| First time post, first time on these boards - hi everyone. Against my better instincts, I am going to post the details of my relationship and open myself up to scrutiny from you all - yes, perhaps a tad daff but there do seem to be some sincere posters with wisdom and advice that I can perhaps glean for nuggets (Kuky's sticky for example). Not sure if this thread is more appropriate in the breaking up section or "long haul", but forever the optimist I am posting here. I should first point out that I am an expat and met my wife in her home country 11 years ago, where we still live. In a nutshell, my wife and mother of our child, seems to want out of our relationship. Here are the details and my apologies in advance for the length and probably extra/random info. After I had returned home from our recent trip to India about 6 wks ago (wife stayed on for a further 1 month yoga training), I received a bomb phone call informing me she wished to separate with me to see if she could start a relationship with another man (I know him too). She said the passion had went out of our relationship and she wanted a change. She had apparently invited him to India, he accepted, and it seems she was very confident it was going to work out between them (as relayed to me by her sister), hence her decision to inform me. She basically cut off with me after that point, I decided against traveling back to India (she said "don't - you won't find me"), and I went through what probably was one of my most emotionally painful experiences in my life (no appetite, no sleep, lost bunch of weight). Since I had the contact for the other guy, I emailed him what was going on, he basically said I am going there more as a friend, I will set boundaries, and I am not into her like she seems to be into me. Needless to say, I was not fully buying what he told me, but I bit my tongue, so at least I would maintain some connection with what was going on. Long story short, when they spent time together, apparently they clashed big time (personality wise, culture wise, veggie vs. non veggie, yogic philisophies, teaching methods, jealousy / possessiveness displayed by my wife, etc), apparently did not see eye to eye on just about everything, and he ended up flying onwards after only 10 days together. I did not contact him much, but he sent me an email after leaving telling me the trip was a big mistake. He said he thought he could help us but did realize how "broken" we were. Bit more info, this other guy is someone we met several years back and see usually once a year at some music festival - athletic yogi type, physically beautiful, free spirit, (naked yoga), travels the world, very outgoing and positive (at least on the surface). Like I say, he and I have known each other and have a level of friendship of our own (but not to same extent as my wife). I always knew my wife liked him but I totally trusted her, so allowed her to spend time with him (my wife is drop dead gorgeus [think cross between Halle Berry and Salma Hayek] but she has always set appropriate boundaries with men. True, it used to bother me when we were a few years younger and she would dress in totally sexy clothing dancing on the speaker with a horde of guys salivating, but she never let anything at all happen and always came with me, showed me respect and so I completely trusted her. Bit more info, almost one year ago this other guy came to our city to teach some special y oga seminar at my wife's studio (mine and her invite) and after stayed on to teach. Oblivious to me, it was during that time that my wife developed her feelings of love/infatuation towards him. He eventually pulled a ninja one day phoning me from the airport after two weeks, telling me he had to move on. It was when I witnessed my wife's reaction to his departure that I understood the depth of her feelings towards him. She did not hide the fact that she "loved" him. This past year has been pretty rough because of this. We argued about her emotional affair, we argued about other stuff, my wife told me it was over with him. It took me a long time to finally reach a point of healing where I thought we were at a point to dig into the well to reconnect at deeper level, and then this happened. It shows how clueless I have been about what is really going on in my wife's head and heart. But in my defence, she is a decent actress, saying she loves me, knows she should be more affectionate with me and take care of me, even up to our time in India together (where there were incidents of her being jeaolous / possessive when I was talking with girls). But now, with hindsight, the signs were all there if only I had not been in denial. Ok, so now she is home for 10 days, facing reality. She explains that it was good for her to have this experience with him because she never really got to know him deeply before and now saw the true him and saw a really dark side of him. She did not say, what I would have like to have heard, "sorry baby, it was a mistake, please forgive me". We have agreed that we will separate, how to split time with our child, see other once a week for a lunch and see a counseler (the counseler thing is quite remarkable as whenever I have suggested in the past, she is totally against it). I have told her that from here out, the best interests of our little child have to be paramount. In the meantime she is still at the house and it is not a good vibe as there is lots of anger /hurt / pain and this has come to a head on a couple occasions. First thing is she needs to get out of the house. She is looking for a place. Create some distance (tks Kuky). Spend some time alone. Try to reflect what each of us really wants. More info. Ok. before this other guy, our relationship before wasn't perfect. Although we had an amazing first few years, where we were deeply, deeply in love, danced in a bubble together, all night, did everything together, nothing we wouldn't sacrific for the other, created an amazing life together. She made me become a better person in so many ways, and for that i will be eternally grateful. I was blessed. But along the way, the grind of life came with our two very demanding schedules, cultural issues, her daughter living with us (now gone to university), our child, etc. We became somewhat distant, yes, the passion died down, we made love with less frequency and passion, public displays of affection dimished, we communicated less, we went out less for fun. We argued more. One problem is that we are both fairly hot tempered. She cannot take criticsim (from me, her staff or anyone), always believes she is right and I am quite arguementive. There are many things that we coul d work on. But from my stance, I still love her deeply, the love had evolved, it wasn't the new, exciting love, but the depth and breadth and resiliance was still there. Now, I see she obviously hasn't on the same wavelength as I, for a long time. I had believed what I wanted to believe about her and thought she felt the same way as I felt - denial. Finally, a couple further points that are perhaps extraneous but I will still mention. I have always been supportive of whatever she did or wanted to do over the years. I am quite a health and excercise person and one of my first gifts to her was a gym membership (she led a very unhealthy life when we first met), and got her into yoga, which she fell in love with and which has become central to her life. I also assisted her, financially and otherwise, to set up and get started a couple businesses that she has handled quite well (very strong woman and single minded). She is basically financially independent now. Before I met her, she had done very little travel, but together we go on at least 3 or 4 overseas trips per year, meet lots of people that has for sure, really opened up her eyes and mind to what is out in the world. Also, she has become very spiritual minded in the past couple years with strong yoga and meditation practice. Probably viewed as extreme by many with 1 or 2 hours of yoga, plus teaching plus anywhere from 1-3 hours mediation per day. Due to my work, it is not a path I can fully embrace at this time, although I do have my own daily yoga and mediation practice and I have never attempted to block her path. Part of our problem I believe is that she has went quite far down this spiritual path, while it is challenging for me to do, at this time. She says this has created some distance between us (and this was cited as a reason for wanted to try a relationship with the other free spirit guy). So what do I want to know? Not really sure. I believe we have to live apart from each other for some time, at least 3 or 6 months, meditate, reflect on what it is we both really want. At this point, I for sure want to give us a chance again, after all it is 11 years, we have a family together, businesses, properties - divorce will be very stressful and traumatic. On the other hand, I do not want to be with someone who doesn't want to be with me / doesn't love me. The worst case scenerio would be we get together than the same thing happens. If I knew that is what the future had in store, I would want to get it over now. But, of course, no one can predict the future, only possibilities. I guess the big question is she motivated enough to go to our well of love and draw upon it, to see if she can get that feeling back again? Finally, she just turned 40, and although she won't really admit it, I believe the age thing, loss of physical beauty is influencing her (the other guy was quite a few years her junior). Hard to put into words the characteristics / essense of an emotional relationship between two persons to complete strangers. There is so much missing that words cannot express and really the only two who know us is her and I. Still thank you for reading this very, very long post and look forward to your comments. With thanks, DS | |||
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