My wife and I met 18 years ago this week, and next month we’ll have been married 16 years. Our life wasn’t picture perfect, we have bills and occasional money problems like many, but I still thought that things were good. We were comfortable with our life, or at least I was…
About seven weeks ago, I confronted her about why she had been so crabby for the last month (I waited to ask because I wanted to be certain it was her and not me) and was told that things between us haven’t been right for a long time. I was stunned. I was completely blindsided.
We had a discussion in which I found out almost nothing. She didn’t know exactly what was wrong, or how long it had been wrong. She didn’t know if it could be rectified, she didn’t know if she wanted to work it out, etc…I asked why she didn’t say anything to me that she felt this way and was told “Because it’s hard.” No shit. I recommended we see a therapist together, she declined indicating she wanted to talk to somebody one-on-one first. Fine, that’s progress. I gave her a week and asked when her appointment was. She hadn’t called. Another week; still hadn’t called. I was dying for answers, but at the same time realized that she needed time to think without pressure. I laid low, again talking to her about it after a couple more weeks, still I didn’t find out anything new. Meanwhile, we’re still living together, eating family meals together, sleeping in the same bed…No one outside the house knew anything was wrong. Hell, the kids didn’t even know anything was wrong.
Then about 2 weeks ago I pushed her for some answers. Still, she didn’t know anything. She told me didn’t want to talk to anyone until she knew what the problem was. I said that’s the perfect reason to talk to someone, to help figure out what is wrong. I also said it wasn’t fair to keep stringing me along without giving me any more information and refusing to talk to anyone else. She asked for a little more time and not knowing how long that could be, I still agreed.
A couple days later, on Tuesday of last week I was off work. I came home from a bike ride to find her car in the garage in the middle of the day. I found her on the couch, crying. Getting really nervous. Her boss, who is also a good friend, had noticed something was wrong and brought her in to her office to talk. I don’t know the content of their conversation, but she sent my wife home telling her she needed to talk to me.
She has decided she still doesn’t know exactly what’s wrong, but she doesn’t think she can get past it. Therapy or not. So we are divorcing. No discussion, no attempt at therapy. Just done.
We told our daughters, 14 and nine, when they got home from school that day. They were both, understandably, very upset. They know we’ll both continue to be there for them, that’s not ever going to change, but it’s still a huge adjustment to ask them to make. All we can do is support them and make sure they know they are just as loved now as they ever have been.
Now the next part of the story. Around the beginning of the year, my soon-to-be ex-wife, an avid Facebooker, reconnected with a male high school friend, now living about 900 miles away (you might be thinking: “This is the problem, dummy”. I’m not naive, I see it). Probably in March, she told me he was returning to our state to visit some family. She asked if I cared if they got together for the day to hang out. Having never been given a reason not to trust in her, I told her I didn’t care. When he got here in June, they spent a night out and then the entire next day. Then he was gone. A couple days later, my youngest asked if he was mom’s boyfriend in high school. Having no idea, I told her to ask mom. SURPRISE!! They never dated, but she had a crush on him in school. That little factoid had never been mentioned before. I was just getting ready to leave for work at the time (night shift) and had the whole night to ponder it.
I started to remember things that, by themselves, may mean nothing, but to my now rather suspicious mind, putting these things together may actually mean something. We used to primarily use one (mine) e-mail account. She had her own, but seldom used it. She changed the password on the account and started to use it exclusively. She began logging out of Facebook when finished, which she’d never done before. I don’t know for certain, but I’d bet the farm she changed that password too. She rarely drinks, and in all our time together, I have seen her drunk one time, about 18 years ago. She said the night they went out “The beers were going down pretty good”. Both times they got together they were out past 11:00. Late for her.
On the night she told me how unhappy she was, I asked if it had anything to do with getting reacquainted with this guy. She said they were only friends, they chat on FB and sometimes talk on the phone.
During the 6 week period while I was kept in limbo, I was becoming more and more suspicious that this guy had something to do with what was going on. I got the cell phone account “detailed billing” turned on and checked her records. I found that she had been calling him on her drive to work almost every day, in fact 27 calls in August. It doesn’t indicate the originating number for incoming calls, but I’m sure he was calling her too. That same month, she took a 6 day trip to visit family. During that time, the phone bill showed more calls placed to him than to home. In fact, she called him every day, she called us two or three times. I was planning to sit on that info until I saw what a second month of calls revealed, but now that she’s ended things, it doesn’t really matter anymore.
I realize that it looks like she’s fooling around, or at least that it’s very plausible. But with the fact that he’s 6-8 states away from us, it’s doubtful. As for her seeing someone locally, I just don’t know when there would be time. She comes home from work and gets on the computer until 10:00 and goes to bed. We’re together almost all the time. My money says: emotional affair. I would love to know what’s up, but in the end, it still won’t change the new direction our lives are going. And with us still talking, still living in the same house, still sharing family meals with the kids, it’s probably not worth upsetting the balance we have right now.
On top of it all, the week before she dropped the bomb, I accepted an offer for a new job and will be starting there on 10/4. The thrill of that has been somewhat tempered to say the least.