I hope I post this in the right forum. My story could probably be posted in a few places.

Where to start… I think I found or at least decided to contribute to this forum too late, from my reading on here – I have made many mistakes already.

Here’s my story! I met the woman of my dreams 6 years ago. She was a single mother with three children from three different men. She was also divorced. This was frightening to me, but for some reason we had a connection right off the bat. Within a week of meeting we started spending every day together. The days turned to nights and weekends.

We moved very fast, she was living in a two bedroom apt – three kids in one room and her in the other. I didnt like this and wanted to help her get her life on track. After about 6 months we decided that we were wasting money because we were both spending over $900 on rent and I was always at her place. We decided to buy a house. She had the whole down payment from selling her previous house. We bought a house, a real fixer-upper.

At first I was doing a lot of work on the house and things were great, we were very happy. She wanted to get married after the first year. I did not. She asked me to marry her occasionally throughout the next 4 years. Finally in our 5th year together she said if we weren’t getting married then we would have to go our separate ways. I told her that she meant the world to me, so I would marry her. She had the whole thing booked the next day, because I said I wanted to do it on 7/7/7. We flew to Vegas and got married.

Now let me step back and fill in the gaps. After the second year I started playing a video game and started neglecting her emotional needs. I wasn’t communicating with her or her children. I would play this game for 8 hours a day – starting the second I got home from work. Working on the house stopped and we fell into a rut.

I think I played this game because I was scared of the situation I was in. Supporting a woman and her three kids. I didn’t know how to be a father because I never had one myself. Hiding in a video game fantasy world made me forget the reality that I was in and I hid there for a long, long time. I made the perfect environment for her to fall out of love with me and to get her emotional needs fulfilled elsewhere. I am so ashamed about pushing her out of my life.

For 3 years she stayed home every day doing her own thing waiting for me to pay attention to her. Waiting for me to watch a movie or TV with her. I was too caught up in my own fantasy video game world too care. I saw her sitting there longing for attention, but I never did anything about it. She would tell me that I needed to pay more attention to her and to her children. I would say that I would, but I never did. Don’t get me wrong there were some good times during this period, but the neglectful times far out weigh the good ones.

Anyway as I said we still married after all this. Why, I do not know. Maybe she figured if we got married I would change. Of course things did not change after we were married. About 4 months ago in June – we had a fight and she went out and never came home. I was furious – I knew that if I had done that, it would be for the sole reason of cheating on her. I brought this up, she denied it. The next day when she came home from her “sisters” she said she did not love me anymore and that she didn’t want to be married. She told me it was because I was never there for her. We were like room-mates. This was true – I didn’t pay enough attention and that’s what it was like. I listened to everything she said about what she did not like about our relationship. I instantly changed everything. I started helping around the house. Spending time with the kids an showing her the love and affection she deserved. Nothing changed. She said that I went form never being there to being there too much. I waited two months and she never acknowledged that anything was helping us.

She started going out with her sister every-other weekend and never coming home. She knew this was killing me and that I thought she was having an affair, but it didn’t matter. She said she had suffered for years, so now it was my turn and she wanted her revenge.

I started looking through her phone and after about 3 weeks I found an incriminating message from someone. I confronted her and she said it was an old friend that she recently stared talking too. The message wasn’t within the boundaries of friendship. She justified this by saying that I had talked to previous old female friends. She said she didn’t talk to him anymore and she was dealing with it and that I needed to trust her. Our relationship did not get better after all of this. She kept going out every-other weekend and not coming home. I kept looking and looking for more messages from this kid. A few months later I found a few more, but they were just “hi”, “how are you” etc. I asked why he was still sending her messages and she said she didn’t know. This was a lie – she was hiding his number under a girls name to throw me off. She had begun locking her phone, but I had a way of still getting into it. I became an obsessed nutcase trying to find out what was going on. I kept pushing her to fix things and she kept moving further and further away.

I left the house for a week on two occasions. I started marriage counseling, but she would not go. I asked her to go to counseling and she said she cannot go because she is my problem. She was no longer the woman I knew and I was not the man she knew. I finally freaked and sent her the nastiest message anyone could ever send. After that message she said she had to get away from me, that we were just driving each-other crazy. She showed her daughter the message and her daughter agreed that they should move and that her mother and I did not belong together. She moved out on September 28th. I let her take everything because I cared for her and her children and thought it was best that they have everything they needed.

She met some guy the Friday before she moved out – I found out and she didn’t hide the fact that she is moving on. She said she can have her friends etc… She has stopped by a few times this week to get things from the house, but she won’t look at me and talks to me like I am worthless. I feel like the past 6 years mean nothing to her. Even though I wasn’t around like I should have been I feel so much love for her still. I keep telling her that we can still fix things, but she said it’s too late. She has blocked me by putting a wall around her heart. She has done this before to her mom and has never talked to her again. She says that once she gets to this point she can never let the person back into her heart. She feels used and abused from the way I treated her and how I never had time for her unless I wanted something from her.

Right now I am totally lost. I am in a house that I only bought because I had her by my side. A house that I bought to make her and her children’s lives better. I am not giving up on this house. I am trying to stand strong and fix this house up, but I do not know why. I hope that she realizes that we both made mistakes and returns, but I doubt it will happen. She answers whenever I call, but she doesn’t say anything nice. I know I have to stop contacting her, but I can only make it 2 or 3 days max and then I end up calling her. When we talk it’s fine at first, but then I bring up what’s going on and we end up arguing and making things worse.

We have discussed divorce several times over the past 4 months, but no one has yet made the move to do it. I am in the process of refinancing the house and removing her form the deed. After this is squared away she says we can file for divorce. By the middle of this upcoming week I should have the new mortgage squared away, but I so do not want to get divorced, but I don’t see her coming back to me. I am so lost. I know I can meet someone new, but that’s not what I want. Any advise would be great. I have found so much useful information on this site - there are some great people here.

Well, if you want her back, you can always do a great Plan A. Women tend to not trust men when they say they've 'changed'. It will have to be months, if not years, of consistent change, for her to believe you.

There's always the possibility of exposing her affairs, if you so choose. You'd have to get more information on it, and find the people to whom you should expose.

You should ask the mods (email them) to move this to the Infidelity/General Questions thread, so the people who've experienced infidelity can help you better.

Thanks for your responce catperson.

I will see about having this moved.

I was and still am unsure if it was infidelity, but in my heart I think it was. I believe that, that was what pushed it this far. Once it happened she couldn't look at me the same and everything changed over night.

If it was I know I had a huge part in it due to not fulfilling her needs for the longest time. I made it so easy for someone to fill those needs.

I neglected my Wife's Needs - she has left me


This may very well be true, but..................there are MUCH bigger issues here than THAT. You can only do what YOU need to do, BUT I think any investigation into this should start with:



3 children, 3 different men



If it was I know I had a huge part in it due to not fulfilling her needs

Again, you MAY have been LAX in filling her needs, but, sometimes, certain peoples needs couldn't be filled with a container the size of the grand canyon.

This ISN'T entirely ABOUT YOU. I would venture to guess that YOUR SHORTCOMINGS play a very small, small part of it.

Thanks for the reply Gabagool

There is so much to this story. Yes, three children from 3 different men.

This probably does identify some problems that she has. This is the same behaviour her mother had. She grew up in very bad conditions. Her mother was the same way - several kids from several people. Divorced multiple times. My W has always said she feared ending up like her mother.

The nasty message I sent her mentioned this, I told her she is becoming exactly like her mother. I know this hit her hard and she couldn't imagine the things I was saying to her. I had to be harsh with her at the time, because she is runing her and her childrens lives. She is acting irresponsible and childish. The thing is - she doesn't want to admit that she is not handling her life correctly.

This is a tough one and you're in a tough situation.

You played "White Knight" and have gotten burned by it.

It certainly didn't help to neglect her as you did.

I wish you luck, but think that she may be too fargone to want to come back and she shows a history of moving from man to man.

The bright side of this is that you're young and don't have kids with this woman.

Do you have any proof of an affair? Check cell phone records? Computer records?

Thanks pomdbd3.

I do not really have any solid proof - I have a few messages from her phone, but they aren't evidence that anything happened. I made the mistake of letting her know how I got evidence from her phone, so she quickly covered her tracks. I didn't get much from her PC either. Her sister has helped her with this the whole way.

I don't understand how her sister could do this, but her sister is simmilar - 2 kids 2 different fathers - not in a relationship looking for a guy. She needed someone to go out with her all the time and took my wife under her wing - ultimately landing me here.

I told her brother and other sister about what she was doing and that there was probably an affair going on. Her brother agreed and said he's sorry and he wouldn't doubt it. He loves his sister, but from her upbringing he even said she is just like her mom.

In the end whats hurts the most is that she is just passing this behaviour on to her daughter as her mother did to her.

I am also fairly new to this forum. And I have been working though some issues, so I can only give you my insights. I don’t claim to be a relationship expert.


I am curious why a woman of your dreams would be a single mother with three children from three different men? What does that say about her character? She has a proven record of a string of broken relationships. She has also proven to be irresponsible. Didn’t this raise any red flags?

I am your wife’s age. So I have a sense of where she is in life. I also have friends who have similar stories.

My guess is that your wife came from a broken family and lacked a father figure. She may have also been molested when she was young. Such a situation tends to damage a woman sexually. Typically either the girl will end up dreading sex (such as was my case), or she will become sexually promiscuous.

You wife has been through a series of men (much more than you suspect). And many of the other men also probably thought she was the woman of their dreams.


I bet the connection was based on fact that she was pretty and sexually available.

I like men. I admire men much more than women. But for some reason guys are stupid and easily manipulated when it comes to sex.


Of course she is cheating on you.

Why would you think she would be faithful with you with her past history? Did you think you were special?

From the moment you started a relationship with her it was pretty much guaranteed that she would one day get bored with you and sleep with another man. That is her life pattern. The video game thing might not have helped. But that is really irrelevant. She would have cheated on you no matter what you did.


She showed her 16 year old daughter a private and emotional message that you sent? Do you realize how abusive that is?


She has blocked her heart to you because she is having sexual intercourse with another man. You must understand that for women sex is very tied to our emotions. It is hard, if not impossible, for us to be sexually active with more than one man at any given point in time. We are wired to be monogamous. Now we might get tired of our current partner and dump him for a new guy. But I have never known of a woman (at least the ones I have known as friends) that can happily have an affair while also happily having sex with her husband.

Guys seem to be wired different. You guys seem to be able to have sex with the secretary at work and then happily have sex with your wife at home. How guys can do that, I can’t understand. But for women it is near IMPOSSIBLE.

So your wife has now sexually bonded with another man. This probably means that she has also bonded with him on an emotional level. As such, she finds your attempts to reconcile to be annoying. She is now in love with this new man. And he probably thinks he found the girl of his dreams.

Other people can give you advice on how to salvage this situation. I am still learning myself. But I wanted to give you my insights.

I have had the "White Knight" problem in the past myself.

But I offer you this thought from my therapist:

Needy people attract other needy people.

You felt a need to rescue this woman. Probably a part of you felt that "you could show her how she should be treated" and you rushed in and did what you thought was noble.

So here's your challenge:

Accept that you can't change her in any way.

Accept that you can only change yourself.

Work on you and on bettering yourself.

Accept that you can't figure out why she does what she does.

Where are these kids' fathers? Are they involved at all?

This is funny, because I have a friend who has 3 children from 3 different men. It wasn't her intention, though. The only intentional one was the last kid, she sought out a man because she wanted one more baby.

It's weird though, because she feels it's weird that someone she met has several kids and they are all from the same father. Like she didn't want to believe it. I think her situation bothers her on some level.

It's just interesting to hear another perspective.

But yeah, you can follow they plans here, Dude, and try to save your marriage. All is not hopeless. You never know 'til you try. And you obviously love her.

Charlotte

This is probably because I also grew up in a broken home. My mother raised four kids on her own and I knew how hard that was for her. I think that when I met this woman and knew that she was doing all she could to raise her children on her own I had the utmost respect for her. Yes this threw a red flag, but I overlooked it. I also think that the red flags persisted throughout the years which was part of the reason I withdrew from her over the years.

I think the connection we had off the bat was that we both came from screwed up childhoods. We instantly talked about anything and everything. Yes, she was drop-dead beautiful and sexy, but that wasnt all there was, but yes this did play a part of it.

Actually the more we talked there were so many things that made me double think the relationship very early on. I overlooked these things telling myself that I was just being paranoid. I can only blame that on myself.


Not much I can say about this. Yes, I actually did think this would happen in the end. Why did I let it. I hoped that I would have proved myself wrong. I didn't though.


Yes, I could not believe that she showed this message to her daughter. She justified it by saying that she wanted her children to see how I really was. She probably still does not think it was wrong. Her showing the message to her daughter was what allowed her to make the big jump of moving out of the house. She had her daughter to back her on the decision now. And I looked like the one who was wrong not her.

Thanks for your responce Jennydream - there is alot of valuable information in it.

Two of the kids fathers do not really have contact with the kids. Her youngest's father does a great job supporting his son and sees him every other weekend.

You are right when we met I think that we were both needy and that was the basis of our relationship in the beginning. I was in need of help when we met just as much as she was. My life was a mess when we met, but I am a very professional person, so it wasn't like I was a scrub off the street. Right now I feel that the reason I loved and still love her is because I was falling so far off the track when we met that she probably saved my life. I think this is why I am having such a hard time letting go.