My wife and I have been together for 8 years, married for the past 1 1/2 and have a five year old daughter. We are both very good parents and respect the other as such. We also both love each other a lot. However, we began growing apart as I became more and more involved in my second job which I do because we will not be able to do our first jobs forever and I am preparing for that inevitability. She had taken over as primary care-giver to our daughter as well as chief of the household duties (laundry, dishes etc....) I contributed a good deal to the outside chores (garden, lawn, home repair, finances)
She is definitely having some difficulties as she nears the end of her career. She would like to be a full time mother and housekeeper but we can't afford to do that at this time.
The problems began intensifying when I became less available at home and she wanted to continue having a social life. She became very friendly with a group of friends who like to party a lot. There are narcotics involved in the partying. She began a Friday night ritual of going to "Sushi" with them and getting home at 2:00 AM. Totally fine ...well 2 became 3 and 3 became 4 and before long it was 6 AM every Friday night as well as a night here or there till that time as well. I confronted her about the drug use which slowly declined and is now in control, however she developed a bond with these people which invades our intimate space. There was one guy in particular who crossed the line and I found them at home together with my daughter having just eaten, he was trying to leave before I was expected home. This incident was predicated by major suspicions of the guy including suspect phone calls/messages, strange remarks to me and a tendency of my wife to downplay his presence at events that I knew the guy was at. He is also at the heart of the drug problem; he is the one who gets it. I physically eliminated him from my home and scarred him a lot.
there has been ongoing tensions in the house which all ended in a horrible incident wherein we had mutually agreed to hav e two of the other friends (not the 'guy') over and socialize. We thought this would help relieve some of my paranoia over her time spent with them. And it did! however at the end of the night when they had gone home and my wife had gone to bed her phone received a message. I looked at the phone and saw that it was the 'guy'. I took a breath and brought the phone into her, woke her up and told her that she had a text on her phone from 'him'. She took the phone looked at the phone and erased the message. I wanted to know what it had said, and she said "he wished he was there", this got me very upset because I felt if there was nothing to hide she should have showed me the message. I said that we would have to put an end to this right now and call him together and ask him to stop communication with her altogether. (We had talked about doing this before but she never agreed to, she said I was forcing her to choose friends) He didn't take my call, so I asked her for her phone, but she wouldn't give it to me. I then physically grabbed her wrist and wrestled the phone out of her hand. She was horrified - justifiably so. Although I did no real harm to her, she was very scared and had a complete breakdown. I have been extremely apologetic and gone through several levels of disgust with myself as well as began studying anger management.
That was a month ago. since then we decided to take an amazing vacation together where we left our daughter with my folks. We talked clearly about everything and mutually decided that we needed a break. We have left our daughter with my folks for 2 weeks and our living separately. We do work together and set up times to talk during off hours. We have varying levels of success. Yesterday we talked a lot and she found a movie called "The Secret" which has had a strong affect on her. She is positive and working on herself. We've had increased positive communication and it seems good. I am sure we need to take it slow, however we have hit on something nice right now.
.... I guess I just needed to talk. thanks for listening. I am continuing to study anger management and will begin seeing a therapist.
Thoughts?
