F4L,
I know this is going to sound harsh, but you have exactly the marriage that you want, why are you complaining. Yes, your H had an affair, and yes he is difficult, but he is not getting away with what he did. You ARE making him pay everyday you withhold from him, decide to not engage him, talk about him behind his back to YOURS and HIS boys.
Yes, JL - it is harsh - but I expected something like that if I went ahead and posted here, especially from an old-timer. I have all the respect in the world for MBs, but to some extent, you simplify things here. Plan A, and if that doesn't work, plan B. God help the BS here who doesn't follow through with plan B and take the consequences. Harley also makes it clear that his approach is not for those who are married to people who have issues with alcoholism and abuse. Abuse plays a role in our marriage, but as to why that is, I am still not sure - that is one of the dark areas of our marriage - why? Was my H abused as a child? Is he autistic? Does he have a personality disorder? Possibly any and all of the above - it is impossible to tell, if H will not go for assessment, let alone treatment. And as much as you can say that divorce and separation are better in the long run for the BS and the children, I am not 100% convinced. BTW, it was you and I who helped Lisa from London out of her marriage, remember? I am Lady in Red.
As to making him pay, withholding from him, deciding not to engage with him and talking behind his back to OUR kids - it is HIM who withholds from me by keeping secrets, telling lies and witholding, it is HIM who refuses to engage with me AT ALL, and it is OUR kids who feel the effect of this refusal to engage. They deserve an explanation for his angry, punishing, difficult behaviour. You tell me what I could do better.
I removed myself from the bed where I was sleeping with an unfaithful and unrepentant spouse. I scheduled MC appts which he cancelled.
I walk away from him when he is verbally and emotionally abusive. He has been physically abusive in the past, so I walk away rather than let him "wind up". Is that what you call withholding and refusing to engage? I am the judge of what is safe for me and I handle myself with self-respect. I refuse to engage with someone who is being abusive and disrespectful. I do not get angry, rage or make sarcastic remarks with H - I treat him with respect. If he cannot treat me with respect, I walk away.
I have made numerous attempts to talk to him, to make a safe time and place available for him to talk to me - I AM available to talk with him ANYTIME - I have suggested many times that he and I talk to a priest and/or counselor. H is not willing to talk about us or himself - at all. H refuses to put himself or his behaviour under scrutiny from any outside source.
I am not MAKING him pay. He is paying the price for choosing not to deal with himself and the choices he makes in his personal life. I am aware that the arrangement looks like he is being punished. He is not being punished. He is choosing to stay where he is. I can't move out of where I am with him without him showing signs of remorse and a desire for reconciliation, which he steadfastly refuses to show. Those signs have to come from him without me telling him - they have to come from him of his own accord.
If you want something different and perhaps better, why not go for it, rather than stew in your own juices?
I think pursuing an MA with a view towards getting a better job in future is doing just that. And BTW, it is MY money which is paying for that, not his - a small legacy which my mother left me when she died covers the cost of my MA. I have feelings of loneliness, which I expressed.
If this site offers anything it offers a path BACK, but you need to be willing to walk it, and if you are not then you really have nothing to complain about.
Why did I come back to this site if I feel that plan A and plan B cannot offer me the strategy which would be helpful in saving my marriage? Especially if I knew that if I posted, I would be burned for not going to plan B. I feel extremely isolated and I needed to talk to someone who would support me going out to try to get some help - the right kind of help.
JL, I have to respectfully say that this is beneath you. I am still his WIFE. My H promised to me, along with a promise to love, honour and cherish, "all my wordly goods I thee endow". As long as we are married, his money is my money and my money is his money. I am not "living off his money". I had 2 children with my H and I am entitled to his love and support. I have supported him to achieve his goals with my hard labour, for which I was not paid. If you think staying home and taking care of 2 kids is not hard labour, think again. H and I are Catholic - marriage meant welcoming children into our lives. So having children was not just something I wanted which he resents. He loves his children as much as I do. I have health problems which are the result of my having children - if I had not had children, I would not be suffering these particular health problems, which have impaired my ability to work full-time. My H is a musician - he could not have children and function in his job unless he had a partner who would stay at home and take care of them when he had to be away - musicians aren't paid a lot - so au pairs and babysitters were out of the question.
(When I said to H that the reason he could do what he did was because I was always there for him, holding down the fort, he said "Now you're taking credit for something you haven't done!" Now that is Fog-talk for sure. When he was NOT a WS, he put his arms around me and told me how much he appreciated what I did, that he couldn't do what he did without me being there for him and the kids. When I reminded him a year ago that he had said this (after he said he had never loved me) he exploded and said my trouble was I was always bringing up the past. More fog-talk. MB is the place where I have learned how to identify and cope with fog-talk exploding in my face.)
A marriage is a shared life, a shared endeavor, where everything goes into building a life which is for the benefit of the family, not just one person. One of the issues in our marriage is money - surprise, surprise. My H is self-employed. He has his own bank account, his own credit cards. When we got married, we opened a joint bank account. Trouble was, H never put any money into it. He said he had to keep his own account because he had to pay tax on what he earned and that was the only way he could keep track of it. I put all my money into our joint bank account. When we had kids and I stopped working, H had all the money - controlled it all - I had to ask him for every penney - and he made me ask. I tried to get him to give me a household allowance - I tried to get him to sit down with me and write up a household budget - I suggested we have a joint account and give ourselves a monthly "allowance" for fun stuff. Nothing. We fought. Nothing. I finally figured out that H didn't get married, he acquired a wife. He would pay for as much as he thought he should pay for and no more. I told him once he treated me like a kept woman. There was no trust. He refused to make me a signatory on his credit card. It was only after one of our MC sessions 5 years ago, that he made any movement in my direction. Now he puts 1/3 of his salary in our joint bank account - he has made me a signatory on his credit card, and he pays for the upkeep of both cars out of "his" money. We own our house outright - his dad paid off our mortgage about 7 years ago. H puts the other 2/3 of his income in his own account. I don't see that. H tries to pay as much as possible out of our "joint account" and on the times I have asked him how much he has in his own account, he says "not much". He responsibly pays for what he SHOULD pay for. I have found his savings account book and see that he is saving money into his retirement plan. I don't make enough money to save into my retirement plan, although I have a pension plan at work. In fact, it is H who is benefiting financially from continuing to live here. The way I look at it, I contributed to his healthy financial state - by economizing well, by living within our means, by not running up any debt - if I had been paid even minimum wage for all the hours I worked as a carer of small children, I figured he would owe me more than 1/2 million bucks - that's right, girls, add 'em up and remember it's 24/7 - by excluding me from his credit cards, H robbed me of the credit I deserved for 15 years of economizing WITH him. It is only this year that I have been able to get a MasterCard in my own name, and no, I don't have any debt on it. H is economical - he's not extravagent - I always respected him for that - but I didn't drag him down either. So how does all this make me someone who is "using his money"?
Yes, I'm avoiding moving. This is my home. It may not be much compared to some, but we own it and don't have a mortgage. Why should I break up my children's home and move somewhere where I would have to pay rent, thereby shooting myself in both feet financially? House prices in the UK have gone through the roof - on average 6 times a person's salary required, with a 1-bedroom apartment costing more than £100,000 in my area. If I moved and had to pay rent, and then got sick and couldn't work, what would happen to me and my kids? I would end up homeless, that's what. My kids are settled into good schools - why should I give up our home and move because my H decided to be a plonker?
If we separate, it is H who should move. If we divorced, or separated, the courts would decide that the family home is just that - the family home - it is where the kids have lived all their lives - so it is actually the kids' home, not mine or my H's - morally neither of us have the right to sell the home out from under our children's feet, and the court recognizes this. They would make a residence order that the kids stay in the family home with their main caregiver (me) - then when the youngest child has finished his university studies, my H and I would be permitted by the court to sell the home and split the proceeds.
I have been to see a solicitor, who told me I have an open and shut case against H.
Do they grow on trees? I don't live in the US. I live in the UK - which many economists call "a low-pay economy". We have the biggest pay differential between company owners and managers and workers in Europe. My boss went to bat for me to try to win a pay raise for me - she succeeded, but it took her a year, and it wasn't much of a pay rise, but it puts me on the pay scale so that my pay will increase with time of service - I have a BA and am working on an MA, yet I am paid as much as I could earn cleaning houses...but I love my work - I'm a librarian...librarian in training, I should say...I don't plan on giving it up...I just hope that once I have my MA, that will lead to something better...I also have this fantasy that someday I might write books...but you know, lots of people think that....still, a girl can dream...
JL - your response to me doesn't surprise me. It's more or less what I expected. But thank you for it anyway - it tells me I need to reach out and try to get help, but MB is not necessarily the right place for that.
And I have remembered that I do have a plan.
H doesn't appear to want reconciliation (at the moment). The way divorce laws are in the UK, you have to file on one of 3 counts - infidelity (which is hard to prove), unreasonable behaviour (which you have to list), or marriage breakdown based on 2 years of separation. I told him my plan was to sleep apart for 2 years, then he can sue me for divorce on the grounds that our marriage has broken down, if that is what he wants. That way I don't have to sue him for adultery or list his unreasonable behaviour, which would damage his career. I told him this on the phone several months ago and he came home and came straight into the kitchen and hugged me. I guess that is what he wants. September will be 2 years - we'll have to see what happens after that.
I am also reading and working with Steven Stosny's book "You Don't Have to Take it Anymore", which is the only book I've read which has "rung all my bells". Chapter 4 - Why Marriage Counseling, Psychotherapy, Anger-Management, and Abuser Treatment Made it Worse is the one that made perfect sense to me. My plan, which Stosny recommends, is to read it yourself, then give it to him and respectfully ask him to read it. I haven't got to this stage yet.
I have also been doing some reading on autism and Aspergers Syndrome - some of what I have read on those discussion forums seems to REALLY fit my H - his relationship difficulties don't fit into the cabbage-variety abusive man syndrome - he reacts badly to ANY "negative" feelings I have, i.e being sick, being under stress, being tired, experiencing grief - in other words, he can't handle my negative feelings - he feels overwhelmed and reacts badly, i.e., he withdraws, shuts off, and if I get upset by that, he explodes. He is also brilliant in his work and totally focused on that to the exclusion of everything else, which is a feature of Aspergers. One part of my plan is to find a way to get him to accept some kind of psychological assessment. This might not be the best thing for him, though - a late diagnosis might send him into a deep depression and cause more despair - it would, however, prove to him that *I* am not the SOLE cause of our communication difficulties. I have also thought of getting psychological testing for myself - to find out if I have any of those traits myself. One of the things that happens in a relationship like ours is that you tend to mirror each other and after awhile, it gets difficult to tell who is responsible for what.
I'd just like to quote you something from Stosny's book -
"When therapists ARE aware that their clients are walking on eggshells at home, they feel almost bound to persuade the woman to leave the relationship. The most frequent complaint I hear from women who have undergone this kind of advocacy therapy is that they were reluctant to reveal the depth of their guilt, shame and fear of abandonment to their disapproving therapists. Some have reported that their counselors would say things like, "After all he did to you, and you feel GUILTY?" I have heard hundreds of women report this kind of pressure from their therapists and have heard hundreds of therapists at conferences express exasperation about their clients' reluctance to leave their walking-on-eggshells relationships. While training therapists worldwide, I always emphasize the utter necessity of compassion for their clients' burden of guilt. Making hurt women feel ashamed of their natural (albeit irrational) feelings of guilt is intolerably bad practice. Compassion for her core hurts is the healthy way to help her heal her pain."
I have been reading MB for five years. In 2001-2002, when I first came here, there was a spirit of compassion on this board and people more or less respected Harley's precepts, which included not engaging in DJ's to posters, even if they were a WS, or you were disgusted by some of the things they did or said. From what I have seen, a lot of that has changed. There is an awful lot of sarcasm on this board now, in addition to all the good that people try to do for each other. Part of my job is being aware of what goes on in cyberspace, and the growth of cyberspace - five years is a long time in cyberspace, and IMO, cyberspace has changed. Cyberspace is now full of people who are not just there to share, but who are there to look for conflict - many discussion boards out there are places where people go looking for arguments - post anything to Youtube, etc and at some point, someone is going to flame you. That's one of the things that I think has happened to MB - while by and large, this is still a site where people who are in pain over their marriage breakdown can find valuable support and knowledgeable guidance in finding their way through the most difficult period in a person's life, it has also picked up some of the nastier characteristics of cyberspace today. I've seen some nasty flaming posts to WS which have made my toes curl.
I'm not lumping you in that category, JL - I "know" you and know just how thoughtful you are as a poster, and how sincere your intention is to help others, but be careful. It's sometimes a fine line between calling someone on their *hit and missing the point. Some of your comments were hurtful but I understand why you said them. I'm aware that staying in my marriage is my decision. It's a decision I have to be prepared to defend while I stay in it. You've helped me to do that, for which I am grateful.
I am trying to recover myself without destroying H, and protecting my children's future. Maybe what I needed to find out was that MB isn't the place for me to do that.
