The situation is just ugly. Put on your empathy hat for a minute and be her. She spent a year giving herself to you with the promise that your divorce was imminent. It's 12 months later, you wife moved back into the house, not a single document has been filed, you are fighting with her in a way she feels is over the top toxic...
She has no idea what is going on with my wife. She hasn't asked. She doesn't know she is currently staying here nor would she care if she found out. She stopped asking about whether I was leaving my marriage months ago. Please stop going on about the marriage. It is driving me nuts. I am getting out of it. I have to do right by my wife also. Please respect the time and space it takes to do this.
Please stop giving the AA lady a free pass every time you talk about the relationship, it is increasing the pain ten fold. She has behaved with utter hatred at times towards me and without empathy or any love, compassion or understanding. I feel like I am banging my head against a brick wall asking you to understand how her behaviour has affected me. Sure I've made mistakes, but it's impossible trying to have a relationship with a feral tiger. That is how she has behaved. Nobody would have been able to contain her when she is like that. Once she decided I was a bad man she rewrote our history and treated me like her torturer. You have no idea how hard I have tried to get her back onside.
Stage Four Rather than face the pain and overwhelm they expect to experience, partners who have reached this third 'defensive' stage, may progress to the forth and final stage of breakdown, characterized by a breakdown of basic trust between the partners, and increasing disengagement in the name of self-protection. Like a steam-valve in a pressure cooker, the partners start avoiding one another so as to minimize their conflicts. Gottman calls this final stage, "Stonewalling", perhaps after the image of a partner hiding behind a stone wall designed to protect him or her from further assault. Unfortunately, there is no way to love your partner when you are hiding behind a wall to protect yourself from him or her.
She is staying away from me. I would have tried again had she not been so clear about not wanting to be with me. This is coming form her. It's not like it's mutual. I would have been willing to get down and do the work required to make the relationship healthier. She doesn't do that in relationships, she leaves.
You both think the other is an extremely flawed, low character human being and you have stories to tell to back your feelings.
I don't think she is of low character. I just think she is damaged and disordered. None of it stops me wanting her. .
Cut your loses. Step away. It's over.
You are torturing yourself with hope. You have this nugget of hope that she will suddenly see the light and you will suddenly not be triggered by her actions and the marriage cloud will vaporize and the wound of months of fighting will heal...
It's stage 4. For your own sanity, know that you will start on the healing process (slowly) the minute you accept that this is a lost cause.
I can't walk away and accept it. It's too agonisingly painful. But she is walking away and that is making me have no choice but to leave her be. I believe with all my heart that we are supposed to be together. I've never felt this way about any woman in my life, that we are supposed to be together. It's like some kind of Higher Power is telling me that I cannot let her go. I kid you not it is that profound and earth shattering. Like walking away from the greatest love I've ever had or will ever have.
When your last relationship went into stage 4 you hung on for dear life and it nearly destroyed you. You really struggled to let go there and in fact, you didn't actually find peace until the AA girl sat on your piano bench (literally). You never fully grieved the last lost love and so now you are facing the emotional impact of two failed relationships. That is why it hurts so much.
I was doing fine actually until she sat on the piano bench. I was healing. Yes, I struggled to let the last one go too but that one was easier because she was married and had a family. This one lives 10 minutes away and like Odysseus I feel the Siren's call constantly. I am literally losing my mind. I believe if I did the right things I might be able to win her back again. The thing stopping me is that if I do and she ends it again, it will kill me. Literally. There is definitely cumulative pain going on here. Another reason why this one is no good for me. Last time I cried she sneered at me that I have emotional damage. What kind of person says that to anybody who is upset? NO EMPATHY!
And soon you will start facing the third - divorcing your wife is going to be a painful process - it is for everyone - you won't get a "bye" on this. You can't run from it. You can prolong it, but divorce is painful (ask anyone).
I don't need to ask anyone, I'm living it. Do you think I'm not experiencing that pain as well? Do you see me running from it? I face my wife every morning until she is financially able to leave. Don't criticise me for doing that by the way, because if I don't she will take me to the cleaners financially.
We all have a stress threshold of pain - maybe for you its 14 points. A broken relationship is 10 points, a delayed grieving is maybe 6, and a divorce might be 12 - 16. You are headed into some very rough seas. It's time to board up the windows, go into self preservation mode. You don't want to have a nervous breakdown, start drinking, or jump in bed with the next wounded chicken you encounter.
I feel like drinking and jumping into bed with a wounded chicken...but I shall do neither. I will stay strong.
I have been way over my threshold for a long time. I think I did have a nervous breakdown when she dumped me the first time three months ago. I called the suicide hotline and couldn't function properly and fell apart crying constantly. That's how my wife knew something was radically wrong between us.
The only solace I have is that things could not possibly get any worse. If i was in my 20's I would probably have gone and slept with another woman just to take the edge off the pain, but I can't do that anymore as we know where that road leads...and it's not Damascus.
