my story . . . heartbroken in alaska arcticrover: hmm. where to start? the beginning always seem to be a logical place to start, but to tell you all the truth i wouldn't know how to fully and fairly explain everything we have been through together. perhaps i should just trust the anonymity of the net and let it all out. i mean, what's there to lose that hasn't already been lost? this has been dragging on for so long; sometimes i feel like my world just froze three months ago and i've been living a thousand variations of the same horrible day ceaselessly ever since. maybe i should just lay down some of the basics first. i've known my wife for a bit over three years now. in november, we would have celebrated our third wedding anniversary. unfortunately, our dissolution hearing is in two weeks. you know what . . . i can't do this. here's the bottom line: she's divorcing me and moving back home to go to school and start a new life. she's competely lost faith and trust in me and is so full of anger that not a damned thing i do seems to have a positive effect. we've had a very rough relationship over the past two years, for a multitude of reasons. many of them are my fault, but just as many are hers. and many more seem to be things that neither one of us really "caused," but rather failed to handle in a positive, supporting manner as a husband and wife team. it started early on in our marriage when she went back home for her grandmother's funeral. while she was home, her sister more or less forced her to come to terms with the fact that she had been rpaed and sexually abused by a female babysitter when she was much younger, like three or four. i noticed immediately how things changed when she got home. our love life up until that point had been incredible, to the point that we were making love several times a day. when she came home, that came to an abrupt hault, to the point that she would only consent every couple of weeks . . . and even then it wasn't even apporaching what it had been. she's would cry, feel phantom pain . . . it was just agonizing. at the same time she began to pull away emotionally, closing herself off from me and being less and less willing to even go out to the movies with me. all she wanted to do was stay home and watch TV. at this same time she was also really beginning to hate work. we worked together in the military. i had been in for four years by the time we met; she was coming up on a little more than a year in. to put it simply, my wife just wasn't cut out for the military. not that she was lacking in any capacity, it's just . . . well it just wasn't a happy place for her. so anyway, my reaction to all of this was pretty poor. at first, i tried to be understanding and supportive. i gave up a lot of the things i really cared about in our relationship. and then i gave up more. and it kept on like that until i couldn't take it anymore.
Re: my story . . . heartbroken in alaska arcticrover: continued . . . .
i started trying to take things back . . . begging that we go out more, encouraging her to be more open and intimiate with me . . . trying anyway i could to get us back on track toward happiness. i encouraged her to go to school, get out of the military if she wanted, etc. at this point, i was really starting to get frustrated . . . feeling like i was giving so much and getting so little in return. and, of course, she was beginning to resent the way i was pushing for her to get better. and then there were all the little things. she wouldn't clean up after herself . . . she'd stay in all weekend and then want to spend time with other people to the exclusion of me. we would go out and she's dance with anyone but me . . . and of course i would get jealous and take it out on her. after a while i started turning to alcohol to dull the pain . . . and thta always ended up in disaster. well, anway . . . things went on like this for about a year and a half. she got out of the air force and i signed on for another term to make sure we would be okay. we had just bought a house at this point and we were both planning on going to school full time while working. then all of the sudden we got this chance to move to alaska for my job, and we both jumped at the chance. anyway . . . fast forward a few months. we moved up here almost a year ago . . . in fact a year ago on friday. i thought maybe it could be a new start for us. well . . . she started a new job and i started mine. we got settled into a new apartment, but she had to go away for training for a few months and i was scared as hell about it. she had asked for a seperation for a while to get centered again and i had said that i wouldn't support it. i was at this point very afraid that she would give into the temptation of a simple affair to escape the pain that our relationship had come to represent, and i was more worried that it would spell the beginning of the end for us. well, anyway . . . she got home pretty quickly but things hadn't changed much. she said she came bakc wanting to try again, but at the time there was little indication of that. what i needed was a very to the point verbal indication that she wanted to save our marriage. instead, we sort of just droned on. there were ups and downs, but then i started to see something truly horrifying. she and my close friend from work (as close a freind as guys can be after 7 months knowing each other) were getting closer and closer, to the point that it had begun to make me uncomfortable. but i let it go.
Re: my story . . . heartbroken in alaska arcticrover: continued . . .
then she wanted to seperate again. but this time it was different. this time i felt she meant forever. i fought it with everything i had, and it was just the most lost and desperate i had felt in forever. she went and stayed with a friend and i stayed at the house. then i made an attempt to bring her back by moving out myself for a while. at this point i was looking for any comfort i could get, and that came in the form of going out to parties and drinking all night and meeting a lot of new people. i never slept with anyone, but i started to allow myself to feel something for other women. anyway . . . at some point it came to my attention that i wasn't the only one that had felt that my friend and my wife had been getting closer. a co worker's wife has actually told me she thought they were sleeping together. naturally, i called to confront both of them about it. they both swore up and down that they weren't, and i had to believe them. shortly after. my friend had a long talk with me about how i needed to just let go for a while and that i wasn't getting anywhere. i took it at face value, but wasn't really interestsed in sharing his opinion. anyway, shortly thereafter i came back to the house after a party to find them in bed together. to make a long story short (wowo this has gotten long), i beat the hell out of him. understand this is the ONE and ONLY time i have ever swung my fists in anger as an adult. I would have killed him, I think, if my friends hadn't heard the screaming from outside and broken us up. now that caused a good three week period where she wouldn't come home. understandably, the emotions on both sides of betrayal and shame are just something you have to experience to fully appreciate. By the time she came back, though, she had decided that we were through. I had exerted too much pressure on her and been too destructive in the past few months for her to ever be able to "forget" and try again. the night i walked in on them was about two months ago now, and i haven't given up for a moment since. i signed the dissilusion paperwork in a moment of weakness and acceptance because she's had it set in her mind that she can't ever be happy with me again. i've been trying so hard to make ammends and forgive . . . and be a better man and husband . . . and it all seems to amount to a bunch of empty promises to her. i've been going to counseling to try to deal with all of this, but it's not enough. i thought about suicide the night after i found them. i even stood up on a cliff for a while looking down at the beach below. then i got help and came back from it. nothing seems to help. i feel so lost. i am so sure that we can work it out if we just take some time to heal. if we remember who we were when we first got married; consider all of the things we had to go through; remember our love and let go of anger.
these days when we manage (rarely) to have a conversation about us without resorting to yelling, i feel like she does everything she can to avoid opening up. like any chance of being vulnarable to my warmth is a threat to her. i really feel like it is hopelessly over. she is bound and determined to end this and never give it another chance. it's about time for me to get to bed, but i would love to get some feedback from anyone who managed to make it to the end of my story . . . .
ad astra,
bobby
Re: my story . . . heartbroken in alaska snkpack: I am so sorry you are going through this. Unfortunately sometimes it is too late for marriages to be saved. I doubt that even had you NOT reacted as badly as you did to the affair, that you were still already well on your way to divorce.
Sometimes you have to learn to accept something that your heart screams against. It isn't an easy process. But you can't force someone to be with you. You just can't. And I don't think anything you can do will change her mind.
I hope you'll find some peace and contentment in resignation. Eventually you will come to a better place. One of acceptance and hopefully some measure of understanding.
Re: my story . . . heartbroken in alaska arcticrover: Peace I have not yet tasted. Maybe some day. These days I'm lucky to get through five minutes without something that reminds me of my loss. I thought I'd been through the worst of it, but every day seems like the last . . . painful and sad.
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