I Finally Decided To Leave...

[mstnghu]

Hi all. I haven't updated my situation on here for quite awhile...mainly because things were progressing very slowly and there weren't really any new developments.

FINALLY I'm now starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. These last few months have been mentally and emotionally draining! I feel like the wife and I just kept doing this back and forth dance to see who'd make the first move. We've continued to have never-ending arguments that never seem to be resolved and it seemed almost impossible to move forward. A big part of that is that I've always allowed her feelings and guilt trips/projections to affect me and it cripples me into not making decisions that I know I should be making.

I think we finally reached a point a few weeks ago where she really seems to now realize that I won't be trying to reconcile with her and I haven't had any intentions of moving back into the house. In the meantime, she's been interviewing for jobs outside of our area about two hours away from where we currently live so she can be close to her side of the family. I also told her that I need to make decisions to move forward in my life and am tired of being stuck in limbo. I let her know that I'd started looking for an apartment because I need to get out of my parents' house and get my independence back again. She has finally come to terms with this but will still be upset when I let her know that I actually DID find a new apartment just yesterday and put down a deposit. I really like the place and am excited to start a new chapter in my life...despite knowing that she'll most likely flip out when I tell her. I'm going to wait until after the holiday weekend though so we can try to have a peaceful weekend.

To add to the good news, it looks like she most likely has a new job lined up now. And, on top of that, it looks like she'll have a nice place to live. While all of this situation has been going on, I recently found out that the wife and her mom have been working on making sure that she has a place to live when she moves. I found out today that my mother in law had an offer accepted on a house she was looking to buy. She's going to be renting it out to my wife at a discounted rate. So, it seems that things are finally starting to fall into place. For the first time in a long time I'm starting to breath a little easier.

[Couper]

This is my first time seeing this and I am rooting for you, mstnghu!  You are good to take the time to share this with the rest of us so that we can see what it looks like to go down this road.  I just finished reading every post and it's amazing how many of us are of the same age, with the same age children, and the same amount of "time-in-service", to say nothing of suffering through the same cycles of behavior and manipulation tactics.

Slow and steady wins the race.  Keep on keeping on.  Your big-picture view of the circumstances past and present will carry you through.

[mstnghu]

I have more to update again!  Since I last posted, I moved into my new apartment. I'm about 95% moved in and organized and the place already just feels right. It feels like it's where I'm supposed to be for now and it's home for the time being. It feels great to no longer feel like my life is in limbo and I'm thrilled to no longer be sleeping on an air mattress at my parents' house.

Today my wife drove out of town to stay at her mom's house with our son tonight. Tomorrow she will be going to get her background check done for her new job in that area. She's also going to be getting our son's new school enrollment done for next year. We're still going to have to work out the logistics of how and when I'll be able to see him and hopefully she'll not decide to be difficult when the time comes. I've made it very clear that I know my legal rights as his dad and that I'm choosing to allow her to move more than 2 hours away with him, and I don't have to do that.

So, in summary, life is finally moving forward and I'm feeling like I can breathe a lot easier right now. I have a new place and so does she and will be moving on July 9th. She has a new job and our son will be going to a new school in the fall. I'm feeling good about the changes...even though, as expected, she's having a very hard time and has still been really difficult to deal with. In all honesty though, she actually has been better than I expected her to be through all of this.

Another crazy thing that hit me the other day- I have a wall calendar in my office at work and when I switched the page over to June I found a note that I left for myself a few months ago. A coworker asked me where I wanted to see my life by summer and what decisions I would make so I could reach my goal. I had taken a sharpie and drew a happy face and a sad face with a question mark in the middle of them. I wanted to make sure that when summer came around I could choose the happy face. I had totally forgotten about that until I changed the page a few days ago and I can now say that I get to choose the happy face!

L