BC,

I COULDN'T even finish reading any more after you said your wife bathed with your 8 year old son and locked the daughter out of the bathroom. Why in the H*LL did she have the door closed and locked to begin with???? THIS IS NOT NORMAL!!!!

Also, my H is bi-polar and if your W is too, she will have to accept it and try to get better. There are a lot of them that don't (my sister included). There are a lot of them that have to hit rock bottom many times before they accept it and ask for help.

Okay, she's accepted and asked for help, THEN you have to find the right combination of meds, etc. It will be a long road and one your W would have to stay on.

IMO, whether you have sympathy for your W or not because you think there are psychological issues at hand, you need to continue with the D. If she shows that she is willing to change and works on the change then GREAT -- you can always remarry.

I do NOT like her always going out beyond the children's bedtimes either. I have the hardest time even agreeing to go out if I cannot be home to put the kids to bed.

I have lost a child as well. She was just shy of 3 and so I like to treasure these times. Your W is taking you and your children for granted.

Just her recent e-mails alone should tell you she is not ready. She needs to get into counseling and so do you -- INDIVIDUALLY first.

You need it for strength.

My sister (the bi-polar one) has a 10 year old D. My niece knows all to well about her mom's mood swings and does not want to have any part of them. She will say, "If you are going to come over and cry, don't come." "If you are going to come over and not pay attention to me and just talk about your boyfriend, don't come." She is a smart little girl and knows her mother well. It is LESS hurtful to her to have her mom not come around than to have her mom come and be a bad mom to her face.... think about that one.

All

Thanks a lot for your comments. Just exchanging ideas and thoughts is a tremendous help to me to gain insight into what on earth has happened to my family and me. Initially I talked to one of my brothers. Eventually I worked up enough courage to tell the colleagues to whom I absolutely had to tell that my WW and me are separating. They were shocked senseless by the news. Today the lawyer will establish a court date for the D.

I feel sad. It really is like a necessary amputation. I feel at this stage as if I am going to be crippled for the rest of my life. But, looking back, I feel that I cannot go on with the M. It's been a roller coaster ride. If I put the pieces of the puzzle together I can see that things were not what they seemed. At the moment, my WW is struggling with her home (our former home - she has to fix some broken things), her father has castigated her for letting me go, her feelings of guilt is eating at her. But, from experience I know that she can be a devious manipulator of emotions. I saw a letter that she wrote to her father a week or two after she told me that she thinks she wants a D: she absolutely wanted to cast me off with everything in her power but to her father she wrote that we had almost no sleep for 3 nights (true) and that we are trying our best to work things out (false) and that she is so sorry if her father's feelings are hurt. The whole letter was spiced with a mixture of truths and omissions and falsehoods to suit her agenda of getting her father's sympathy. She also solemnly promised me that she would never relocate and take the children with her at the time. In the meantime she was entertaining thoughts about moving away and start a new business venture with her new boyfriend elsewhere. Even now, I may be the victim of emotional manipulation. I think that she is sorry that she cast me off now because she needs me to bring stability back into her life again. I think that she is sincere at the moment to want to put me first and to learn to love me. I don't think that I am unreasonable to suspect that there is no guarantee that this sincerity will last a lifetime. 11 Years ago she made the same solemn promises in the church in the presence of more than 100 people. Our values for raising the children are not the same, although I know that both of us love the children very much and we want only the best for them.

Yea, this is a sad time, but I must look at the future. I must focus on building my new life. Thank you for you positive remarks regarding the success of blended families, TMCoffeeMan. Regarding telling my GF about my lingering doubts about continuing with my D: This is the 2nd time that my WW besieged me to stop the D proceedings. The first time round I told my GF everything as it was unfolding. I seriously thought for an hour or two one evening about going back but in my mind doubts about the suddenness of my WW's request made me recoil. That was the time when her boyfriend left her. The whole incident placed a tremendous strain on our relationship. This time around, the same thing has happened. My WW suddenly came with a request that I reconsider. I want to sort this issue out in my mind before I place undue strain on our relationship again. I considered it, and came to the same conclusion as the previous time: there is not enough grounds for a continuation of the M. This time the D is going through also. OK, lame excuse for not telling her. I resolve to go on with the D. I think I really thought things through this time round and my WW should not come with the same request again. As things are, my WW can theoretically place strain on me and my GF's relationship at will by requesting reconciliation. I think what I must do is to discuss with my GF what we are going to do in that event. Thanks to the fact that I thought everything through, read as much as I could, gathered opinions, I am now in a position to confidently tell my WW: "Your decision to D me is one of those decisions that you made in your life that you cannot overturn."

Regarding our children, I am slightly concerned that I am not doing enough for my GF's little girl. I don't feel the same bond between us that I feel between my D and me. My D is like a fragile little butterfly. Her D is more of a tomboy and I can't seem to connect with her. She doesn’t like to play with me and would rather turn to her mother for support and attention. This is something that I will have to work on. Our two daughters are almost like sisters though. When my daughter has to go back to her mother, my GF’s daughter is in tears. Then I have time to spend especially with her though: reading stories, learn to play chess…

I’ll keep you posted. This is a sad time for me. It involves decisions that will change the rest of my children’s lives and mine forever. I just wished my WW realised this when she first started flirting with other men.

Hi All

Just to let you know: I am going through with the divorce. I just cannot trust my FWW. One day she would promise to try to love me and the next day she would say that it's not worth it. In the meantime I place my future with a potential new wife in jeopardy. I came to the conclusion that she is more concerned about her image with her family and her own needs, than with me.

Looking back at my M, I sometimes think it was just one big farce. I thought I was married to a faithfull W who deserved the love and care that I bestowed on her, but the extend of the betrayel, and my naivite, is just astounding. Almost from the beginning things happened about which I just did not feel comfortable: She wanting to go to the movies alone with a coworker of the oposite sex for instance. When I pretended to be my W and emailed him to call of the date, he emailed back complaining that it was she who started it and that he could not understand the sudden change in tone. My W was furious with me for what I have done. And that set the tone for ever serious flirtations and EA's and later PA's, while I was being deprived of the emotional and physical love and attention that a spouce may rightfully expect from a marriage partner. I decided to end the infliction of pain and humiliation. Although I was not a perfect husband, I am absolutely certain that I did not deserve to be treated like this. Thanks, perhaps ironically, to MB, I came to the conclusion that I have rights too - for instance the right to be treated with respect. That's why I decided to put a fullstop to this whole sorry story. My court date is set for 2003/14/08. Let me assure you all, this is not a nice thing to have to go through. But this is not only about a M or the children, it is also about me.

Thanks to everybody at MB who gave me such excellent advice, everything is appreciated. I just whish I knew MB last year on June 10, when my wife told me she thinks that she wanted a Divorce because she is afraid that she might end up in an A. In the meantime, she has just offered another guy to divorce me for him. OK, you know the sordid details. It is just sickening. I am puuting an end to this all and restore normality back into my life.