever I wanted from my computer to his.

Working through the MB material together went very well. We basically followed MB to the letter. I thought that our marriage was going very well. I of course had problems dealing with my pain over the affair. But otherwise it was going very well.

Things deteriorated some time probably in 2004, after he�d been laid off twice. He sent out hundreds of resumes, did a lot of interviews. But he was not hired by anyone. The recruiters he was working with told him that the employers kept picking the younger candidates. And from there things went downhill.

I am back here because I know I have a problem and want support in handling it. Now that the old post has been found I re-read it. Much of it was very helpful. There were two particular statements that turned me away.

Stop making a fool out of yourself. He certainly is having no trouble having a laugh over you.�

�The mindset is, YAY, I dont have to work! I can sit here all day if I want. My wife will work and make the money. I can sit here and smoke all day and waste time. She can work! YAY I got it easy. YAY!!!!!�

I�m sorry but those posts are not helpful. I don�t even think they are true. I think that he�s in a deep depression and has some serious mental illness issues. He has spoken to me in the past about being deeply ashamed of himself but that he is unable to move forward.

Thanks for finding that MelodyLane. I have reread the thread. Some of it was helpful. But there are the parts that were not�

He has been diagnosed. It took a long time to get him to agree to go. He's on medication. It helps some. But he still will not get off the computer but for an hour here or there.