X-Slayer, if things aren’t going well, and they don’t have the connection they used to have, she probably already feels isolated, alone, and unsettled, right there in her own home. And it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if the feeling just got worse when they were both in the house at the same time.
When you feel lonelier around the person who’s supposed to be your best friend and lover than you do by yourself, it’s time to get away from it for a bit. The constant pain of feeling that way just gets in the way of dealing with other issues, and it can lead to a huge, simmering load of resentment that just clouds the issues even further. In that situation, sticking around isn’t doing anybody a bit of good, and it’s certainly not helping your relationship. Sometimes getting the hell out of Dodge lets the pain fade enough that you can see more clearly, and work things out more effectively.
Of course, sometimes once the pain fades you see things more clearly and realize things can’t be worked out. That sucks, but I’d say the bust-up is less acrimonious than it would be if she stayed and let the pain and anger keep building up.
I know of what you speak, CrazyCatLady because lived thru it. I know what it feels like to be lonely, isolated and unloved living in your own house.
My posts are for QuickSilver; how to address his issues not hers. She needs to feel the pain without the home. I wakes people up sometimes. It would be too unsettling and in my opinion unfair to be told to leave when she is the one with the conviction to separate. If she wants to make the leap, let her feel the ground leave her feet. Its not something I would recommend lightly.
We almost had a divorce over a similar situation. He was still working but it was a horrible situation and a completely demoralizing job. Add to the mix that his pay was reduced until he was at minimum wage and that he didn’t think he could get another job in the Bay Area. My usually amiable husband would come home and either pick a fight or just tell me what a failure he was. This went on for months. I couldn’t take it anymore, the emotional rollercoaster was just too much for me to deal with and I finally told him that he could either face up to the changes in his personality or I was leaving.
Luckily he was laid off and he found a decent job within a short period of time. At the time he refused to believe that his personality had changed at all and it took him about 6 months after things had improved before he finally admitted that he might have been difficult to live with.
I’m sorta rambling here and just trying to say what happened with us but the thing is that after things improved, my husband kinda bounced back pretty quickly. But I couldn’t do the same. I was so tense and wound up from the months of being an emotional punching bag that it wasn’t easy to let go. It just took so much out of me to be the emotional support for both of us that I was completely worn out and needed a break. We didn’t have kids which is a huge factor.
So your wife may just need an emotional separation to allow her time to rebuild her emotional strength. It can take a lot for some people to rebuild their emotional reserves. If this is the case then patience and understanding might work better than pushing for an immediate resolution.
Whatever happens I hope that things work out for you and your family.
That is precisely how she feels and I blame myself for it.
X-Slayer wrote:
Me too.
X-Slayer wrote:
But I don’t know if I can bear to put her through it. Even if that is ultimatly what needs to happen.
Rocza wrote:
I wouldn’t say that I’ve completely improved. I’m certainly feeling like things are starting to get back on track with my career. I’m far from my dot.com boom days and I’m not doing the work that I love. But I remain in a related sector and I’m optimistic that I’ll work my way back into my specialty. But the important thing is that I am “cautiously optimistic”. Alas, my wife is still very much shell shocked. It’s just been too much for her in too short a time to be able to get back on the road to recovery. What’s more, she’s unsure about herself and what she’s become after 7 years of being (an amazing) full time mom and now finding that this is just not enough anymore.
My thoughts on this situation (if you’re still checking on this thread);
I haven’t read anything here so far that warrants as drastic an action as divorce, especially where there are two small children involved.
After my husband and I spent two years alternating being unemployed, when we were finally both working again, I had a short, surprising period of being really cranky once the pressure was off. Some kind of perverse human reaction - it didn’t last long, but your wife (and you, yourself) may be feeling something like this.
Get both of you to counselling. You say you’re good parents - well, good parents don’t hurt their children the way a divorce will without fighting tooth and nail not to let it get to that point.
It sounds like your wife is at loose ends, wants some kind of change in her life, and thinks her marriage is the cause of her restlessness. I suspect she will find out that the marriage is not the cause; hopefully, she won’t have killed the marriage before she realizes that.
Living separately in the same house for awhile might be a good solution to the way your wife is feeling. Maybe you don’t need something as drastic as a separation or divorce; maybe she just needs some time and space to get her head together again. Maybe she’s feeling too much like her whole identity is “wife” and “mother”, and needs to find a way to be a whole, adult woman again.
90% of the time a separation is prelude to divorce. It sucks but based on your description of the situation your chances for staying married are poor at best. You had best be crafting a post-divorce shared custody-single dad life strategy at this point.
I will assure you she already has her post-Quicksilver strategy well mapped out.
A user on this board recommended to me two excellent websites.
Marriage Builders and Divorce Busters. (I think you just have to put www in front of them. I’m too lazy to check right now.)
Take a look at their message boards to see that hundreds of people have been through the same thing that you’re going through.
My WAG: perhaps she is plumb tuckered out after babysitting you for that long bad period. You say you’ve always talked. I’m sure you did, but perhaps she didn’t feel free to speak her mind. Perhaps she felt like it was her job to make things be okay.
Maybe she didn’t come up to see the kids because she thought that, if you are going to divorce, it’s high time they learned to see you as a single source of comfort.
This is all wild guessing based on what can happen very easily with American gender roles and your idea that a “new house” has magic powers. Why should she sleep with you in the new house if she told you, in the old house, that she wanted to stop doing that?
Again, I have NO IDEA what is going on in her mind. Just tossing out some possibilities. Can’t be sure by user names - is this basic scenario posted by females only? Hmmmm…
FWIW:
My parents separated for 15 months. She left and lived with her sister. They got counseling. My Dad learn to to stop taking her for granted, she learned to accept him for who he was. They have been back together for 17 years.
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