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ILYBINILWY with no affair?

Hi everyone,

First, thanks for all the longtime posters on here for giving their advice and creating a free space for people to talk about marriage issues. I've already learned quite a bit from the threads and related blogs and books like MMSL, Love Languages, and so on. Now I need my own personal advice. Here goes:

My wife and I have been married for just over a year, and have been dating on-off for 5 years. We have one son, 19 months old now. We married on a whim, when our son was 4 months old, in what was a small but still meaningful little ceremony performed by our favorite hippie professor from our alma mater university. The marriage was rather spontaneous, and made urgent by the fact that she needed dental work and needed to get on my health plan but we needed to be married to do so. In retrospect, our marriage was rather rushed and I now realize the importance of the traditional love, marriage, kids scenario, even though that doesn't always work out, either.

A few months ago, she gave me the ILYBINILWY speech. I was crushed, but I also recognized a lot of things I had been doing to the detriment of our relationship--mostly not always listening properly and taking active interest in her interests and volunteering to do art, exercise, etc with her when she wants. She mentions that I don't "mirror" her emotions the way a good couple should, i.e., be happy when she is happy and be able to share in her emotions. She thinks good couples share emotions and that's why old couples look alike (?). I have taken ownership for my contributions to the marital breakdown and have taken many steps to improve, and she even says she notices a big change but is afraid I will just slip back into old patterns again.

After the speech, I started reading everything I could to start to remedy the situation, and on the advice I got here, started to snoop around to find evidence of an EA or PA. First I asked her, and got her to admit that she had a crush on someone else, but it was just a stupid crush and she didn't act on it.
So I snooped--phone and text records, facebook msgs going back 5 years, and digging around in her personal files on computer and phone. I felt bad about doing this, but she has always snooped my phone and FB since we started dating so I didn't feel too bad. What I found was disturbing: she had written lists of things I did that made her angry or upset. Some of them small and silly, like chewing loudly, some of them more important like not coming home at the time I said I would (I easily get absorbed into my work and lose track of time), or getting angry or upset when I was stuck with the baby and she was going out, even when I said so. I realize that she had legitimate griefs, but she should have communicated them to me. She also even wrote that she "hated who she lived with," our marriage was crumbled, she was miserable with me, and was looking forward to being happy.

Here's the juicy part: she was developing an extremely intense infatuation with a friend and colleague of mine. I had no clue, and even allowed her to go out alone to events like plays and paddle trips with him, because I thought by doing fun things she might get in a better mood and maybe that would help us as a couple. We could have done some of these things together, but our only baby-sitting option is my aunt and she's just not in good health to watch our S that often. So I think part of her attraction was the high and the relief she felt just getting away from the house and baby for a while. She wrote a lot of mushy pie in the sky stuff about him being attractive and understanding her sadness and how she just felt so good being around him. She doesn't know the guy like I do--so I know for a fact that she is just projecting qualities she wants onto him. It didn't go anywhere--I know this guy and he would not do that to me. But I did confront her about it, and told her I r ead her stuff. She was extremely angry at me, told me that wasn't my business, etc etc, but she hasn't written anything since and has deleted everything she wrote (as far as I can tell). We talked about since then, and I think she understands that she was projecting a lot of what she was missing from us onto him. I know she is not calling or txting him, since I still check her FB and phone records (not actual phone, since she is on to me and will delete stuff) from time to time. And besides, he is friends with me and knows not to cross the line (b/c she wrote lots about "why won't he talk to me or ask me out or respond to me"...duh! b/c he's my friend and wouldn't do that to me!!! Man sometimes she can be dense!)

Her response to our problems is to do a trial separation. She thought at first that she could use the little bit of money she made to get her own apt., but since then her part-time job has made it clear that they don't have the capacity to give her more than a few hrs per week. After lots of arguing and resistance to this on my end, and me making clear that I see a separation as a step to divorce and not reconciliation, she still just wants the space and to be alone. I am now ready--she has pushed me far enough that I realize there is only one option that I can work on by myself--and that is moving on by myself.

She initially agreed to MC, but after one session, didn't want to go back. The MC told her that MC takes two partners, and for it to work, one partner can't have one foot our of the door. She says that she is still not in love with me and she doesn't know if her feelings will ever come back, she is too angry with me, and right now doesn't think she could EVER be intimate with me again.

So my question, after all this, is: is it possible to have the ILYBINILWY speech without a fully mature EA/PA, and her lingering resentment and anger is at me for crushing her hopes with her "OM", and she needs time to get over him before the fog lifts and she is willing to work on our marriage? Or is it time for me to cut my losses, move out to my aunts, work out a separation agreement, get full or at least 50% custody, and start the year-long waiting process for a D and let her find out that she lost a good husband for no good reason?




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