Stuck in Limbo

[benpom]

You shuold out her today in my opinion, and I think you should start on Facebook.

 

And I mean start there. Something like, " Just so everyone knows, 'Wife's Name' has left me and the children for her Ex 'Ex's name'. I suppose we will be find after we all heal from her betrayal of me and her family".

 

Why should she get to have all the cake and eat it after what she has done to you. She is never coming back and you should never take her back.

 

It is not a revenge thing it is just an honesty thing. People should know.

 

This has the danger of starting a blame game.

 

Most people, relationships and families have moments they are not proud of, because all people are flawed. Exposing something people are not proud of in the name of honesty will start a war of digging up each other's shameful moments in life.

[benpom]

To a small degree, your story resonates with mine. So I want share a few words from my point of view. But don't take it seriously. My view may not relate to your situation at all.

 

1. Being a stay-at-home-parent can take a hug emotional toll for someone with ambitions and someone who has had a successful career, like your STBX, or someone like me. It does not happen overnight though. It creeps into life slowly. It erodes away security. The stay-at-home-parent must be very very secure to tolerate this slow erosion. When you say you will be a happy stay-at-home-parent, I think you just mean you will happily make the decision to be a stay-at-home-parent, but you don't really know whether you will be happy in the long run, because it's not in your control.

 

2. Many failed relationships suffer from lack of connection, not lack of attraction. I think yours might be one of them, so was mine. In your case, I think a few things compounded together:

* Not enough attraction - this is not the key though. Attraction only brings people near each other, but it's the connection that truly binds people together. The connection is built upon mutual respect, care and trust. I think you guys had enough attraction, but not enough connection.

* Lack of commitment

From your perspective: part of you don't trust her because she is not into you as much as you are into her, so you don't want to commit with a marriage or have her name in the deed.

From her perspective: she could not trust you completely because you did not want to commit. Without complete trust, she could not get the connection she needs, so she strays.

[DKT3]

If she can introduce him to your girls then she can be outed. She want to be the good guy, probably already concocting a story to fit the image of her she wants the world to see.

[The_Onceler]

This has the danger of starting a blame game.

 

Most people, relationships and families have moments they are not proud of, because all people are flawed. Exposing something people are not proud of in the name of honesty will start a war of digging up each other's shameful moments in life.

 

 

Yeah, I am really on the fence about it.

 

I would NOT post something particularly personal or privileged about her. Like, I would not name the OM, or even offer my opinion. That being said, she recently sent me a note where she talked about "dating" him, and I think it would be fair game for me to share to the world that it was strange and upsetting to hear her talk so casually about dating, after having been her committed partner for so many years.

 

That feels defensible. I mean, I am free to share with my Facebook world my own thoughts and feelings.

 

Even so, to what end, really? Anyone who knows me well is aware of the score, at least my perspective of the score. And if she is deceiving her friends and family, well, it seems to me that she is doing enough harm to herself already, then, isn't she? I mean, if a person has a relationship that they must keep hidden, what does that say? What more could I do to them?

[benpom]

Yeah, I am really on the fence about it.

 

I would NOT post something particularly personal or privileged about her. Like, I would not name the OM, or even offer my opinion. That being said, she recently sent me a note where she talked about "dating" him, and I think it would be fair game for me to share to the world that it was strange and upsetting to hear her talk so casually about dating, after having been her committed partner for so many years.

 

That feels defensible. I mean, I am free to share with my Facebook world my own thoughts and feelings.

 

Even so, to what end, really? Anyone who knows me well is aware of the score, at least my perspective of the score. And if she is deceiving her friends and family, well, it seems to me that she is doing enough harm to herself already, then, isn't she? I mean, if a person has a relationship that they must keep hidden, what does that say? What more could I do to them?

 

Good question! To what end?

 

It's hard to choose between fighting back and withdrawing safely if she already started the blaming war. But I caution against escalating things even unintentionally.

 

Be strong. What road you take now will affect your next relationship.

[BluesPower]

What has she done to deserve your restraint. And what has he done?

 

They are both terrible people and she has just treated you as less than dirt.

 

Why would you not out the both of them, they both deserve it and more.

[Marc878]

Exposure is a good thing if well planned. The truth fixes a lot of things.

 

Living in fear doesn't get you much.

 

IMO the timid passive attitude is why a lot end up here.

[The_Onceler]

Well, I ran the experiment.

 

Some friend had posted about his struggles with his divorce. I replied to commisserate, and said something along the lines of, "Yeah, I know it is inevitable, but I too am struggling with the fact that their mother introduced my girls to the man she is dating"

 

That seemed fairly harmless, it was factually correct, and all I was really doing was discussing my own experience and my own feelings. I mean, she NEVER mentions the other man on Facebook. It is clear that she is taking pains to keep their relationship out of the limelight in that regard. So, if I was intending to be a jerk, I might have posted something more explicit, perhaps with a link to his page or something.

 

Anyway, it didn't take long before I got this message from her: "Good for you for becoming somebody who airs their personal **** on Facebook. Nice that you made a special effort to misrepresent the situation too. Just another way that you want to try to manipulate and put me down. If you can't get to me personally, let's try to make everybody on Facebook think I am a villain. So much for being the man that your girls will be proud of."

 

She was upset because, evidently, when the kids met the other man, she did not introduce him as her boyfriend. Instead, they staged the situation and pretended it was a chance encounter with another family.

 

Anyway, I don't think my comment to my friend had misrepresented anything. It is was not relevant whether the kids new that this man was their mother's boyfriend. What was relevant was that she had taken a step towards the day when there WOULD be another father figure in the lives of my girls. That is hard to accept.

 

I thought it was quite telling that she called me out for putting her down and manipulating her. I mean, she and I have had a few disagreements since we split, but I think I have bent over backwards to be agreeable and to work with her in all of this. So, I really don't know where that stuff comes from.

 

I did think it was quite amazing for her to say that I should be ashamed of mentioning that my kids met the other man, but that she should not be ashamed for the mere fact of the other man. I mean, she had the affair, she broke up our family, and she moved out, all to be with him instead of with me. But I should be ashamed for merely mentioning it? WTF?

 

More recently, we have been fighting over child support. Here is the basic timeline:

 

June 1: She announces that she is leaving; I find out about the other man; after some arguments we decide to carry on with the status quo until she can find a job and move out. That means that I continue to support her (she was a SAHM).

 

Aug 15: She starts her new job; we put the kids in full time camp/daycare for the end of August.

 

Sep 10: she moves into her new place

 

 

So, I proposed to her that since I had continued to support her until Sept 10, we should waive child support for the balance of Sept and start in Oct. I then noted that her half of the cost of the child care that we needed once she was working was roughly equivalent to one month's child support, so since I paid for the camps and daycare, we should waive child support in Oct. I proposed starting payments in Nov.

 

We fough back and forth over the numbers, and finally agreed that I would make a partial payment in Oct and start with full payments in Nov.

 

It occurred to me that our payment schedule was based upon the salary that she told me she was going to get. However, whereas she had always had full access to all of my financials, I had no proof of hers. So, I asked her to send me a copy of a payslip.

 

I discovered then that, after accounting for the cost of housing that each of us pays, after I had sent her the child support payment, she actually had more cash on hand each month than I did. She actually winds up with about $1,000 more per month than I do.

 

The reality is that the difference is largely due to my large mortgage. However, I feel like I am stuck with the mortgage, and she is partly responsible for that. You see, we had purchased this house last November (2015). I sold my first home, and I then liquidated a 401k account, and used the net proceeds to purchase this new house. We went back and forth on the decision, because I was very uneasy about the large mortgage, and about liquidating a retirement account. Her argument was that things would be tight at first, but after a year or two, we would be OK. And also, since we intended to stay in that house until the girls were grown, it would represent a good investment vehicle, to offset the loss I would sustain when I liquidated my 401k.

 

In the end, I was convinced.

 

7 months later, she decided to leave me for the other man. I had foolishly put her name on the deed (primarily for rights of survivorship, but also as a show of committment to our relationship - we were not married). So, when she decided to leave, she had me by the short hairs, because I had sunk a ton of my personal wealth into the new house, and she was legally entitled to half of it.

 

I managed to get her to agree on a buyout, based upon what she felt was her share of the equity of the house that we had sold (it was my house, but we had raised our girls there togehter for 7 years).

 

Anyway, now I am left with a morrgage that I can hardly afford, considering the loss of her small income (she had been working part time) and the larger impact of the child support payments.

 

At the same time, if I sell now, I will lose tens of thousands of dollars in the process. I know that I am a grown man and I can do what I want, but I feel somewhat trapped in this mortgage. My financial well being depends upon me keeping the house if I can find a way to do so. Clearly, if I can't, then losing tens of thousands is better than losing ALL of my equity, but it would be best if I could keep the house until I can realize some actual return on my investment, or at least mitigate the losses.

 

So, I feel like my financial situation is crap, and in part it is crap because I agreed to buy the house with her with the express intent of being there for 10 years or longer. Then within a year she decided to leave me to pursue her happiness elsewhere. She is of course free to do that, but I feel like it is also incumbent upon her to take into consideration the agreement that we had and the covenant that she broke.

 

Now she simply expects me to pay her child support based upon our relative incomes, and if I am struggling wiht a huge mortgage, that is just my problem. If I will lose tens of thousands if/when I sell, well, that is just too bad for me.

 

I suspec that none of my perspective would hold water in a court of law, but it would be nice if she would at least admit that she effed me over in this process.

 

So, once I found out that she is actually materially MUCH better off than I am at this point, I was then incensed when she sent me a note to tell me that, in addition to the basic child support payment, she also had an itemized listing of everything ELSE that I owed her for - stuff like hair cuts for the kids, books she bought them, costumes she bought them, etc.

 

We went round and round, and she finally said, if I continued to refuse to make the additional payments, she would seek to bring in a mediator. I happen to have subsidized legal counsel as part of my employment benefits, so I told her to screw her mediator - if she wanted to go that route, I would just have my lawyer contact hers. She backed right off after that.

 

Even so, I am torn about fighting for lower child support payments. I have always taken care of my kids, and I have no intention of stopping, but it galls me that she can reneg on our 10 year plan with this house, walk away and leave me holding the bag, and then demand from me child support payments that cripple me financially yet leave her sitting pretty.

 

Gah!

 

 

 

OK. Sorry. I needed to vent. Thanks for indulging me!

[BluesPower]

She just does not everyone to know that she is an adulteress that betrayed her husband and family.

 

I don't know why you don't put your entire story on face book.

 

She is embarrassed because she did not want everyone to know the type of person that she is. You should have seen that from the start.

 

I would just not worry about her at all. She is gone, she betrayed you in about the worst way possible.

 

Just move on and try to act like she does not exist. Living well will be your best revenge.

 

Hang tough...

[The_Onceler]

She just does not everyone to know that she is an adulteress that betrayed her husband and family.

 

I don't know why you don't put your entire story on face book.

 

She is embarrassed because she did not want everyone to know the type of person that she is. You should have seen that from the start.

 

I would just not worry about her at all. She is gone, she betrayed you in about the worst way possible.

 

Just move on and try to act like she does not exist. Living well will be your best revenge.

 

Hang tough...

 

I imagine that it might not seem like it from all of my ranting and raving, but I *am* trying to move on from her. She just doesn't make it very easy. For instance, yesterday she sent me an email to tell me that she is going to have a busy month at work. She was forewarning me that she was going to ask that we rearrange our custody schedule to fit with her work requirements.

 

I said, feel free to send it along, but I was facing a busy month at work too, and in addition, I might have to travel (my boss made some vague mention of a trip to the UK before he left on his own business trip). I wanted to tell her to just piss off, but I thought that the more mature thing to do was to at least SEEM like I might try to work with her.

 

She. Went. Ballistic.

 

How dare I not tell her that I was leaving the country!

 

How dare I consider making my own arrangements for care!

 

How dare I plan to have my mother watch the kids rather than have my ex do it!

 

 

 

I tried to explain that I am attempting to live my life AWAY from her. As such, when I need somebody to watch the kids, I arrange for a babysitter or family or some such. Clearly, if I had concrete plans to leave travel, I would tell her. And if I was going to be gone for an extended period, I might even need to involve her.

 

But I expect to be gone for a quick trip, maybe 2 or 3 days. In the worst case, that would mean having my mother stay at my house for a few days, put the kids on the bus in the AM, and pick them up in the PM. Not a big deal, and no reason to involve my ex, in my opinion.

 

But, my point is, she expects to continue to involve me in her life in these ways, and expects that I need to involve her in mine as well. As far as I am concerned, aside from updates about homework and the health of our children, I am best off to have no contact with her whatever.

 

So, I *am* trying, but she keeps reaching out to exert her influence on my life...

[anna121]

I would not dignify her outburst with a response other than, if I was feeling particularly snarky: "Thanks for your input. I appreciate your perspective." But I would continue to tell whomever I pleased whatever I pleased. That said, I would no longer do so on FB. Nothing that can be flung in your face in a proceeding later.

[anna121]

When she goes ballistic, I would not respond. Wait until she gets back to you in a calmer mood.

[The_Onceler]

This was also part of her last email to me: "Maybe you should meet <OTHER MAN> so you will see him as a human and not as this force of evil that came along to ruin everyone's lives. Like you, he is a great dad. That might be where the similarities end. He doesn't stand in judgment of me at all and he knows 100% everything about me."

 

WTF?

 

Does she seriously expect that I would want to meet him at this stage? At any, really? Cuz in my my mind, he is just that - a bastard who broke his own vows, then came along to help break up my family.

 

She said this because I had mentioned him in my previous response to her. She was chastising me for planning to leave me kids with my mom for a day or two, claiming that they should be with her. I reminded her that on the 3rd weekend after we split, she chose to dump the kids with her mom so she could take off for the weekend with her boyfriend.

 

So, at best, my mention of him was oblique, and my point was really that they had both done something crappy, in my opinion. I mean, the kids had only learned of the split a few weeks before, and she was dumping them at the last minute with her mom so she could be with him.

 

Why would I want to meet him?

[The_Onceler]

BTW: I resisted responding to her at that point...

[BluesPower]

You know what The_Onceler, she has just lost her mind.

 

You have to wonder at this point if she ever loved you or if she was ever a sane person.

 

I know you realize this but I am thinking that you are lucky you got out when you did, wow.

 

I mean I thought I knew about crazy, but this is on a whole different level.

[The_Onceler]

You know what The_Onceler, she has just lost her mind.

 

You have to wonder at this point if she ever loved you or if she was ever a sane person.

 

I know you realize this but I am thinking that you are lucky you got out when you did, wow.

 

I mean I thought I knew about crazy, but this is on a whole different level.

 

 

 

I do think that the breakup was in part due to a midlife crisis that she is having. Honestly.

 

But I really don't know... sometimes I think she is bat**** crazy, then other times I think it might be me who is nuts...

[Wade Lamare]

This was also part of her last email to me: "Maybe you should meet <OTHER MAN> so you will see him as a human and not as this force of evil that came along to ruin everyone's lives. Like you, he is a great dad. That might be where the similarities end. He doesn't stand in judgment of me at all. He hasn't had to deal with the hum drum reality of life. Diapers, illness, laundry, temper tantrums, money worries, building a home like you have. He just continues to say nice lovey dovey things to me and tells me how marvellous I am. It's wonderful and the best thing possible for me and it'll last forever, I don't know why you can't see that?

 

There FTFY.

[The_Onceler]

There FTFY.

 

Hey! Have you hacked my email??

 

This was the remainder of that same email: "I hope you also meet someone that accepts you completely for who you are and gives you wings to be the person you want to be. I feel very thankful to have him in my life to keep me focused on the positive in the midst of all the ways you like to paint me out to be a bad person."

 

Right? He didn't have to go through what I did with her. Not yet. Give it time. When the honeymoon phase ends, and he learns how self centered she is (or when her self centered behavior no longer suits his needs), then what? I anticipate a steaming pile of regret coming her way.

[The_Onceler]

To a small degree, your story resonates with mine. So I want share a few words from my point of view. But don't take it seriously. My view may not relate to your situation at all.

 

1. Being a stay-at-home-parent can take a hug emotional toll for someone with ambitions and someone who has had a successful career, like your STBX, or someone like me. It does not happen overnight though. It creeps into life slowly. It erodes away security. The stay-at-home-parent must be very very secure to tolerate this slow erosion. When you say you will be a happy stay-at-home-parent, I think you just mean you will happily make the decision to be a stay-at-home-parent, but you don't really know whether you will be happy in the long run, because it's not in your control.

 

2. Many failed relationships suffer from lack of connection, not lack of attraction. I think yours might be one of them, so was mine. In your case, I think a few things compounded together:

* Not enough attraction - this is not the key though. Attraction only brings people near each other, but it's the connection that truly binds people together. The connection is built upon mutual respect, care and trust. I think you guys had enough attraction, but not enough connection.

* Lack of commitment

From your perspective: part of you don't trust her because she is not into you as much as you are into her, so you don't want to commit with a marriage or have her name in the deed.

From her perspective: she could not trust you completely because you did not want to commit. Without complete trust, she could not get the connection she needs, so she strays.

 

I had meant to respond to this, but somehow it was lost along the way...

 

So, for one, yes: I get that being a SAHM (or dad) is not all daytime soap operas and bon-bons. That being said, due to the circumstances of how we "started" our family, it was always difficult to feel fully committed to her. I never really felt that I could trust her.

 

To summarize: she and I had been broken up for almost a year. She reached out to me to "get closure", but we wound up having sex. Two days later, she reached out to me again - more sex. Three months later I found out that she had stopped taking the pill (she had been on the pill for her entire adult life), had forgot to mention it to me, and she was pregnant.

 

So, I dropped everything, moved from CA to NE, and committed to attempting to make a family. I agreed to take on all of her debts and be the primary (sole) breadwinner, while she stayed home to care for our baby daughter.

 

Then I found out about all of the other men who she had shared her bed with, never really cheating on me, but they were interlaced throughout the previous years of our rocky relationship. But, all along, when we would split and the reconcile, I would ask if there had been any other men, and she would always say no. The truth of the matter was that there were dozens, and I had actually spent time with her AND them at various points along the way, but I was the only one who was ignorant of what was going on.

 

Maybe it was just ego, but I was shattered. I learned all of that in the first few months after our daughter was born. It was all so crazy and there were so many men, I actually went out to have my daughter's DNA tested.

 

She was mine.

 

Anyway, all of that made it hard to feel good about her contributions as a SAHM, and instead, I often felt resentful.

 

I made her a full partner - she had access to my paycheck, my savings, and all of our finances were available to her. She and I had very different ideas about how to manage our finances, and that led to many fights, which further fueled my resentment.

 

So, anyway - there were reasons (good and bad) why it was hard for me to give her the credit that perhaps she was due as a SAHM. Of course, she wanted to be a SAHM. Later, when our girls (we got preggers again by accident!) were old enough, she talked about going back to work. Within 3 months, she had herself a job. She only worked as a SAHM for exactly as long as she wanted to.

[BluesPower]

The_Onceler...Understand this.

 

I get that you think you are crazy sometimes. And, maybe you made some bad choices and did not recognize what type of person she was or you were in denial, whatever. That does not make you crazy, maybe it makes you young and a little stupid at that time, maybe it makes you naïve at the time, but it does not make you a crazy person. Your wife is Bat**** crazy, and I am serious about that.

 

And you got to wonder why she would pick (or pick on) you to receive all of this pain. She could have chosen any one of her other lovers to get pregnant by and saddle them with her insanity, but she choose you. Maybe it is because you were a good guy, I don't know.

 

When my wife was deep into her addiction for a few years, I really thought that I was losing my mind. What was all this behavior about? Why does she do the crazy things that she does? Why does she treat me this way? Why is she always messed up and I don't see her drinking?

 

I mean it must be me, right? Wrong. For me, when I finally realized what was going on, I felt stupid, I new I had been wronged, but I finally knew without a doubt that I was not crazy.

 

As bad as I felt about what I had been put through, at least I knew I was not crazy and that made me feel somewhat better.

 

You should really understand that you are not crazy and you never were. All the stuff she did, all that stuff you argued about, that was her and it was never you. Over time as you realize this more and more, you may beat yourself up for staying with her for so long, but you will know that you really did all you could and you are not crazy.

[MJJean]

Have you spoken to an attorney about the child support you're paying? In my state, any payments that do not go through the child support offices are considered gifts unless there is a receipt signed by the Payee acknowledging the money was for child support or the payment is made by check or money order with "for child support" written in the notation area.

 

In other words, a man can pay child support for YEARS and if his ex takes him to court, he would be considered to have never paid a dime and be immediately in arrears.

 

Were I you, I'd get a court order for child support and custody. Make sure it includes the details such as who pays for what, etc. If you decide to do more than required, that's great. But your azz will be covered just in case.

 

Also, in my state, it is common for parents to include something like "no unrelated members of the opposite sex can stay the night in the home while the children are in residence" if that is a concern for you.

 

And, again, in my state, it's also fairly common for custody agreements to include first refusal. This means that if Parent A has the kids and needs a sitter, Parent B gets asked first. If Parent B cannot or does not want to take the kids, Parent A can arrange a sitter. Might want to look into that, too.

[MJJean]

Later, when our girls (we got preggers again by accident!)

 

Just curious, Pill and condom?

 

My oldest child and my disastrous sham of a first marriage were due to a Pill failure. The continuation of that marriage for an additional 2 years was because a condom failure resulted in another baby.

[The_Onceler]

Just curious, Pill and condom?

.

 

First child was no pill, no condom. We'd been in a relationship for years prior to that final breakup, and had a long history of that sort of sex. It seemed totally normal, even after a 9 month breakup. For me, there had been no other woman in between, and she always acted as if she had the same sort of approach to sex, so it was easy to believe that she had also had no other partner. She didn't mention that she had stopped taking the pill, tho I should have asked and/or used a condom anyway.

 

Child #2 was due to IUD failure. She has a bifurcation uterus (I think that is the term), so her IUD blocked one of the paths to her uterus, but not both. Child #2 was a miracle of sorts.

 

I do have to say, I love my children dearly, so from that perspective, this has all been worthere it.

[anna121]

I know I said you shouldn't respond, but you really, really shouldn't be reading these long emails filled with her psycho-babble and narcissism.

 

Consider asking her to keep your communication strictly business. Maybe state something like "I see no benefit, and am not interested, in discussing these matters with you. Please do not continue to raise them with me."

[The_Onceler]

I know I said you shouldn't respond, but you really, really shouldn't be reading these long emails filled with her psycho-babble and narcissism.

 

Consider asking her to keep your communication strictly business. Maybe state something like "I see no benefit, and am not interested, in discussing these matters with you. Please do not continue to raise them with me."

 

Thanks. I totally agree. I have tried to do this, and have said this sort of thing to her in the past.

 

However, she can't seem to help but send me such things, and to be honest, I sometimes cannot resist engaging her. It is fairly typical for her to put a bunch of time and effort into some plan and then send my emails and texts and spreadsheets and ask me to agree. I either simply agree, or all hell breaks loose in some manner or another.