seadog
recently joined
Reged: 09/10/10
Posts: 3
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My story from the start till the?
09/10/10 10:28 PM
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To be honest I’m not sure why I’m posting here other than to second guess myself and the steps I’m going to take. I’m probably more thinking aloud than anything else and seeing everything (or at least a condensed version) written down may help me do what I should have done years ago. I’ll apologize to those that get bored and drop out and am impressed by those who make it to the end!
I am a 40 year old guy who has been married for a bit over ten years. I have a 6 year old son who is my whole world.
I met my wife on the internet 13 years ago (before it got trendy) and we had a hard road to follow before we could actually be together. She is 10 years younger than me and was young when we wed (22). We got married while I was still a seafarer so every time I came home things were great and every time I left things were heartbreaking. I believe that we loved each other deeply and gave up my sea-going career to have a child. I knew I wouldn’t be able to miss out on my kids growing up, so quitting the sea was always going to be part of the deal when I had kids.
I got a shore job and about a year later my son came along.
I think everyone who makes an effort to come to a forum like this is the sort of person who knows the depth of love a parent feels for their child and the amount of hardships they will endure to bring them stability and happiness. I don’t feel the need to tell you how much I love the little chap or the lengths I would go to to make him happy. You all know what I’m talking about.
Things were good for about a year until the wee man went to a room of his own. I was the one who had some issues with being separated from him and I could not do the “let him cry it out” thing to fall asleep on his own. That was the beginning of the end of my marriage. Within about 3 weeks I was regularly falling asleep on a chair in his room after swinging him to sleep. Sometimes my wife would wake me up but mostly I would wake up when it was time to go to work.
My life turned into 10 hour work days then give the wee man a bath because “you haven’t seen him all day” and then put him to bed and fall asleep in his room, wake up and repeat. This went on for about a year.
My wife was working part time and started going out with her colleges after work once or twice a week. At first I was happy she was getting out and having some fun but as the nights out got later and more frequent I got more suspicious. It didn’t take long to find out she was having an affair with a guy from her work and she made no effort to deny it.
At this point my life consisted of my work (which I don’t particularly enjoy) and my son. I’m not a local to the area in which I live; I have no friends of my own and no social life that does not involve her family.
It took me less than an hour to realize that there was no way I could be separated from my then 18 month old son and despite the hurt I felt I would try to make things work out.
This was the point where my wife started to seek help for depression; unfortunately I think the depression was more to do with the ending of the affair than anything else. I had an interview (not sure if that’s the right term but it will do) with her first Psychiatrist who indicated that my wife was indeed suffering from depression but that it is not and could not be used as an excuse for an affair. To be honest she treated me very nicely and was sympathetic.
So life went on in a fashion with me doing the same thing and her sleeping on the sofa all day.
About a year later I was offered a big promotion and we all moved a couple of states away to “start a new life”
I went ahead and started to look for a new home and get settled while my wife and son stayed at the old house to get it sold and so on.
Eventually the house sold and we had a lovely new house in a good area. They arrived and I thought everything would start to turn around. I have to mention at this point that there had been no physical contact between my wife and I since the affair with her saying it would take time to get back to “that place” . I accepted this as I partially blamed myself for the whole sleeping in my son’s room and thereby ignoring my wife thing.
For a year I thought things were getting better. She spent more time than I would have liked going to visit her parents (7 hour drive once or twice a month) but I figured she needed that with the depression and everything. My new job was hard but paid well and my son was in daycare and settled. He was in daycare because she could not look after him for long periods due to the depression. There was still no physical contact but there was at least from the outside looking in, a functional family.
Then one day I got home from work and there was a letter on the floor, they were two states away with her parents visiting. There letter was a “return to sender” with my wifes hand writing on it. I opened it and it was a love letter to another man complete with perfume and lipstick kiss. I think my heart actually broke right then, I had never and hope ever will again felt so betrayed. Had it not been for a good friend from work I may not have made it through that night.
I called her and confronted her about it and then she decided it was a good time to drop another bomb shell on me. She went back to him (yes it was the same guy she was originally having the affair with 2 years previously) because she had been raped and needed someone to confide in.
Now I am not a heatless B. I am not a man who would turn his wife away because she had been violated by another man. On the other hand the circumstances are upsetting to me.
She had hooked up with a old school friend online while she was trying to sell the old house and I was living 2 states away (for those of you who are skimming you will now be lost, for those of you who are reading, I am impressed at your stamina!) and agreed to meet him in a bar. Needless to say she lied about where she was going that night to me. If she is to be believed, and I do even given everything that she has done, the guy slipped her one of those date rape drugs and he and his buddy then took her back to my house and raped her.
In short, she lied about where she was going and who she was seeing and then did stupid stuff to get herself in a situation that most 14 year old girls know better than to do.
So now we can add PTSD and severe depression into the mix.
I insisted on marriage counseling that time and after the second session she said that she didn’t want to go because the counselor just said it was her fault. After the second session the councilor told me I need to move on and get away which, while maybe unprofessional, was probably very well intended advice.
Around this time she was committed to a mental ward for a month and then left to live with her parents for another 2 months. That, in retrospect, was a happy time for me with my son, very hard due to work pressure, but happy.
She came home and eventually the pressure of tough job and a crap home life started to drag me down to the point where I felt that I might start to need drugs (prescription) to make it through the day. I could not face the thought of my son having 2 messed up parents so I opted to give my family one more chance and take a lower pressure position which would at least relieve half my stress.
It worked for a while and I love the place where I live. My work is far from a dream job but it pays well and is secure.
But.
There is always a but.
After 5 years, there is still zero physical contact between my wife and I. Nothing. We have not kissed on the lips for 5 years. It is a very lonely existence for me. My son is now 6 and is no longer a cuddle monster. I am very alone and lonely in a marriage where there is no hope of anything changing.
My wife lives in a bubble. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out. As long as the bills are paid and there is a sofa and internet access, she is content. She sells some stuff on the internet and does surveys online and that is enough for her (I forgot to mention I’ve paid for her to do 2 degrees over the last 10 years).
This is the part where I’ll probably lose the very few people who have read this far.
I have fallen in love with another woman.
I always promised myself that if I had a kid I would never divorce but I never thought it would be like this.
My wife has no idea because I always walk away from any fights because standing up to her results in her having a fit, taking sedatives and going to bed.
I have made my mind up it is time to end the marriage, only thing I don’t know is how. I don’t care about money or houses or contents. I don’t want to take my son away from his mother and I think he needs his father. I would love to think that she will be realistic and agree to split custody but I just don’t know. I am fairly sure she will want to go back to her parents but that is 4 hours away and I’m not going to let that happen. (I have previously warned her dad that I couldn’t take much more and he said he didn’t blame me)
I suppose the thing I’m having trouble with is the straw that broke the camels back.
That straw is the most wonderful person I could ever hoped to have met and someone I know will try as hard to make me happy as I do them. I cannot be with them until I have finished the marriage that I should have finished when my heart broke. I can only hope that she will wait for me to get through this next weeks and months.
I never wanted it to end because of another woman as infidelity is where it all went wrong.
But I think I tried hard enough and deserve the love of a woman who l love in return.
I would be amazed if there is anyone who made it to the end of this and if you have you will no doubt be wondering if I’m looking for a reply?
Not really, it just all looks more real written down and “put out there”.
I need to pluck up the courage to do what I have to do and this is a part of that path for me.
Feel free to leave a comment if you want and if anyone requests I’ll let you know how it all turns out. Otherwise, give yourself a pat on the back for reading all the way to the end of my pathetic tale and have a drink to happiness and love. I think we all deserve a bit of that at the end of the day.
Best wishes to you all
SeaDog
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