Here it is late at night (Really early morning) And I just got through reading a 40+ page book written by my STBX BIL Who is a dear friend and more than an inlaw but a real brother to me.. The Wife got a copy of the same book. <P>Its a story of their life growing up as childern.. <P>Very abusive father. Drugs, Guns, BOOZE, late nite beatings, puppies shot in the head with a shotgun while they were watching. Chasing them (Mother, Child/wife, and brother) breaking out car windows and shooting at them as they sped away to escape. and much, much worse stuff.. My God, My God, My God. I was never told any of this before or during my 13+ years of courting and marriage to my wife. Lord, please help me... This is some deep doo-doo here sports fans. I absolutly had no idea.... <P>I'm sitting here numb.. Its hard to type.. <P>I just got off the phone with the wife. Asking why didn't she tell me about this, to which she said she didn't want to bring it back into her life.. and asked if I understood. I said I did, however it didn't matter how much I understood it was still a very, very large part of her I didn't know.. I said I married her because she was, who she was and I didn't get the whole picture. If I had known this 10+ years ago I would have known what it was that she needed throughout the entire marriage. <P>When I think of all the things I did to try to please her, to make things better, they weren't even in the right hemosphere. For the last 10 years I've been playing football at a hockey match. <P>There were times (Even today) I thought the wife had some problems to work out. And I tried to rationalize them by saying she didn't have a problem, she just doesn't have the skill sets. Now I'm totally blown away..<P>The lose of happiness because of a childhood that was so haneis(sp?) she couldn't talk about it to her husband. And it killed US. What a loss. I'm sitting here weeping. I could of been part of the solution but infact became part of the problem by proxy and a lack of information.. Lord, please give me the stregnth.. <P>She said she was going to reread the book, call her brother, then we would talk again. <P>And to make matters worse. I took them both (Wife and Daughter) to dinner tonite, The wife made a toast. 'To A nice Evening together'. When I dropped her off at her appt. I served her the divorce pappers. Then came home and read the book.<P>I feel robbed. I feel a huge whole in the center of my heart, All this time wasted.. It all makes so much sense now. All the strange things I noticed that she did but didn't say anything because I just thought that's the wasy she did things. Like fold the towels in a certain way (That I hated but got use to). No wonder she hated my hunting dog. and about a million other things I DID that unknowingly screwed my marriage. <P>Man, Oh man. I bet this is first for the board?? I know it sure is a revalation for me.. <P>I sure hope there isn't to many missed spelled word in my post.. If there is I'm sorry. Lord, Please help me.. It hurts so much..

{{{{{{{{{{Tex}}}}}}}}}<BR>I don't even know what to say, except I'm tinking of you, and I will pray for you and for your wife.<BR>Butterfly<P>------------------<BR>There are deep sorrows and killing cares in life, but the encouragement and love of friends were given us to make all difficulties bearable. <BR>-- John Oliver Holmes<P>The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.<BR>-- Elie Wiesel<P><BR>

Tex,<P>WOW! That's about all I can say. I'm not going to go into detail here, but I have often felt that there is something from my ex wife's past which has caused her to be the way she is and which ultimately led to our divorce. I always assumed a loving childhood for her, but I'm sure there could be some skeletons in her past. I can understand how you feel robbed. If there really is something in my ex's past, I wish she would have confided in me so I could have tried to help. <P>What a revelation for you. I hope she will allow you to be there for her now that you have this information.

It's a stunning shock to find out about the abusive past your wife endured. I'm sure that it explains a lot of things you observed and problems you had. I'm going to cut against the grain again, though.<P>The revelations are so lurid that they may assume too great an importance. It's a seductive idea that her past serves to explain *everything* that went wrong in your marriage. <P>John Gottman says that many, many men come to him and say "something is wrong with my wife mentally, Doctor; what can you do to fix it?" He cautions that the issues are seldom so simple. <P>What you *should* be looking at is the totality of the picture of your marital troubles. Of which the history of abuse is but one state in an unholy union. It may be Texas or Alaska (or even the whole Louisiana purchase), but it's still only part of the story. <P>I'm not discounting it. It's already changed how you look at *everything*. But regardless of our pasts', we are human beings with free will, and should be treated accordingly. <P>My XW had a history of bulimia (triggered by a single comment by her father--not <I>caused</I> mind you, but triggered) and cutting (in adolescence, on her wrists). What did she do with the latter history? She <I>used it</I> to manipulate me by threatening to go back to cutting as a way to get me to back off efforts to reconcile. And until this moment, it did not occur to me that the right answer to that was "You're 34 years old, I think you've come a little too far to go back to something like that. Stop trying to scare the both of us." Instead, I carried it with me as a sort of moral escape hatch ... that I would be justified in giving up as a way to head off her threatened self-injury.<P>Remember: to a five-year-old with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.<p>[This message has been edited by Sisyphus (edited January 13, 2001).]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by AgoodManInTexas:<BR><B>I just got off the phone with the wife. Asking why didn't she tell me about this, to which she said she didn't want to bring it back into her life.. and asked if I understood. I said I did, however it didn't matter how much I understood it was still a very, very large part of her I didn't know.. I said I married her because she was, who she was and I didn't get the whole picture. If I had known this 10+ years ago I would have known what it was that she needed throughout the entire marriage.<P>...I could of been part of the solution but infact became part of the problem by proxy and a lack of information..</B><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>If your wife wasn't comfortable with telling you about her past, if she didn't <I>want</I> you to have the "whole picture", then I think you can be pretty sure that her real motivation was a "need" to hide her past from herself. <P>In the long run, unresolved issues will <I>always</I> come back to bite. Sometimes we really can't deal with our issues right away (that's why denial and anger are stages in the grief process), but trying to put things off indefinitely will <I>never</I> work. You can bury your feelings, but they do not stay buried. You have to keep burying them again and again, and you might need to keep finding new techniques since the old ones sometimes lose their effectiveness.<BR> <BR>But the important thing for you to understand, what I wish <I>I</I> had understood a long time ago, is that it is not enough to know what your wife needs. Knowing her needs would not necessarily have enabled you to <I>give</I> her what she needed, and when I say that I'm not referring to your own human limitations.<P>We all probably have needs that we aren't aware of ourselves. And when someone does something to meet that need of ours, we may be surprised and delighted to discover this "new" need. It would be nice to think that this was always the way we respond, but it's not. We may choose to <I>deny</I> that need, because acknowledging it would require us to acknowledge something about ourselves that we don't want to face.<P>And if we make that choice, there's nothing anyone else can do about it except wait, hope, and pray.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><B>Man, Oh man. I bet this is first for the board?? I know it sure is a revalation for me..</B><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>I've only been on this board since the first of the year, but I'll bet it's not anywhere close to being a first for this board.<BR><p>[This message has been edited by GnomeDePlume (edited January 13, 2001).]

Tex. I am really sorry.<P>Sorry for you and your wife. It's said that we are the sum of all we have experienced. We bring so much baggage into our marriages from our past, and who is to know what is inside some of those bags boxes and trunks that are locked up and hidden away.<P>Now you know--thank God for your brother in law. At least you will have answers to your questions.<P>You seem like a wise-enough man to know what to do next

((((((((((((Tex))))))))))<P>(In case you didn't know, a name in parentheses equals a hug around here.<P>I often wonder how much of my x's childhood entered into our divorce. I never heard him talk much about his parent's relationship. About his relationship with his parents. About his relationship with his siblings. Maybe my x has never had an honest relationship with anyone. <P>So you're not the only one around here married to a mystery person. To this day I believe I married a man who didn't exist. I thought he was one person when he turned out to be someone totally different. <P>As for not being able to meet needs you didn't know about, you can't beat yourself up over that. It's not going to change things. <P>If you truly love your stbx, there could possibly still be hope. I heard Joe Beam, who I believe has done some work with the Harleys on "His Needs/Her Needs" classes say one time that the only marriage they feel is truly unsavable is one where one or both partners have subsequently married another person.