Hi believer,

Yes. I've always been the one to want kids, and she's the one who's always been opposed to the idea. I'm glad now that I've never pushed harder for it, or made it a big issue. Also as mentioned previously, we haven't yet bought our own place, so nothing really major to fight over.

We do have some expensive household appliances and furniture, and I'm not sure how to split them when she comes to get her stuff. Its petty to fight over these items I know, but more than the monetary value, I guess I just don't want to give her the satisfaction of walking away with some of the more expensive items in our home. Should I or shouldn't I make a big fuss over this?

I read this on another thread somewhere but it IS great advice on how to split household goods in a really fair way.

One person makes two lists dividing the assets in what they believe is a fair way...the OTHER person gets to pick which list they want.

Hi noodle,

Good advice. I'll think about it some more and see how to approach this since I've still got 2 weeks to think about this.

Well, she's off to the US tomorrow. I'm still musing over whether to send the email to her sister and a few of her friends and tell them about the A and the fact that WS is a lesbian now.

Been spending a lot of time with mum and sisters who are down till Sunday, keeping myself busy and all. But when everyone's asleep and I think about the situation, it just feels so damned surreal! Man, 8 months ago we were a loving couple, had plans to buy our own place, was looking around at apartments etc. Fast forward to today, and we're separated, she's in a romantic A with a lesbian and I'm seriously contemplating divorcing her, not that she cares at all. Very surreal indeed.

Misery loves company.

Or more appropriately, I would say 'Birds of a feather flock together'. This was the phrase going through my mind as I read some of WS's emails the other day.

I was just musing over my WS's current group of friends, friends that she'd never really kept in contact with much until now, and realized this:

1. Two of them just recently broken up with their long-term boyfriends. One moved out, another moved to another country

2. NONE of them are married

3. One was a former OP and has told my WS that kissing another woman is "normal and just s stage you go through"

4. Another is a real bi*ch who seems to hate men and all her emails to friends who are having problems in their relationships are laced with venom. Things such as "good riddance", and "take him for all her got" kind of statements. Oh, and she's single BTW, I wonder why?

5. Another is very happy go lucky who has never been in a relationship before, who says things like "its your choice, do whatever makes you happy"

Anyway. she's off to the US (on the plane now). Only emails apart from the last ones I mentioned was her forwarding her itinerary and flight details to OW, just like she would to her husband. Think will definitely see more email traffic between them since she's in the US and its far cheaper to email than to call or text message <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

I'll decide on whether to do the mass email during this period. With family around all the time, I've hardly had time to myself to sit and think.

Yuck, just saw a lovey-dovey email from OW to WS where she expresses how much she missed my WS, telling her to come home soon cause she misses her etc, ending with kisses.

Think at this point I'll go work on a draft for my mass exposure email. But the reasons not to send it are becoming more and more insignificant

Good observation on how the people we choose as friends says a lot about us...an has the power to effect enormous change.

So what made you decide to do another round of exposure?

Hi noodle,

I just spent 30 minutes sitting down with my mum trying to convince her that there is nothing else I can do at this point but to let her go. I've told her about the ongoing affair, about the lies that WS has told me about moving out "to think" when in actual fact she was done thinking already. Mum still hoped that maybe she may "come crawling back" after the US trip, and I told her not to fantasize about something which is not going to happen.

I told her that at this stage, I'm ready to move on. But I feel like I want to set the record straight also. A divorce is a public affair (no pun intended). If she's the only one out there telling people I'm to blame, rewriting history etc, everyone is going to assume the worse about me because her's is the only voice out there. I want to try and get my side of the story out there, to tell people we're close with "This is the main reason we are having a divorce, and it has a name, OW"

I shall try to write as objectively as possible (not easy I know), and try not to demonize WS or make it seem like a personal attack from a vengeful spouse. Let people believe who they want, whats important is that they have both sides of the story to compare and evaluate. This is why I want to do the exposure. Sorry that it seems very un-MB-like <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />

What are your thoughts? (everyone welcome to chip in)

Well, everyone's left and after I'd cleaned up the house, I finally got around to packing up all her stuff into these big boxes. Man, so much stuff.... amazing how many things you accumulate in just 3-4 years, and this is just HER stuff. Closing that last box was closing an important chapter in my life.

Unless she gets someone to help, she's going to have an extremely hard time loading them into her car, and she's going to have to make at least 2 trips to wherever she's dumping it till she finds her love nest.

I didn't help her the last time she moved out, because I didn't want her to go and I certainly did not want to aid in her departure. But now that it has come to this stage, I think helping her to load her stuff into the car is no longer that big a deal. The least I could do after 2+ years of marriage, right?

Weekends are hard. Home by myself, thinking and missing the other half of me. Not the WS, but the W. Life is really so unpredictable.

I was just reading HopeThisWorks' thread and someone mentioning about someone after being divorced for 4 years still getting the ex-wife calling at 1am in the morning to "see how you're doing"

When I knew my WS at university, she was going out with a classmate of mine. He was a heavy smoker, was involved with not so 'healthy' people, drank a lot, and did drugs occassionally. She was the sweet young thing, an angel always good natured, always smiling.

Well, they had many ups and downs and it was after graduation (we both graduated but her boyfriend had to repeat a few semesters) that we got together. She promptly broke it off with her ex and we were on full throttle from then on. A few months later I left home to move into another city to work, and she joined me 6 months later. A year plus later we got married.

Now, she used to get phone calls from this ex-boyfriend of hers, at 1, 2 or 3 in the morning. He would be drunk on the other end usually and was usually crying and asking why she broke up with him and all. I always got angry that she chose to pick up the phone when I had told her to ignore it, but she still did it anyway.

Fast forward till today, and WS is 'stolen' from me by a lesbian. I guess this is part of the karma that everyone's talking about?

Anyway, when I thought back to those midnight phone calls, I swore myself that I would never stoop so low as to make that phone call to her. NEVER.

Sigh, sometimes telling mum about stuff is counter-productive. She called me this morning and said she couldn't sleep thinking of what I said about emailing WS's friends. She told me it wasn't a good idea, there was no point doing so, etc. She doesn't want this to turn into a public spectacle. I told her I was considering it, and would not do so until I was sure it was what I wanted to do etc.

I think she's still fantasizing about WS crawling back to me and that things can be ok again. She's afraid that if I do this, it will DEFINITELY be over between us.

Anyway, I figured that there was plenty of time to send out that email. I don't have to do it NOW anyway.

Just saw that she's signed up for a "family & friends subscription" for her mobile phone. This basically lets you select 3 numbers which you call frequently for a dollar each/month to enjoy reduced call rates to those numbers. She's never signed up for anything like that because the company pays her phone bills in full, but I guess the volume of calls between her and OW is sufficiently high that she needs to have this to avoid problems with the office.

How come we never have THAT much to talk about when we were together? We certainly never spent more than 30 minutes on the phone talking.. sheesh

I don't know that I think it's so much KARMA Dev. Shortsightedness maybe but KARMA?

There is a big difference between dating someone and marrying them...unfortunately a lot of people don't really "get" that...they sort of get caught up in the wedding like it's another shot at prom or something.

What you could have seen...and wil hopefully take into full consideration is ...

1 Your ww digs drama. It just flat does it for her apparently. She likes to play "beauty" to their beast possibly.

2 Even under the best circumstances her boundaries are iffy.

The way that you describe your [very short] history together does not say to me that she was ever really committed in the way that would get her through the rough times that are rough in a boring every day wet towels on the floor sort of way.

So what has this little retrovision done for you in terms of what you would do differently in the future?

Hi noodle,

I think you have it right... she's always had 'iffy' boundaries, but I never thought of it in those terms until now. I've always told her that she's someone who can't say no easily, and she agrees with this.

There was an incident a few years ago where she was back home at her mother's place and I was in the city working. She knew this one guy, real a sleaze-ball who was dating her friend at the time. He was also hitting on WS subtly at the time. I didn't like him and had told WS to avoid him because I didn't feel comfortable with him around her.

Well, on the day she was supposed to return to the city, this guy actually dropped by her place out of the blue and offered her a ride to the bus station. She knew I wouldn't like it, but she accepted anyway. I called her when she was in the car, and I remember getting pretty angry at the time. Accepting the ride only encouraged him to call her out for drinks whenever he came to the city for business, but I had forbidden her to meet up with him by then.

Its not that I don't have confidence in myself that I fear my wife talking and speaking to other men (or woMAN for that matter, lol). But getting herself into a position with someone whom she herself admits is a sleaze who tried to hit on her while he was going out with her friend is too much. I've always thought her as extremely naive, but your statement about her loving the drama and not having strong boundaries is probably closer to the truth.

Maybe I need to evluate the next Mrs Dev a lot more closely before getting into an M. :P

I'd say that [evaluate the next or present Mrs Dev] and also know yourself.

See...I think it's an interesting and revealing example of your own boundary issues.

Can we have a look see just for conversation sake?

First off...you played the role of OM in your relationship with her.

Is it adultery? Not remotely. Was she free to change her mind and decide to date you instead..absofrickenlutely.

So what's the big deal?

Aha...it's the deceit factor...the poor boundaries and entitlements that should have been but failed to be red flags to you both [probably because it was EXCITING and DRAMATIC].

So onto ill omened marriage.

Now we see the same poor boundaries begin to play out against each other.

She accepts overtures that you rightly recognize as a threat.

You tell her you don't like it.

She dismisses and downplays it and does it anyway.

Are we seeing affair overtures yet?

Such a good girl..but dev..it isn't that she CAN'T say no...it's that she doesn't WANT to say no.

She enjoys being hunted, admired, won over...and she enjoys having a "dangler" aka the old flame as backup.

Your role here is that you haven't had any standards you were willing to enforce or any insight into the nature of the beast...you bought the glamor hook line and sinker.

Yes, can't disagree with you here. I've had a crush on her since the day I met her. But she was always out of reach, a friend's girlfriend.

I told myself that what we were doing was right because she was in an unhappy, destructive relationship with a loser and a drug abuser.

Well, I guess that's exactly what OW is rationalizing right now also (minus the drug user part) <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />



Yes, but I've always wondered at this part: Doesn't every woman want that? To be admired, feel wanted? Its fine to want that, but you better make sure you have damned strong boundaries.

In my case (and this is not to sound self-righteous), I've had numerous occassions to cheat on my wife... a very attentive female colleague who would zero in on my during company events, hanging out with friends who had 'loose' female friends along...etc but I've always maintained my boundaries by saying "No, I'm a married man" and never gave any signals that I may, or could be interested in anything beyond being casual acquaintances.


I bought the glamor? Can you elaborate on this a bit more? Enforcing boundaries I understand, but I did get very upset with her over those incidents, we had arguments, until the next time it happened again. And after a while, she learned to NOT tell me about them. And I'm sure I don't know about all of the 'encounters' with men who were after her. But what could I have done differently?

This is the glamor...

"She just can't say no because she's so nice"

Nope..she can't say no because she doesn't want to.

Do all women want to be admired...well..I'd have to say that no, Dev..they don't.

Admiration is a complicated thing...it is so easily mistaken for FLATTERY which is what we are really looking at.

Your WW is FLATTERED and it strokes her ego to have men and women tell her she is desired by them.

Selfish from both ends...she uses them for validation and they use her for "fill in the blank".

Could the core of our problem be that I never validated her need for admiration (filled that EN) properly? Do you think that if I have been more attentive, told her she was beautiful, showed her genuine admiration, that she would not have been looking for it elsewhere? Or would it not have made a difference?

Honestly I would have to say it probably wouldn't have mattered very much.

I would LIKE to tell you it would have...but looking at her history of seeking it out from the most unhealthy subjects available leads me to strongly suspect that this is an area of what I call perverted or corrupted need.

Say...it's a legit need..but it CAN'T be filled by an activity or person who is healthy or delivering it without the corruption factor.

Was your wife abused?

Nope, of this I am sure. She was always the fav of her parents because she was pretty filial. Both parents dote on her a lot. Don't think there was any physical abuse at all from her first boyfriend or from anyone else.

The only time I've ever hit her was on D-Day, when I slapped her after she sheepishly confessed to the A, no remorse, more like a "please pass the butter"-type of statement. I was angry, and my emotions were in a turmoil and I was so frustrated because up until that point, I was blaming myself as she kept telling me it was MY behavior that was causing the problems in our M and had kept denying about any A (even swearing on the Bible).

I am to this day extremely ashamed and regretful for what I did. I apologized to her profusely a few days later, after we had both calmed down some and swore I would never do it again. That was the only time I think she was ever hit. More ammunition for her to validate her wanting out of the M, eh?

Anyway, about her "seeking it out from the most unhealthy subjects available" I guess that that old saying about opposite attracts, or good girls love bad boys does have some merit after all.

Nope not at all imo [about opposites attract].

There are juuust too many red flags in your wifes behavior for me to be convinced.

As for a face slap [chuckles] I happen to know of a few straight up PUNCHES delivered by board vets which might suprise you.

Short of a bodybag I don't react much to that at ALL because the nature of the discovery is SUCH a shock and usually done with the MOST apalling callousness it compares to saying...hey I just backed over your child with my car a few times..and while I was crushing them they really damaged my bumper...I'm going to need some compensation obviously and sice I'm such a good guy/girl I'll accept a personal check.

LOL, love the analogy about backing over the child thing.

Yes, it was the pure callousness of the statement, like it was no big deal type of thing that pissed me off and made me do it. I wanted to grab her hair and shake her so many times over the ensuing months, because I simply couldn't understand how she could be so DENSE and not see what OW was doing to her and to our M... I knew about the fog by then, but looking at the person I thought I knew and understood so well doing and acting in ways I didn't -well, my brain and my heart were in constant turmoil.

At this point, I don't feel much of anything when I think of the WS. But I do miss the good times with W. I'm trying to keep myself busy at work and also planning to do stuff that I had neglected or put off when I got married -like taking up SCUBA diving. Signing up for a class next month then I'm heading out for the islands <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />