I had a few brief posts on the 'considering divorce/separation' bboard but its now just about the process. First a little background, I'm a 36 year old male who married my currently 42 year old almost 15 years ago. So if you do the math, you can see I married at an early age, she was really my first serious girlfriend. And she was a bit older and I think was definitely obsessed with just getting married as all her friends already were - so after about 2 years of dating I got an ultimatum, marry me or leave.
Now I'm a very logical guy (and somewhat traditional - my family before me was all arranged marriage, but that wasn't for me) so I carefully balanced losing her vs losing everything else (because my parents did not approve, and that was really all that was in my life). I did choose her, and obviously now I'm not sure if it was the right decision, but it was done.
The next 14 years I think was kind of very classical and traditional relationship, in the sense that we built a comfortable financial life, but we weren't particularly close. I never really saw that as a problem till recently; I would brag to my sister I found a 'low maintenance' woman and that I didn't have to do much (and vice versa).
While it's hard to drag down a specific moment where everything fell apart, I feel about five or six years ago she got (and beat) breast cancer. I basically let her confront it on her own because I (stupidly) thought she didn't want me involved. She didn't tell me otherwise and the anger and resentment built.
Over the next few years after that I would hear 'I'm unhappy' and yes I would answer 'Why? You're just being crazy'. I should have listened more, but you've been something one way for your whole life. Then about a year ago she went on a weight loss plan through myfitnessplan. She's always been considerably overweight (and I'm there too) but it was never a big deal to me either way.
Well, if you know anything about the myfitnessplan site it's about hyperlogging and all sort of 'support' on the site. Obviously I wasn't really interested so the gulf just grew and grew. At the same time, due to my comments about not understanding why she was unhappy, she started to see a therapist. About seven months ago I went in to see the therapist with her and the therapist confronted me with 'Why do you love her' and yes, I answered the values that I grew up with, which was about devotion and commitment, not necessarily spark, love, etc. In other words, I would have stayed with her no matter what -- even if I really hated her, as bad as that sounds. (I didn't say that last part, but it was pretty obvious)
We had a flare up that night where I reverted back to my closed off self, and was made that my 'devotion' was being questioned, so at that point I told her to leave if she didn't like it. She backed down and I went back into my protective cocoon of the way it was.
Fast forward a few months and one night in mid August she tells me she has to leave me. I know I am clueless but she never has told me she wants to leave till now, but I get the message (too late as it turns out). There are real things to fix like affection and intimacy and I try to turn it around.
But as I will find out, she's already made the decision to leave me, and also to cheat on me, facilitated by this MyFitNessPal site. As you can imagine, anyone who's weight is changing drastically has a different self image and people can take advantage of that. So she found another man (while she'll say it never got physical, I don't know, and it doesn't really matter). It went far enough, but she fessed up in mid September and I accepted it.. Which I did, if that was the worst thing she did, then I could deal since I did definitely do her wrong.
The next couple of weeks included my sister's big wedding which apparently crystalized her feelings that divorce was the only option; I was still working through the steps she had said. A couple of weeks later I asked to borrow her phone to call a friend of mine as my phone was dead and I saw a message from that guy on Myfitnesspal, which we had both agreed that she would not talk to.
Later on that evening she told me that she had already hatched a plan with the therapist to stay with me for three more months (selfish, I think, because she's not a great planner like I naturally am) and then leave me. While this was close to the last straw, I did keep trying for a couple more weeks, but she was already gone, as a marriage counselor, her mom (who I talk to) and others have told me enough times that I finally accepted it last week.
There are a few more details at the end here which I will get into in my next post, and then I'll just outline the process I'm following here in PA. I know its never easy but I hope it is because I'm super organized and logical, and now that divorce is a certainty, the paperwork is my specialty.
Feel free to ask any questions .... thanks for reading.
