Hello everyone
This will be my last post until Sunday night or Monday morning. I had a great chat with my brother last night, and shared with him this forum’s concern that I might at some level be in danger. I don’t fully agree (though I appreciate the concern), however my brother absolutely
does agree—and so he is whisking me away first thing tomorrow on a “brother’s retreat” into the wilderness. I don’t expect to be on here until Monday. But I wanted to write a courtesy note to everyone, in case my 3-day absence caused unnecessary concern.
Will do my best to keep this short.
Wife FaceTimed me last night. She honestly looked very unwell: pale, wan, sickly. She was teary, but gentle, and kept focusing on how much the ILYBNILWY was a huge mistake and not representative of reality. I think she is focusing on that because she sees that as the worst thing she has said or done to me … that
I know about, as far as she knows.
She told me that her Mom is taking her away on a ‘mother-daughter’ retreat, next week, from Monday through Sunday. She said that she has told her mother ‘everything’ (as in: what she thinks I think I know: dead bedroom and ILYBNILWY), and that her mother is upset with her for how poor a wife she has been to me. My wife said she wants us to “Begin Again” when she is back, and that I will be shocked at the ‘new wife’ that she has become.
I told her that I appreciated all of that, but that the cumulative effect of the dead bedroom and her telling me she is no longer in love with me is very difficult to overcome. I said that I can’t make her any promises, but welcome whatever reflections she had upon her return. It was hard for me to ‘act’ like that; I hate lying, and am not good at it. But it seemed to calm her down and even to constitute a fair / hopeful response to her.
@drpod – your most recent post is uncannily, cleverly, on-point with where my legal options reside.
PI: coldness / protection
I think I may not have conveyed PI's reaction as accurately as I could. Let me try again.
What he seemed surprised by was really McD’s coldness. He felt that, in light of the context—that they had just screwed, and then were discussing such a weighty subject—that his combination of callousness, command, and coldness (how is that for three Cs?) was emblematic of someone lacking a moral compass. But it wasn’t so much a case of two lovers plotting my demise. If anything, my continued ‘role’ as unsuspecting husband is vital to both of them—at a material level (economics), optical level, and—alas—a sexual level, as I believe (as do you all?) that a great amount of their ‘kicks’ are in the infidelity and humiliation.
PI swept the house early this morning, and there are no devices, as far as he can tell.
Lastly (and this may seem like an odd point on which to sign off), I want to say this: it has been very difficult, throughout this last month, not to feel very sorry for myself and to be throwing myself daily pity parties. But if anything, as truly awful and soul-destroying as much of this has been, it has also allowed me to have enormous gratitude.
How lucky I am to have found this place, for one. How lucky I am to have the financial resources that I can hire a top PI, pay one of my city’s best lawyers, go on mini-retreats to help me in this process—all of which have helped me unearth and retain strong proof that (a) gives me the bad news I need and (b) will enable me to extricate myself from this nightmare with, at the very least, my dignity and key possessions and, more fantastically, something much more retaliatory. And that I have an even wealthier (!) brother who loves me unconditionally, and who can offer comforts for me that not everyone could afford.
So, I do count my blessings and feel that is unfair that I can be protected this much—when a man in my exact situation, but with fewer resources, would just be f*cked 9 ways to Sunday.
Finally, I want to say that none of you have anything to worry about, in terms of my wife’s recent appeals to my heart. Our relationship is over. Perhaps one day, deep into the future, if she has changed mightily across a huge sweep of different areas, I might entertain friendship. But I doubt even that.
. The CEO’s wife divorced him. We, the partners, wanted him gone, however there was the costly problem of buying him out of the company, which at that point was worth several million dollars. Lawyers were involved and the only solution was personal signature loans (secured or unsecured) to buy him out of the company. None of us were willing to mortgage our futures to that degree so he is still at the company to this day. All we were able to do, in the end, was maneuver him into a position where any shenanigans would not affect the company in future.
