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I wanted to save the marriage. Now I want to GTFO ASAP

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Looks like it’s been the first time in almost 4 years I’ve been on this forum. I miss y’all. My last year has been one hell of a rollercoaster ride. Not in terms of my mind, I’ve been relatively sane, but with the actual events going on.

so 2019, first time in my adult life I finally found and maintained a full time job. I’ve been working security for over two years now, and I’ve made a reputation for myself. To the point that if I ever had to walk off a job, another is practically waiting for me around the corner. I feel accomplished. Useful, for once.

last year on Father’s Day I finally met my biological father. Basically took the 23&me DNA test, turns out my great aunt was on the network. I give her my number since she still talks to my dad, the day before Father’s Day, my dad gives me a call. We talk a while. I meet him the next day. I also met my little brother, who I never got the opportunity to meet before.

for context my mother made every attempt to alienate my father from my life, travelling around the country to avoid him, and only getting to meet him a couple times in my life, only for me to be used as a pawn so she could serve him with a court summon. She drained him from child support payments so bad he could barely take care of my brother (who has EDS and as a child needed specialized care) or make payments on his home.

I then met my stepbrother, the child of my dads wife. He was pretty cool but for some reason something about him didn’t sit right with me.

Found out pretty quick why. My wife was seeing him behind my back.

here’s the messed up part. A few months prior to this being an issue, I kinda got the vibe that he had the hots for my wife. So I nonchalantly asked her one night “you don’t think he has the hots for you do you?” She replied no I don’t think so, and with that I dropped the thought entirely.

a week later she comes up to me and says “btw I asked ******** about it and he said absolutely not” and I was pretty choked up because I’m sorry, call me old fashioned but a conversation in the bedroom stays in the bedroom. Then him and I had a long conversation where he made it clear he had no intentions whatsoever with her and if she were to even flirt with him, he would be the first to tell me.

so that night, the whole situation just seemed suspicious so I told her, hey, I don’t think you should trust him.

few weeks later I wake up, stepmom is downstairs with the kids. And I ask where the wife is. She says she’s out with my stepbrother to buy swimsuits for my kids, and some water balloons. They were out for 4 hours. When they come home, I asked her why so long, she said “we went out for a drive too”. I ask her why, “oh we were talking about the kids”. That night, I told her, crying in front of her for the first time in 4 years, telling her I’m hurt that for one, she is talking to a man that I don’t trust, and told her not to trust, alone. That she would talk to him about our kids for hours but she never gives me the time of day to talk about them. How it has been literally forever since she has initiated any kind of affection toward me. I had to initiate that all the time. And how she has never asked me “how I’m doing”. Even the days I’m not ok.

a week later I finally confront her. I told her if we are to move forward in our marriage, because then I really wanted to make it work, I needed to see the messages between her and him. (In our relationship we had passwords and pins to each other’s socials and devices, even though we never really asked to check things) and she refused. It took 3 hours to finally convince her to do so, because since this whole scandal, she has not let her phone out of her sight, she would sleep with it in her hand, not even charging it.

I finally convinced her to show me. And it turns out they have been going out for walks alone together at night. She told him she has plans to leave me. She even expressed her feelings toward him. And that it had been going on for 3 weeks.

I looked at another message threat with one of her mom friends where she basically said things have been getting worse between us and that she is going to leave me. “Fixing our marriage, absolutely not. Coparenting, maybe”.

that “maybe” broke me as a father.

I gotta try to get some sleep now. I’ll finish this story when I wake up.

again, for those that remember me, it’s been awhile. Miss y’all.
 
So I asked her. Is this why for the past month you’ve been suddenly job hunting? She said yes. I asked her, do you really have plans to not have me in their live? She said yes. Is this why every time I brought up the idea of us trying to make our schedules work so when you work, I get the kids that day, you got defensive and insisted on hiring a babysitter? She said yes.

I’m still living under the same roof as her, til the end of October at the latest. And even though she insists we’re civil now, and we both have in writing that neither of us are going to keep our kids from the other parent, I still can’t help but doubt that she’ll try to keep me from my children. And even now, I’m talking with my stepbrother, with absolutely no reason to trust him, (he insists he never reciprocated anything but still spent time alone with her), that what she has been saying to me, she tells him a completely different thing. Her and I agreed that both of us should be taking this time to give each other closure to everything, so we can move on, and shes still lying to me.

For the past 5 years we’ve had issues in the bedroom. A year ago she admits that even me asking for a hug is a burden for her. I’ve been starved of every form of intimacy for two years now. I only learned last year that depriving your spouse of affection is abuse.

for the past two years she’s made it a point to not give me time with the kids. I’ve always insisted that on a day off from work, she should go for a day drive and leave me with our kids all day. That never happened. It got so bad, I felt like I was walking on eggshells, even to do something as simple as sit by my oldest son to watch a YouTube video with him on his tablet. Or to change a diaper. Or to feed them. I got into such a bad depression that I just sat upstairs all day on my phone. I realized how stupid this was and took the “initiative” in a way I knew wouldn’t upset her. I asked her, hey, is there anything I can do with the kids today? Or need anything done today? Without fail, every single time she would say no you don’t need to you can stay upstairs.

after her making her decision clear that she wanted a divorce, her and my stepbrother (of course she needs his help) went out of town to help move my mother in law out of our house. I had all 4 of my little nugs for the whole day, and most of the next day. For the first time in years, I had a day to be a father. To keep them occupied with plying, they helping me clean the house, I finally repaired the broken screen at the door, I COOKED THEM BREAKFAST FOR DINNER. I actually cooked something for the family for the first time in almost a year.

that was the first time in years I truly felt like a dad. And my kids loved every minute of it. It breaks my heart they didn’t get to have this part of me before. Gods know they deserve it.

I realized right then that there’s no saving this marriage. I’ve been abused, neglected, and alienated for years but I didn’t want to realize it, and just gave that woman every benefit of the doubt that I was doing something wrong.

the silver lining is I got 4 beautiful children from this ordeal. And I learned a lot more about myself and the real world in the past 5 months than I’ve learned in a long time. Downside is I’m 26, and I have a whole lot more love to give to someone but I’m fresh out of trust now. I don’t think I’m gonna trust again for a long time.
 
Hi thanks for your story. I can hardly even think about infidelity, it’s gotta be the worst. Sounds like you are coming out the other side though and I hope so for you. It was nice to hear you say there is a bright side at the end. There always is. Sometimes though it doesn’t feel like it.
 
Hi thanks for your story. I can hardly even think about infidelity, it’s gotta be the worst. Sounds like you are coming out the other side though and I hope so for you. It was nice to hear you say there is a bright side at the end. There always is. Sometimes though it doesn’t feel like it.
I wish I could say there’s a bright side at the end. I said there’s a silver lining. I still don’t know if the woman is going to let me have the time we agreed on with my kids. I don’t know how I’m going to play nice with her when she knows that I don’t even see her as a friend now. I told her to her face if you want to be my friend, you have to be a friend. And in reality I don’t ask for a lot from friends. And to think she could expose our children to the life she’s living (getting way too friendly with my brother) and destroy for my kids what a healthy family dynamic looks like. Like if she cheated on me and left me for anyone else I wouldn’t be this messed up. I really wouldn’t be.

but hey. I got 4 kids to answer to. I’m down a wife, down a brother, but I’ll make do with what I got. I’ll find peace eventually. I can only pray that peace comes in the form of me having a solid place in my children’s lives. I’m nothing without them.
 
Get a lawyer!!! I'm serious. It sounds to me like she'd have no problems with screwing you over and might be planning to do it right now. Get the best divorce lawyer you can afford and get an ironclad custody agreement. Without a custody agreement, you can be screwed over and you will have no way to fix it.
 
I still don’t know if the woman is going to let me have the time we agreed on with my kids
Unless she puts them in the PICU in order to coerce you into doing whatever she wants, and the courts are cool with that (IE you live in my state, where abusers get their “parenting time” both in the hospital and in jail, if they killed one -but not all- of the kids); or she changes 5 names and flees the country (initiating an insanely expensive & years long custody battle)?

The “let” is about stress & conviviality.

Because of the thousands of kidnapping charges leveled in the US each year? Fewer than 200 are “actual” kidnappings. The rest are someone playing divorce games and refusing to allow the other parent their time with the kids, and the other parent not putting up with that nonsense. Or in reverse, if you’ve divorced a real asshole, and even 2 minutes late at pickup means police will be arresting you for having a badly time bout of explosive diarrhea.

MOST people? Are far more reasonable. They may not LIKE sharing custody, but they don’t require a police escort & charges leveled in order to “allow” it. Nor do they kill your kids, or run off with them.

You had the latter -as a child- and I had the former -as a parent- so I reeeeally do get the stress involved in worst case scenarios being very real ongoing concerns.

Because, yeah. Those 2 things are totally possible. But? It sounds like you made a better choice in exWives than I did in exHusbands. The stress? Is very very real, and will require a helluva lot of management, especially in the early days. But if she’s not strangling your kids, just being cold & bitchy? Benefit of divorce; you don’t have to CARE if she’s cold & bitchy. You can just take your babies and go kick it with them. Assuming you aren’t the one who has primary custody, and she’s the one showing up at yours.
 
Unless she puts them in the PICU in order to coerce you into doing whatever she wants, and the courts are cool with that (IE you live in my state, where abusers get their “parenting time” both in the hospital and in jail, if they killed one -but not all- of the kids); or she changes 5 names and flees the country (initiating an insanely expensive & years long custody battle)?

The “let” is about stress & conviviality.

Because of the thousands of kidnapping charges leveled in the US each year? Fewer than 200 are “actual” kidnappings. The rest are someone playing divorce games and refusing to allow the other parent their time with the kids, and the other parent not putting up with that nonsense. Or in reverse, if you’ve divorced a real asshole, and even 2 minutes late at pickup means police will be arresting you for having a badly time bout of explosive diarrhea.

MOST people? Are far more reasonable. They may not LIKE sharing custody, but they don’t require a police escort & charges leveled in order to “allow” it. Nor do they kill your kids, or run off with them.

You had the latter -as a child- and I had the former -as a parent- so I reeeeally do get the stress involved in worst case scenarios being very real ongoing concerns.

Because, yeah. Those 2 things are totally possible. But? It sounds like you made a better choice in exWives than I did in exHusbands. The stress? Is very very real, and will require a helluva lot of management, especially in the early days. But if she’s not strangling your kids, just being cold & bitchy? Benefit of divorce; you don’t have to CARE if she’s cold & bitchy. You can just take your babies and go kick it with them. Assuming you aren’t the one who has primary custody, and she’s the one showing up at yours.
Nice thing about Canada, specifically Alberta, is family court makes decisions solely on the best interests of the children. And if it’s anything but 50/50, the parent pushing for it needs real reasons to keep you away from the kids, otherwise the courts flag that person as hostile. No different than getting flagged for a history of vexatious litigation. Good thing we already have not only a separation agreement, but also a shared custody continuity agreement (basically saying even in times where our guardianship is challenged or compromised, we agree to restore shared custody at the soonest opportunity. So if either of us turns our backs on that agreement, boom. Court.

I’m not saying it won’t happen, but if it does, I’m prepared for that contingency.
 
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