I love my wife. She doesn't love me. I'm 31, she 25. We've been together since we were 22/16, living together since 23/17. No kids. Married for a year and a half. She left because I was controlling, manipulative and mentally abusive. I have apologised for this, and accepted that I was controlling. I am in therapy to help get myself past that, and I feel it's my resistance to change that means I am controlling.
It has been three months now. I'm still struggling. She's moving on. She wants me to as well. She's been travelling with her parents, exercising, drinking with pals. I have a slight issue in she was the source of most of my social activities - I'm an introvert by nature. All my workmates are 40+ with kids, and my best friends all live out of town (although they sometimes pop over for the weekend and we go for mini road trips). I have no family in the country I live in (UK) as they are all back in my home country, and I can't move because of substantial negative equity (bought the place a couple of months before the credit crunch slammed in).
Separation papers were to be sent to me by her but she's put it off until next year because of the cost.
I've been doing a lot of NC recently other than seeing her Facebook status updates on occasion. She's cat-sitting our cat at my place while I travel to the US for work next week.
I struggle to focus on and/or enjoy the things I used to do on my own. They say this is a time to find myself, but I find that I have lost myself. My mind keeps going back to the wife.
I would personally prefer to reconcile. I - and my therapist too - feel the things that went wrong in our relationship are things that should be able to be repaired and worked upon. No cheating, no physical abuse, and mental abuse is basically me being an idiot jerk who thought he was helping his wife diet by putting back the chocolate she puts into the shopping trolley and stuff like that. I should never have got involved with that and should have just kept telling her I think she is beautiful, because ironically that's the only reason I wanted to help her diet - so she could feel good about herself. She has body image issues. As for manipulation, I feel it's really hard to pick on that one because everyone manipulates. I never had any cruel intentions or wanted to hurt her. For control, yes, definitely. I consistently said it was not worth getting a joint account nor putting her name on the mortgage. In retrospect I was controlling the financial things very careful ly. I always let her see what I was doing but it was a trust issue and I want to get past that by doing exactly what she had wanted - both names on mortgage, joint account, let her have more say in things and trust her with them. I am confident I can do all of these things - I should have done them earlier and honestly I would have done them in the days before she left, when we argued about stuff like that. But it was clearly already too late at that point for her.
In the end I just feel that our marriage is not worth throwing away, and she is not worth giving up on. But at the same time, she seems happy now - so who am I to tell my loved one she can't be happy? It's a tough time.
Anyway. Just thought I'd post. I had a much longer post written out earlier but deleted it, it was way longer than this one even. Hopefully this shorter (!) post will get a little response.
EDIT: Worth noting I was torn about putting this into Reconciliation or not. Decided on this place in the end because while reconciliation is my aim, it's not what is currently happening.
It has been three months now. I'm still struggling. She's moving on. She wants me to as well. She's been travelling with her parents, exercising, drinking with pals. I have a slight issue in she was the source of most of my social activities - I'm an introvert by nature. All my workmates are 40+ with kids, and my best friends all live out of town (although they sometimes pop over for the weekend and we go for mini road trips). I have no family in the country I live in (UK) as they are all back in my home country, and I can't move because of substantial negative equity (bought the place a couple of months before the credit crunch slammed in).
Separation papers were to be sent to me by her but she's put it off until next year because of the cost.
I've been doing a lot of NC recently other than seeing her Facebook status updates on occasion. She's cat-sitting our cat at my place while I travel to the US for work next week.
I struggle to focus on and/or enjoy the things I used to do on my own. They say this is a time to find myself, but I find that I have lost myself. My mind keeps going back to the wife.
I would personally prefer to reconcile. I - and my therapist too - feel the things that went wrong in our relationship are things that should be able to be repaired and worked upon. No cheating, no physical abuse, and mental abuse is basically me being an idiot jerk who thought he was helping his wife diet by putting back the chocolate she puts into the shopping trolley and stuff like that. I should never have got involved with that and should have just kept telling her I think she is beautiful, because ironically that's the only reason I wanted to help her diet - so she could feel good about herself. She has body image issues. As for manipulation, I feel it's really hard to pick on that one because everyone manipulates. I never had any cruel intentions or wanted to hurt her. For control, yes, definitely. I consistently said it was not worth getting a joint account nor putting her name on the mortgage. In retrospect I was controlling the financial things very careful ly. I always let her see what I was doing but it was a trust issue and I want to get past that by doing exactly what she had wanted - both names on mortgage, joint account, let her have more say in things and trust her with them. I am confident I can do all of these things - I should have done them earlier and honestly I would have done them in the days before she left, when we argued about stuff like that. But it was clearly already too late at that point for her.
In the end I just feel that our marriage is not worth throwing away, and she is not worth giving up on. But at the same time, she seems happy now - so who am I to tell my loved one she can't be happy? It's a tough time.
Anyway. Just thought I'd post. I had a much longer post written out earlier but deleted it, it was way longer than this one even. Hopefully this shorter (!) post will get a little response.
EDIT: Worth noting I was torn about putting this into Reconciliation or not. Decided on this place in the end because while reconciliation is my aim, it's not what is currently happening.
Put the internet to work for you.
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