I have an appointment to see my attorney Tuesday about separation. I would like to show him the letter before I give it to her.

Please let me know if you have any ideas or advise. GTO

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Dear Wife,

It is with much sorrow and despair that I write this letter to you. I am sad beyond compare for what has happened to our marriage and our family. Please know that this letter is not from spite, anger, revenge or as a punishment. Instead, the actions I must now take are those of self preservation. Regardless of how we find ourselves here less than three and half years after being blessed with DD, I still find that my heart has a hole in it from you not being available to me and our family. I love you in a special way that I hope someday you will recognize as the most pure form of love you were ever exposed to. It is my prayer that we are able to reconcile and rebuild a “new” marriage from the ashes of this pain and hurt. One that allows us both to understand and meet the needs of each other in a selfless, respectful and ever growing way. I still am proud to be your husband and am still proud that you are the mother of our beautiful daughter.

We had a lot of wonderful times over the past 23 years of our relationship. There are beautiful memories of Ohio State Football Games, summers at the Creek, Prom, walking off the field with you after high school football games, Ft Lauderdale and Miami, The Bahamas, Puerto Rico, St Thomas/St Martins, The Everglades, Cincinnati, Toronto and other wonderful trips. There are wonderful memories of DD growing from our little Buddha baby to the beautiful little princess she is today. There are trials and tribulations we went through with infertility, almost 4 years, only to finally give it all up to God and he led us to China and our little miracle. I will never forget holding your shaking hands as you said I do on our wedding day and then holding you and crying as we laid DD on the bed in our hotel room that first day in Changsha. These and many other moments I will never forget. I will always remember with fondness your quirky laugh when you were really tickled about something or wrestling with you and DD on our bed or how we comforted one another with the loss of Noobie and even Guinness. I loved spending the holidays with you and our families. I felt so close to you during these times.

As I have already discussed with you how I am deeply sorry for my failure to meet certain needs of yours within our marriage. As I told you, you mean the world to me and if my sensitivity had been better or our ability to respect and communicate with one another had been better I have no doubt that I would not be writing this letter today. One thing for sure, if I would have been able to determine that you were hurting in some way from not having an important need met I would have overturned heaven and earth to try and figure out how to meet it better. With God’s help and through determined learning, I will become a better husband, father and Christian. I hope someday I have the opportunity to show you the man I am becoming. I think given the chance you might like him.

That said, this process of wanting so badly for you to see the light and come out of the fog of the affair you had and the lifestyle you were living and seem to be continuing with and your unwillingness to do so has left me tired, bruised, hurting and most importantly with a feeling that I hate, which is that I may be losing those wonderful feelings I once had and to some degree am able to still have for you. At this time there is no chance for our marriage to begin “anew” as long as the temptation to contact or see the other man by staying in a job that offers the opportunity and the means to see and speak with him, is a priority in your life. When and if the infatuation wears off for this other person and other life or this new life you have chosen becomes a burden, perhaps then there will be a chance for us to talk about building a new and better marriage.

From now forward, I will conduct all child exchanges with you through our parents. I would appreciate it if you would go to another room or simply not be around when these exchanges are made. The sight of you in the state you are currently in helps to further erode the good feelings and love I still have for you. This is my request and I hope it is one that you can honor. In order to provide DD with stability I believe that it would be in her best interest if we follow the following schedule. Monday and Tuesday’s she will be with you, Wednesday and Thursday’s she will be with me and we will alternate weekends. In order not to disrupt DD any more than this already will, I recommend that on the weekends that I have her, that I return to the home and that you find other living arrangements. I understand if this does not work for you and thus will plan on bringing DD to my parent’s house on those weekends that she will be with me.

If you need to contact me please do so through my mom or through your parents. In an absolute emergency you may still call me on my cell phone.

I will be living with my mom. With your salary and my commitment to give you $XXXX.00 a month (which should cover the mortgage plus additional costs), there should be no problem with you being able to pay for the household expenses. Of course you may need to get rid of a few luxuries such as the internet and cable TV, but we lived without these items most of our lives. I will keep a duplicate supply of groceries, toys and clothing on hand at my parents house and will routinely buy DD necessary clothing, toys, etc. I will continue to share in any of the finances where DD is concerned. I will also continue to keep you and DD on my health and dental insurance. But please be aware, that by giving you XXXX dollars a month I have left my self very little money to survive on my own, it will barely meet the monthly cost of gas and food.

In closing, I hold out hope that the beautiful, smart, Christian, caring, giving, loving, dependable and loyal woman that I was so proud to marry in the Methodist Church over 12 years ago will find her way to the surface someday. I think she and the man I intend to become might have a lot in common and would make a great team. Until such time, and in order to preserve what love and feelings I have left for you I feel that I must separate myself from all of the pain and devastation left in the wake of your decision to go outside your marriage to get your needs met. By doing this it will allow me to remember the reason I fell in love with you in the first place and will keep you a small place in my heart that is all your own.

I will be willing to discuss our future together as soon as you:

Be willing to help come up with a plan to save our marriage.
This plan should include the following:
Permanently separate/have absolutely no contact with him.
Remove yourself from your work situation, whether that is a transfer to another school or quitting your job.
Construct a plan to ensure a complete separation from him.
Cut off all contact with any "special friends" who have enabled your relationship with him to continue.
Begin an open and honest dialog about what took place these past two years.
Remove all the walls that you have created in order to shut me out of your life.

Until that time I will continue to pray for our family and us.


Your loving husband

Without knowing your full situation, I can guess that you have already put in quite an effort. It is a shame that it has to come to this but I understand for sure. If/when I find myself at the same point, I will be cutting and pasting a lot of this text into my letter. It is smart, concise, and full of feeling. Good luck and God bless.

Thanks phoenix, I hope it never comes to this for you!!

God Bless and Good Luck!!

Definately...... The only thing that snapped out at me was the $$$$..... That's where you need to talk with the ATTY, definately don't want to offer more than you'd be giving if this leads to divorce because then you've established a standard of living.....

Agree with LH, you don't want to pay anything more than what you absolutely have to by LAW. Her actions have led to this D, why hand her all the benefits of a married woman when she doesn't want to be married? Let her see what it will be like as a single woman with no H to carry her.

I'm not familiar with your situation. If you have a history thread, would you mind posting a link to it?

I echo ML's sentiments. You did nothing wrong. Why should you be the one to move out? Why let your WW stay in the home? Why give her a dime?

Have you cut the financial ties or at least frozen them? Joint savings/checking/retirement accounts? Credit cards?

I read somewhere that WS's have little or no attention span for anything resembling reality. Your letter is heartfelt and well written, but she might not read past the first paragraph or two.

Also - you might want to edit your post; later in the paragraph where you mention $XXXX.00 you go on to name a number.

GTO,

So like this is a big old Plan B letter, correct?

Ditto on the bucks. If you make it too comfortable for her why would she consider coming back?

""As I have already discussed with you how I am deeply sorry for my failure to meet certain needs of yours within our marriage. As I told you, you mean the world to me and if my sensitivity had been better or our ability to respect and communicate with one another had been better I have no doubt that I would not be writing this letter today.""

Seems wimpy and like you are taking the blame for the deal. Couldn't you leave out this paragraph? (Since you already discussed this with her?)

Does she know this is coming?

Good for you for standing up for yourself!!

k

Edited to read: OH YEAH, DON'T YOU DARE MOVE OUT OF YOUR HOUSE!! Of course if she won't, there could be a problem.

LH,

I agree with the others about the $$$. Your attorney should advise you on what your state requires for child support based on your income and the fact that you will be sharing equal time with your DD. I wouldn't give a penny more than is required.

I also assume that there will be no spousal support paid. I think that while in your heart you want to be generous, but by making this financially easy for WW, you are possibly encouraging her to continue in her waywardness (if that is even a word).

I think that it often takes the financial reality of actually living separately and paying for it that brings some WS's out of the FOG and back to reality.

JMO, FWIW.

Who

Ok, I'll try and answer some of this. I agree that I am probably being too generious with the money and that I might be setting a standard which she could use in the divorce.

We still have joint savings and checking accounts. I did open a new savings and checking account, I just haven't put anything in it.

I'll look at the wimpy section and see what I can come up with.