As a last resort, I thought I would post here on TAM and see what thoughts others had. I have previously posted on TAM about a few situations. As with anything, its always best to start at the beginning. There are so many things to weave together, some might be out of order, but I'll try to make it flow as best I can.
Basic family history:
We have been married 21 years. We have three children, the oldest two are from my wife's first marriage. Her first husband passed away when the kids were very young. We met two years after that, and have one daughter of our own. Shortly after marrying, we decided to open our own business, which was funded from a mortgage on the house she owned outright and some money from the life insurance settlement she got. Business has been successful, and my wife was able to be a stay at home mom and raise the children. The business never involved travel, so I was home every night.
We were in a small town for ten years, and the schools were not the best, so we put the children in a Christian school (K-8) in the next town. Overall it was a good education, except we pulled our middle daughter out of that school in the sixth grade because a male teacher was not nice to her. We did decide to relocate both business and house because the jobs for teenagers and education for high school were not good in that area, so we relocated to an area about an hour away where the schools were good and much better jobs were available for the children when they got old enough to want a part time job. We sold the first business and started a second one when we relocated. My wife was able to come and go from the business as she wanted. A major issue came to light in 2008. It turns out that our middle daughter was raped by her sixth grade teacher while in the Christian school. A very long story but it played out like this: State police did a very good investigation, and came to the conclusion that the sex abuse was widespread and happened to both boys and girls. The county prosecutor refused to let the State Police interview the teacher and took the investigating trooper off the case and put another on to close it down. Over a period of three years, we have gone to the State Attorney General and got nowhere, the local Federal prosecutor, the FBI child protection unit and a civil rights attorney and the local TV investigator. The TV investigator obtained the police report, and all the names except my daughter was whited out. They all basically said, sorry, nothing we can do. That was a very bitter pill to swallow. Of course my wife blamed me because our business kept us in that small town, and it was basically my fault because we were "forced" to use the Christian school if we wanted our kids to get good schooling.
In 2011, my wife accused an employee (her niece) of doing something malicious. That situation evolved like this: my wife asked if we could temporarily hire sis in law to work at the office to pay off her bill. Keep in mind this is a medical office and requires a great deal of knowledge. Not really excited about it, I reluctantly agreed because didn't want to be difficult about it. So my wife puts sis in law on the phones and computers from the start. Shortly after that, our niece, alerts me to a problem with the computer program. There was missing data in one record she found. So, not knowing if this is the one incidence of missing data, or if this is the tip of the iceberg, I called my wife to express my concerns. And I was concerned, and I am sure it came across in my voice and tone. I explained what happened, and she said "We didn't do it" I said I know no one did it on purpose, and I was sure it was a error of some type and that it had never happened before. The only thing new was sis in law was on the computer. So until I figured out what went wrong, I thought it best if sis in law was not there. So a few days later, my wife says to me "I know what happened with the computer" I reply "What?" She says " K____, (the niece) deliberately deleted those records to make sis in law and me look bad" I said that she has been a loyal employee for years, and she is your first husbands family, and why would you accuse her of that with out proof? After that, the accusations were that I had manipulated the computer data. After that, both niece and I were accused of doing it. I know what I do and I know what I don't do, and this would have never entered my mind to even think of doing. After 9 months, my wife decided that she no longer wanted to work in our business and took employment in her previous job. However she kept at me about her niece. So I tried to replicate the computer error, and came to the conclusion that it was possible that the niece did it, but also very possible it was an error of some type.
My wife was transformed and the whole marriage took a turn for the wonderful. Doing things together, actually having a sexual relationship, actually talking in deep ways. We still refer to that month as "that May." My wife was waiting for me to fire her niece. She asked me about a month later, and I said, that while it was possible that the niece did it, that the computer snafu could have been done by anyone. And that is when things went bad, real fast. We have been there ever since.
Physical abuse toward me started about a month after that and lasted until last august. Basically there wasn't a time in three years when I didn't have bruises on me. During this time, I would come to work, and my staff would see the scratches and bruises and ask about sometimes. I would state what happened. They would ask if I was ok. So the long and short of it was that my coworkers knew what was happening at the house. Things really deteriorated and we sold our house last august. There was not enough good will to look for a house together, so since then I have been living with my dad, and she has been living in an apartment with our 27 year old son.
Since selling our house last august, I filed for divorce last September. My wife went on a vacation with me this past January, I invited her to try to reconcile things. While there, she apologized and said she was having a breakdown during that period and didn't know it. That if she would have known it, she would have gotten help. I said I did not realize she was having a breakdown, that I thought all the anger and rage was directed at me because I refused to fire someone I thought was innocent, and had I recognized it, I would have gotten her help. So at the end of the trip, I thought we had some healing. In march we took another weekend trip and thought again, there was some healing.
However, since then, every time we get together for dinner, the conversation becomes about everything I have ever done wrong, especially talk to my staff about what was going on at home. And looking back, I could have used better discretion, but in the midst of being beat on several times weekly, and being raged on until wee hours of the morning, I think I was suffering from severe sleep deprivation and really was only trying to survive mentally. I didn't turn to alcohol to cope or other destructive things. I chose to get involved in constructive things instead. In a last ditch effort to do something, I dropped the divorce case because they would not reschedule court dates, and I ordered Mort Fertel's program, which I think is the best program I have seen. It focuses on fixing you, not the other person.
My wife and I were supposed to do it together, and I see my mistakes, or at least some of them and am working on them. However, my wife still only insists on blaming, criticizing and condemning me for what transpired over three years and my staff getting wind of it. She said I should have just kept my mouth quiet and just dealt with it. I have permanent scars on my arms as a reminder. The Marriage Fitness program with Mort is over now, and there is no change. I tried to institute a date night, after a few times it became a "This is whats wrong with you and why did you do this night." Over the past months and years, I get barrages of texts, sometimes 70 or more at a time, telling me what's wrong with me. I used to engage or try to respond to her concerns. I get nowhere.
My wife is all about emotions, she acts how she feels. I have never been talked to the way she talks to me. She is very verbally abusive and has been for years. Name calling, raging, contempt, accusations, withholding affection and sex (we had sex about every 6 or 8 months for years. Whenever I asked for sex she would respond with contempt to "conrol myself." Routinely told I was disgusting and repulsive. During the past three years she would ask me to leave on holidays so her family could come over and the family could have a nice holiday. After doing some research I started to wonder if my wife had high functioning borderline personality disorder or some type of bi polar disorder. She was very angry I would even think this and totally disregards that anything might be wrong.
Sometime she can be very nice, and others times, for no reason, really start raging. So I am in place where I need to want to move out of my dads house and get a house of my own. I can't see it happening together with my wife. It will fall back into the same destructive pattern. The money from the house is sitting in escrow. We are going nowhere. I want to move forward, and the only way I think I can do that is to file for divorce again, and go thru with it, and have hopes that my wife might come to some sort of ephiphany. My hope is that my wife would see her part in all this and see how her actions impacted me and my actions. I do see how some of my actions impacted her, and am correcting those behaviors. The other thing I see is my wife interprets things very differently. For example, my dad comes over for Christmas and asks my son where he is working. That simple inquiry by a grandfather becomes something very different. Think of the most angry, hateful way a person could ask "Do you have a job yet?" and that is the way it was interpreted. My dad isnt' soft spoken, he is a Korean war vet, and a ex marine. He speaks firmly. I got raged on for 8 or 9 months regarding that, and my father was not welcome in our house again. There are many, many other examples.
My wife is a wonderful person in many ways, but I can't live the rest of my life the way I have lived the past 20 years. I am 56, she is 48. No one is having an affair.
Any input or advice would be appreciated. Is this salvageable or am I wasting my time? Thoughts or opinions or questions? A womans perspective would be appreciated. I will gladly respond to questions.
Basic family history:
We have been married 21 years. We have three children, the oldest two are from my wife's first marriage. Her first husband passed away when the kids were very young. We met two years after that, and have one daughter of our own. Shortly after marrying, we decided to open our own business, which was funded from a mortgage on the house she owned outright and some money from the life insurance settlement she got. Business has been successful, and my wife was able to be a stay at home mom and raise the children. The business never involved travel, so I was home every night.
We were in a small town for ten years, and the schools were not the best, so we put the children in a Christian school (K-8) in the next town. Overall it was a good education, except we pulled our middle daughter out of that school in the sixth grade because a male teacher was not nice to her. We did decide to relocate both business and house because the jobs for teenagers and education for high school were not good in that area, so we relocated to an area about an hour away where the schools were good and much better jobs were available for the children when they got old enough to want a part time job. We sold the first business and started a second one when we relocated. My wife was able to come and go from the business as she wanted. A major issue came to light in 2008. It turns out that our middle daughter was raped by her sixth grade teacher while in the Christian school. A very long story but it played out like this: State police did a very good investigation, and came to the conclusion that the sex abuse was widespread and happened to both boys and girls. The county prosecutor refused to let the State Police interview the teacher and took the investigating trooper off the case and put another on to close it down. Over a period of three years, we have gone to the State Attorney General and got nowhere, the local Federal prosecutor, the FBI child protection unit and a civil rights attorney and the local TV investigator. The TV investigator obtained the police report, and all the names except my daughter was whited out. They all basically said, sorry, nothing we can do. That was a very bitter pill to swallow. Of course my wife blamed me because our business kept us in that small town, and it was basically my fault because we were "forced" to use the Christian school if we wanted our kids to get good schooling.
In 2011, my wife accused an employee (her niece) of doing something malicious. That situation evolved like this: my wife asked if we could temporarily hire sis in law to work at the office to pay off her bill. Keep in mind this is a medical office and requires a great deal of knowledge. Not really excited about it, I reluctantly agreed because didn't want to be difficult about it. So my wife puts sis in law on the phones and computers from the start. Shortly after that, our niece, alerts me to a problem with the computer program. There was missing data in one record she found. So, not knowing if this is the one incidence of missing data, or if this is the tip of the iceberg, I called my wife to express my concerns. And I was concerned, and I am sure it came across in my voice and tone. I explained what happened, and she said "We didn't do it" I said I know no one did it on purpose, and I was sure it was a error of some type and that it had never happened before. The only thing new was sis in law was on the computer. So until I figured out what went wrong, I thought it best if sis in law was not there. So a few days later, my wife says to me "I know what happened with the computer" I reply "What?" She says " K____, (the niece) deliberately deleted those records to make sis in law and me look bad" I said that she has been a loyal employee for years, and she is your first husbands family, and why would you accuse her of that with out proof? After that, the accusations were that I had manipulated the computer data. After that, both niece and I were accused of doing it. I know what I do and I know what I don't do, and this would have never entered my mind to even think of doing. After 9 months, my wife decided that she no longer wanted to work in our business and took employment in her previous job. However she kept at me about her niece. So I tried to replicate the computer error, and came to the conclusion that it was possible that the niece did it, but also very possible it was an error of some type.
My wife was transformed and the whole marriage took a turn for the wonderful. Doing things together, actually having a sexual relationship, actually talking in deep ways. We still refer to that month as "that May." My wife was waiting for me to fire her niece. She asked me about a month later, and I said, that while it was possible that the niece did it, that the computer snafu could have been done by anyone. And that is when things went bad, real fast. We have been there ever since.
Physical abuse toward me started about a month after that and lasted until last august. Basically there wasn't a time in three years when I didn't have bruises on me. During this time, I would come to work, and my staff would see the scratches and bruises and ask about sometimes. I would state what happened. They would ask if I was ok. So the long and short of it was that my coworkers knew what was happening at the house. Things really deteriorated and we sold our house last august. There was not enough good will to look for a house together, so since then I have been living with my dad, and she has been living in an apartment with our 27 year old son.
Since selling our house last august, I filed for divorce last September. My wife went on a vacation with me this past January, I invited her to try to reconcile things. While there, she apologized and said she was having a breakdown during that period and didn't know it. That if she would have known it, she would have gotten help. I said I did not realize she was having a breakdown, that I thought all the anger and rage was directed at me because I refused to fire someone I thought was innocent, and had I recognized it, I would have gotten her help. So at the end of the trip, I thought we had some healing. In march we took another weekend trip and thought again, there was some healing.
However, since then, every time we get together for dinner, the conversation becomes about everything I have ever done wrong, especially talk to my staff about what was going on at home. And looking back, I could have used better discretion, but in the midst of being beat on several times weekly, and being raged on until wee hours of the morning, I think I was suffering from severe sleep deprivation and really was only trying to survive mentally. I didn't turn to alcohol to cope or other destructive things. I chose to get involved in constructive things instead. In a last ditch effort to do something, I dropped the divorce case because they would not reschedule court dates, and I ordered Mort Fertel's program, which I think is the best program I have seen. It focuses on fixing you, not the other person.
My wife and I were supposed to do it together, and I see my mistakes, or at least some of them and am working on them. However, my wife still only insists on blaming, criticizing and condemning me for what transpired over three years and my staff getting wind of it. She said I should have just kept my mouth quiet and just dealt with it. I have permanent scars on my arms as a reminder. The Marriage Fitness program with Mort is over now, and there is no change. I tried to institute a date night, after a few times it became a "This is whats wrong with you and why did you do this night." Over the past months and years, I get barrages of texts, sometimes 70 or more at a time, telling me what's wrong with me. I used to engage or try to respond to her concerns. I get nowhere.
My wife is all about emotions, she acts how she feels. I have never been talked to the way she talks to me. She is very verbally abusive and has been for years. Name calling, raging, contempt, accusations, withholding affection and sex (we had sex about every 6 or 8 months for years. Whenever I asked for sex she would respond with contempt to "conrol myself." Routinely told I was disgusting and repulsive. During the past three years she would ask me to leave on holidays so her family could come over and the family could have a nice holiday. After doing some research I started to wonder if my wife had high functioning borderline personality disorder or some type of bi polar disorder. She was very angry I would even think this and totally disregards that anything might be wrong.
Sometime she can be very nice, and others times, for no reason, really start raging. So I am in place where I need to want to move out of my dads house and get a house of my own. I can't see it happening together with my wife. It will fall back into the same destructive pattern. The money from the house is sitting in escrow. We are going nowhere. I want to move forward, and the only way I think I can do that is to file for divorce again, and go thru with it, and have hopes that my wife might come to some sort of ephiphany. My hope is that my wife would see her part in all this and see how her actions impacted me and my actions. I do see how some of my actions impacted her, and am correcting those behaviors. The other thing I see is my wife interprets things very differently. For example, my dad comes over for Christmas and asks my son where he is working. That simple inquiry by a grandfather becomes something very different. Think of the most angry, hateful way a person could ask "Do you have a job yet?" and that is the way it was interpreted. My dad isnt' soft spoken, he is a Korean war vet, and a ex marine. He speaks firmly. I got raged on for 8 or 9 months regarding that, and my father was not welcome in our house again. There are many, many other examples.
My wife is a wonderful person in many ways, but I can't live the rest of my life the way I have lived the past 20 years. I am 56, she is 48. No one is having an affair.
Any input or advice would be appreciated. Is this salvageable or am I wasting my time? Thoughts or opinions or questions? A womans perspective would be appreciated. I will gladly respond to questions.
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