Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
There are a lot of answers in that article for men who may be confused about this kind of thing. Many women are holding years of resentment and feeling trapped. She was showing signs with the overspending years ago, so that there is a major problem shouldn't be a complete surprise. She could handle this a lot better but you can bet she has been through her own emotional turmoil to get to this point.
Of course. Every time a woman does something sh***y, it is very important that we remember to make excuses and feel sorry for her. Because women never, ever, simply misbehave.
I think in most cases and particularly in marriages of the young that last a long time there is an element of co-dependency. I know in mine there was. You sort of melt into the other person.
I'm glad to hear that you're taking this trip on your own as it's a confidence builder and bet you'll have a load of fun even if it feels a bit strange at first. This can be a peak at your new life. Also glad that you feel like being around people. These are all healthy things.
That intense love you felt for her must now be moved over to encompass yourself and your kids. I'm getting the feeling that you may end up with the kids when this is over. Everything is going to be akward for a while but keep pressing on to new adventures to open your life up and explore the possibilities.
Yeah it does feel strange, and a bit lonely. But I'm taking my son, he's really excited so I won't be completely alone.
Yes my wife did tell me that she was concerned about what my cousin would say but I told her what she told me what I expressed the same concern about she and her girlfriends -- don't worry about what other people say about you. When she said it to me, it said said harshly and impatiently. I remembered how that felt and I tried to say it as kindly as possible. She still wanted to come to the point of wanting to call my cousin so she could sleep on the floor. Very surprising to me. But no, it's just me and my son, two guys on a road trip! He's looking forward to swimming in the gulf.
I am trying very hard to keep moving forward, focusing on today and not 6 months (or whenever) from now. Staying busy seems to help and I am actually looking forward to therapy and the divorce support group. It makes me feel like I'm doing something positive and productive.
I am not looking forward to being by myself, but I'm trying as hard as I can as fast as I can to get myself okay with what is coming.
It's a bit like facing death I would imagine. You don't want it to come, you don't want to say goodbye, you don't want it to be over, but the choice is not yours. All you can do is get okay with it because it's happening whether you like it or not.
I think she's made her decision, one I will not understand till my dying day. And on my deathbed I will still grieve the loss of something very special, very rare and oh so precious.
Okay I'm in a bit of spiral at the moment. Maybe because it's Friday night, maybe because I'm relaxing and feelings are up. Forgive me, you're not exactly catching me at my best.
Why does love die? Please, I'd really like to hear from women in particular. How is it possible that you could love a man and then stop? And even more specific, how is that where once there was love there is now dislike? Not hate, no I'm not that much into self-pity.
But what I see from her now is she doesn't like me any longer. The further I get into this the more clearly I'm seeing what has been in front of me for several years. In a way, as with my parents, it makes the task simpler. Not easy, not by a long shot, but simpler as in less options and more clarity. You can't turn off love after 30 years. You can't just stop loving someone, it doesn't work that way. But you can stop liking them. I see that in her face now, so very, very clearly.
As I sit here, I'm reminded of a quote from an old movie with Jimmy Stewart: "When I married my wife I didn't love her. I liked her, I liked her a whole lot. And gradually over the next year or two I realized that I'd fallen in love with her. You see son, when you love a woman without liking her the nights become cold and empty and bitterness fills your soul."
I think about that quote about my soon-to-be exwife. Except that's how she feels toward me -- cold, empty and bitter. The English language is so limited when it comes to love. The ancient Greeks had 4 words for love, because there is more to the emotion than simple romance/sex. This is why I am using the word "like".
She doesn't like doing things with me anymore. She doesn't like to talk about common interests, even what happened with her day. Where once there was kindness, now there is contempt. In her eyes I can do nothing right and any action I take the least attractive motive is automatically ascribed to me.
I've come a long way in a short time. I'm awake and aware. One helluva time to get awake if you ask me. Please believe me, I want nothing but her happiness. I sound like a woman, and I know it, but I still truly, deeply in my heart love her and like her.
If any woman, or man for that matter, can help me understand why a woman who once cared so deeply and once genuinely shared interests and genuinely liked me and being around me, if you can help me understand why or how that changed, you have my full attention.
I am a man of deep feeling. When I am happy, my wife used to say it was like seeing the sun. When I am angry it is as if I raging amidst an inferno surrounding me. And when I am sad, there is no depth too deep.
I keep thinking that if I understood her dislike of me, her total change toward me I could through this better. Knowledge is power and all that. I've tried to be as objective as I can be on an internet discussion board. I've shared things that maybe I should because I want understanding. I need this pain to stop.
So please if someone can help me understand why love changes into dislike -- even contempt you have my fullest attention.
Okay I'm in a bit of spiral at the moment. Maybe because it's Friday night, maybe because I'm relaxing and feelings are up. Forgive me, you're not exactly catching me at my best.
Why does love die? Please, I'd really like to hear from women in particular. How is it possible that you could love a man and then stop? And even more specific, how is that where once there was love there is now dislike? Not hate, no I'm not that much into self-pity.
But what I see from her now is she doesn't like me any longer. The further I get into this the more clearly I'm seeing what has been in front of me for several years. In a way, as with my parents, it makes the task simpler. Not easy, not by a long shot, but simpler as in less options and more clarity. You can't turn off love after 30 years. You can't just stop loving someone, it doesn't work that way. But you can stop liking them. I see that in her face now, so very, very clearly.
As I sit here, I'm reminded of a quote from an old movie with Jimmy Stewart: "When I married my wife I didn't love her. I liked her, I liked her a whole lot. And gradually over the next year or two I realized that I'd fallen in love with her. You see son, when you love a woman without liking her the nights become cold and empty and bitterness fills your soul."
I think about that quote about my soon-to-be exwife. The English language is so limited when it comes to love. The ancient Greeks had 4 words for love, because there is more to the emotion than simple romance/sex. This is why I am using the word "like".
She doesn't like doing things with me anymore. She doesn't like to talk about common interests, even what happened with her day. Where once there was kindness, now there is contempt. In her eyes I can do nothing right and any action I take the least attractive motive is automatically ascribed to me.
I've come a long way in a short time. I'm awake and aware. One helluva time to get awake if you ask me. Please believe me, I want nothing but her happiness. I sound like a woman, and I know it, but I still truly, deeply in my heart love her and like her.
If any woman, or man for that matter, can help me understand why a woman who once cared so deeply and once genuinely shared interests and genuinely liked me and being around me, if you can help me understand why or how that changed, you have my full attention.
I am a man of deep feeling. When I am happy, my wife used to say it was like seeing the sun. When I am angry it is as if I raging amidst an inferno surrounding me. And when I am sad, there is no depth too deep.
I keep thinking that if I understood her dislike of me, her total change toward me I could through this better. Knowledge is power and all that.
So please if someone can help me understand why love changes into dislike -- even contempt you have my fullest attention.
Asking lots of these kinds of questions of yourself and others is all part of the process - don't despair!!
When does love change? I think it starts when you lose respect for the person you love, or even respect for yourself.
Lack of respect leads to lack of trust - it's kind of one of those things where the love gets chipped away little by little, though I guess it could happen in one fell swope if you found out your beloved was a child killer or something equally as ghastly. In any case, love changes to dislike when the foundation of the love is eroded over time for many different reasons
Such a familiar tale. My husband of 27 years did much the same thing, including putting us in debt. He likes his life as well, he just want's the perks of the life we built....without me in it. I wish I could tell you something to make it all better but time will have to do that. I'm sorry for what you are going through.
I am not looking forward to being by myself, but I'm trying as hard as I can as fast as I can to get myself okay with what is coming.
This is one of the biggest mistakes men make is not taking the time to learn to be independent and self reliant again after a divorce. So many guys I've known jump right back into a bad mistake because they fear being by themselves.
Asking lots of these kinds of questions of yourself and others is all part of the process - don't despair!!
When does love change? I think it starts when you lose respect for the person you love, or even respect for yourself.
Lack of respect leads to lack of trust - it's kind of one of those things where the love gets chipped away little by little, though I guess it could happen in one fell swope if you found out your beloved was a child killer or something equally as ghastly. In any case, love changes to dislike when the foundation of the love is eroded over time for many different reasons
Wow that really hits home. As much as my wife protests otherwise she is very much about money and material things. She likes to envision herself as a hippie chick, but she lives in a big house in an affluent neighborhood and she rather likes that.
I've thought for some time that she began losing respect for me after I was laid off. It doesn't matter if it wasn't my fault, it doesn't matter that 100 other people were laid off. She is first and foremost selfish, and she's thinking about how my misfortune affects her. I know this because this is what she's said to me. She's in a "selfish phase" and she's tired of being the good girl.
So really I'm hearing from you but mainly from myself that this part of her was there all along. Maybe it wouldn't have come out if I was still making equal her salary OR if she was able to maintain the lifestyle she had become accustomed to.
Wow you've really opened my eyes to how selfish she really is. How devious she really has been with me. If you want to know the truth I made $76k on my former job because I worked every Saturday rain or shine. I did this for 3 years. While she slept in every Saturday, I got up at 6:00 a.m. and went to work. Meanwhile at this very time was when she was wracking up $20k in secret credit card debt. That was $20,000 was over and above the extra $500-$700 per paycheck I was bringing in by the OT.
Bare with me here for a moment. I need a stream of consciousness.
So what I'm hearing here is that this lack of respect, this dislike of me was in reality contingent only upon my ability to earn enough money for her to do as she pleased? So really she is right, isn't she? This selfish, self-centered entitlement that has led her to this point really did begin years ago. It really did begin before she forced us into bankruptcy with 73K in debt in 2005.
All that spending and spending was really a mask. Wow. I've got goosebumps. Oh god, I feel so ... bad right now.
This isn't about the past 2 or 3 years like I originally thought. She's felt this way about me now for at least 6 or 7 years. That's what caused all the spending before the bankruptcy, it was her way of not looking at it or hiding her newfound dislike/disgust toward. Now she has embraced it and it's changed her.
oh my ... I feel so bad. so stupid. i never saw it. all these years she's felt this way about me. and i believed she loved me. and all this time, for 6 or 7 years it's been a lie.
after what i went through with my parents and all this time the same thing was happening right in front of me. this woman that i trusted and loved feels about me the same way they did. all this time she's been trashing me to her friends, just like my parents did. all this time my heart has been open and she's ...
oh ... god.
knowledge isn't power.
damn
this is a bad crazy time right now. i had no idea until now. i didn't see because i didn't want to see.
i see her now, madly typing away on skype to her cyber friends. she likes them, she's interested in them. she looks like the woman i loved, she sounds like the woman i loved, but she's not. i can't take my eyes off of her. who is she? this woman is a liar and two faced and has been living a lie for years, just as she said.
i'm really starting to get how deep this goes now.
H, just slow down and take a few deep breaths okay?
I've actually been monitoring the computer the last few hours because I am so concerned about you and wanted to be here if you posted again.
I know it feels like your world is spiraling out of control as you are being hit with every emotion imaginable, but do try to hang on. You have a lot to process and it will not all happen in a day. Don't be so quick to rush to conclusions, you need time to really think thru the things you think you understand about your wife right now. In time things will be a lot clearer, but with so much emotion involved right now it really is hard to think straight.
Wow that really hits home. As much as my wife protests otherwise she is very much about money and material things. She likes to envision herself as a hippie chick, but she lives in a big house in an affluent neighborhood and she rather likes that.
I always say you have to get beyond someones words and look at their actions.
Sounds to me she doesn't really know what she wants.
What is hard for people to accept is we have some control in terms of decisions, but often what happens to us is out of our control. I'm sure she has her side of the story, but if she chooses to leave, I don't really know what you could do to stop that.
I think somehow you are going to have to find a way to let her be responsible for her behavior instead of you holding the bags of things like $93000 in credit card debt.
I have known someone with codependency issues before and you definitely need to seek out counseling on your own to talk about a lot of this stuff. I don't think any of us here are professionals and I think while we can help a lot of it is above our heads. In my humble opinion, from your writings your whole identity and reason for existence is wrapped up in your wife and that is not healthy. You are a person and you need an identity of your own. There is a reason communism and marxism regimes always fail and end with serious death tolls. They strip away individual identity. You need to find that person inside you. It's there, you just need to establish contact with it.
My advice is to go back to the table with an offer of counseling. If not, then it's time to lawyer up and find a way to reach an amicable agreement, especially regarding the child. Then everyone can go their happy way.
In conclusion, I wouldn't sit around wallowing in misery, but use it as an opportunity to connect with yourself and what you enjoy and how you can make a good life for yourself.
sorry this happened. lots of sympathy posts and good ones. about the marry, debt & divorce ripoff game. if she blind sides you once, its her bad. if you marry & divorce again, its on you. there is hope. new census release--- 43% of people over 18 are single. men are getting smarter. as to level of trust between the sexes since no fault divorce,
it stinks.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
