Just another Dorothy

Girl Next Door, I stand and salute you! Thank you so much for your post, and your willingness to take questions. Your self-description sounds very much like my ex-wife (pre MLC: mom of the decade; post-MLC, nightmare mom).

I will be submitting questions later this week.

Welcome.

Basil Duke

Welcome...girlnextdoor...I am so glad that you have posted and are so open to telling your story.  It is rare that we have someone who is willing to tell their story after the fact.  I look forward to your responses and learning more about your trip on the MidLife Yellow Brick Road.

Shepherdess

Girlnextdoor  what a story and I am glad you have chosen to share it with us. I shall think about questions but, if you have read my posts, I shall be grateful for any observations you may have.

Jack

Girlnextdoor,   Thank you for your story.  Was there anything in particular that happened or that you did that brought you back to the "old you"?    Or was it something that just happened gradually and naturally.   It must have been awful not knowing what it was that was happening to you. 

Hello, Girl Next Door. Wow. Where to begin? I suppose I'd first like to learn more about the "other man." In virtually every case history you'll find here, the "OM" was/is a preposterous character - profoundly flawed in some or even several ways. A freakish predator. And yet, they possessed the power to take our wives from us. They live in vans down by the river. They park cars for a living. They are 46 years old and have never been married. They are punks in their early 20s who just graduated from college. They claim to be 30-year-old virgins. They are runty, drug-addicted Persians who are about to be deported. Etc. and ad nauseam.

How did you meet your eventual "OM," and what about him was it that prompted you to have the affair? My ex was like a dopey 15-year-old girl at the zenith of her fascination with her lover. Her eyes would literally get glassy when she talked about him: "We have such an unbelievable and amazing connection." She thought she loved him - after knowing him for literally a month - and blew up our family for him.

What kind of emotional hold did your OM have on you?

Thanks in advance.

Basil Duke

Good Morning Struggling,

That is a great question.  I can remember the exact day the tornado struck. However, I cannot pinpoint an exact time that it was gone.  I did not wake up one day and all was fine.  It was a very gradual (at least 5 year) process. By contrast, the tornado that hit me was lightening speed. I went from the height of the "Old Me" to the depths of the "New Me" in less than two weeks.  In the midst of the tornado, I would go to church (occasionally) and ask God to change my heart and heal my mind.  I was SO AWARE that I was sick.  But the healing came slowly and in fact, may still be in progress. This new understanding (since I found this site) may be the final stage. 

A huge part of my sickness was escaping into my computer. I had carried considerably more than my fair share of responsibilty throughout my marriage.  I was in a weakened emotional and physical state and one day I simply "broke".  Almost accidentally, I discovered an online fantasy world where I could find happiness.  Real life was no contest to the fantasy I had found.  I was preyed upon by the "bottom dwellers".  (It seems so strange to call people that I considered the "best friends I ever had" bottom dwellers -- but I know now that is exactly what they were.)     I could not break away from the online fantasy and when I was away from the computer, the fantasy scripts continued to play in my head. I was obsessed with the online world to the point that I was UNABLE to continue to run my company that I had started from scratch with blood, sweat and tears.  My business, my family, my soul -- were all very nearly destroyed. Thankfully, I had enough wits left about me to understand that if my company failed my children would be on the street.  (My husband was never interested in bringing home the bacon.) I managed to carve out enough time from my online life to train one of my employees to take over the operations of my company and by the Grace of God, she was capable.     She continues to be my operations manager.

As my life began to smooth out, so did my need to live my life in the computer or live "in my head" i.e. in my fantasies. I will say that I still have to monitor my computer time because it still draws me (does that ever change, Shepherdess?) but now I use it for learning and research instead of relationships.   

Someone spoke in one of the threads about dreams (while sleeping).  My dreams returned shortly before I remarried.  They had been gone for years.  That was a breakthrough - a sign of healing.  Another sign was when the numbness that had consumed me began to dissolve.  My father died during my MLC and I could not mourn (I still haven't, but there were extenuating issues that probably account for that).   I also could not mourn the loss of my relationship with my son; however. one day while riding in the car with my husband the song "Cat in the Cradle" came on the radio and I listened to the words and began crying for him...and cried for several hours.  I cry daily for him.  I'm crying now.   That's a breakthrough.  During MLC I was numb to the pain I was causing those that loved me.  That numbness is gone and I am tortured by guilt that I was the cause of such pain.  That's a breakthrough.  My conscience has returned.

For me, healing has been a tortuously SLOW process.  But healing does eventually come. 

(((Struggling)))  hugs to you

Hi Basil,

I wonder if what we are going to find is that the OM typically is the polar opposite of the man we're married to.  In my case, my husband was the good-natured "good ol' boy" that everyone loved...but sadly he was a "ne'er-do-well".  I worked two jobs when I was pregnant -- all the way until delivery day -- while my ex-husband sat home watching TV. He flitted from one low paying job to another our entire marriage. This continues to be his pattern.  (I believe now that my ex had/has underlying emotional issues that causes this behavior.)   Additionally, my ex-husband was closer to atheist than to Christianity.  I'm a Christian and longed for (and prayed for) a husband who would accompany me to Sunday School and Church, pray with me, and be a spiritual leader for our family. On the rare occasions I could get my ex to attend church with the family, he would discount all he heard in church to our children.  "Oh c'mon, kids use your heads.  The dinosaurs are proof that the Adam and Eve story is utter nonsense."  

Ironically, the OM was a Christian in MLC himself. He was a Sunday School teacher and he and his wife had taught a Bible study in their home for many years.  He was a professional in finance with a 6 figure income. (My attraction wasn't because I was financially needy. I make a very good income from my company. The attraction was that he was a man who had enough "self respect" to support his family - a trait I had longed for in my ex-husband.) The OM was separated from his wife and 5 children and was in terrible turmoil. We met in a 40's chatroom and "connected". He epitomized all that I felt was lacking in my own marriage. Where was my common sense that would ask why a "Christian" man was messing around with a married woman in a chatroom, you ask?  Good question.

Now -- get this.  I had NO INTENTION of EVER meeting this man.  I wanted it to remain fantasy where I could go to get my emotional needs met.  In fact, I knew I could never meet him.  I had gained 75 pounds after the birth of my daughter that I was still carrying.  I lied to him about my weight and sent him a "pre-baby" picture of myself.   There was NO WAY I was going to let him see me and ruin the fantasy.  My weight gain prevented me from ever crossing the PA line -- or so I thought.  But the more we talked the more we began to believe that we had fallen in love with each other.  He was like water in the desert to me -- something I HAD to have.  Without him, I was sure I would die.  He eventually  gave me an ultimatum - either we meet or call the relationship off.  He said he was buying plane tickets and gave me the date he would be in town (2 months away.)   I was in a horrible place believing that I had fallen in love with a man I could never meet. The thought of losing him was unfathomable.  I desperately began to lose weight.  I worked out at the gym like a crazy woman, I barely ate anything.   Five months after meeting him online I met him in person. I was down 45 pounds (in two months) and had 30 to go.  The picture I had sent him was of a size 4 woman.  I was a size 12.  Two hours after meeting, he asked why I had lied to him. We spent the weekend together and  I crossed the PA line. After the weekend ended, he didn't call or answer his phone for days.  When I finally reached him he told me he did not love me.  I dissentegrated.  He'd used me for sex and in the process, started a reaction within me that I had no control over.   My husband found out about the weekend PA about 3 months after it had happened.  I was in a deep depression at the time.  Sometimes I wonder if he had not confronted me if I would have eventually gotten through my depression and emotionally returned to my marriage.  But backed into a corner at that point and in my depressed state of mind, I exploded.  I told him I didn't love him anymore and wanted a divorce. He moved out of the house and I continued spiraling out of control from there.   I lost the remaining weight (down to a size two hard body), got a boob job, became blonde (they have more fun, you know)  bought a red convertible and was "young again".  I had more men's attention than I knew what to do with but I didn't have a clue who I was anymore.  I began serially discarding men BEFORE they could hurt me.  I left a trail of broken hearts (and mostly of very good men) in the wake of my tornado.    What a mess.

The Girl Next Door
        

Man, oh, man. Thanks for sharing. Clearly, you were preyed upon by someone who knew what he was doing - and using God's Good Book as cover. Sickening. Men like him truly are predators. This one sounds evil.

My ex, too, seemed to associate her boyfriend with life itself. Couldn't live without him. Absolutely obsessed over him. HAD to see him. She was desperate and frantic when not in his presence. I don't think I'll ever be able to wrap my head around that. I've heard many people liken the obsession with the other man as a drug addiction. Sounds like you'd agree with that. (My ex-wife was 42 when she shot herself into MLC orbit.)

Do you have any sort of civil interaction with the father of your children? Were you able to muster the strength to sit down with him, post tornado, and apologize?

Thanks again, for taking the time to share your insight with us. It's very, very interesting and informative.

Basil Duke

Hey Basil,

Yes, I do have civil interaction with my ex-husband.  It was never my intention to hurt him.  I never harbored ill-will against him.  When we divorced, I told him I wanted nothing from him.  We sat at the kitchen table and discussed how the divorce would go.  He took the property that was his pre-marriage, I took what was mine pre-marriage,and with the joint property we took turns "choosing" what we wished to keep.  We agreed on joint (50/50) custody and no child support. I gave him the house and the newest car - both paid for.  I took the (MEGA) income tax debt and outstanding personal debt.   We wrote it all out on a piece of notebook paper  hired one attorney to put in in legal form and took it to the judge.  No fighting.  When the divorce was finalized, the judge said that in his entire career, he had never seen such an amicable divorce - and asked if we were sure we wanted to proceed.  

Since the divorce, I have invited him to all the family celebrations and he always attends. My husband and ex-husband get along great and have even worked together on a couple of projects.  

Have I apologized post divorce?  No, I haven't.  (I apologized for hurting him when I originally asked for the divorce but as you can imagine, that fell on deaf ears.)   I've thought about apologizing (post divorce) many times -- but don't know what to say and don't know if he would receive it.   Same with my children -  I think about apologizing to my children but am unsure how to go about it and if it would open old wounds.  Does that make sense?   

Girlnextdoor,   The online communication is a funny thing because for some reason some people feel more comfortable baring their souls via keyboard in front of a computer with someone they don’t really know than they do face-to-face with people they love.  That's why we come to this site too I suppose.  On the other hand it’s easy for someone to seem to be or pretend to be something they are not, as in the case of the man with whom you had an online relationship.   And you were dishonest too about your weight etc.   I read something from a link from this site regarding internet addiction and it was really interesting.  You might check that out. 

I became addicted to communication with someone too.  It was mostly while I was at work through my work email.  If I went a week without hearing from him I felt really blue.  This person was a person from my youth, so I did have some previous knowledge of him.   I was painfully honest with him about things I shouldn’t have been, but I really have no idea if he was honest with me about anything.  To his credit he did not attempt anything physical with me when we met and did not pursue me in that way at all.  It’s pretty much what was going on in my head that was so messed up because I couldn’t stop fantasizing about him.  It has been a slow process moving away from that, but the attraction has been slowly fading.    Sometimes I think that the attraction would have dissolved rather rapidly had I had the chance to know him, but  I decided not to let that happen because I knew it was way too dangerous. 

I put that situation behind me before I did irreparable damage to my marriage and I feel very fortunate in that respect. And I have been very fortunate to have such a supportive family through all of this.   However I do still feel the effects of MLC.  I am working through this within my marriage but the feelings of detachment from my family still plague me from time to time, even though things have much improved.    I still am grieving over lost youth and wanting to be young and all the missed opportunities. 

For now I am allowing myself the freedom to “be young”  in ways that won’t have a negative effect on my life.    My husband is all about having adventures and we now have more freedom to do those fun things we have always wanted to do and I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.   I have decided that I am not going to leave my husband  and my job for two years to join the Peace Corps or for 18 months to go to Culinary Arts School hundreds of miles away or whatever other implusive decision I thought I had to make before.  They were all of the crazy "gotta do it now or never"  thinking I had going on. 

It’s weird because my emotions have been so intense probably due to hormonal changes.  I haven’t gone through menopause yet but it is happening.  There are definitely some physical changes happening.    At the same time there has been a numbness toward the people I love.  It’s a weird combination that’s hard to explain but from what I have read from others not uncommon.  Maybe the numbness is self-imposed to quiet the intense emotions. 

I am very glad that my kids were grown before this started for me.  At least they have been shielded  from my craziness to some extent.  My oldest daughter (just turned 31)  and I have always been very close and she has not liked that I have not been as supportive of her and as involved with the grandkids, but for now she is accepting that and she is just happy that I am no longer wanting to leave the wonderful man who raised her.  It’s given me the chance to reconnect and focus on my marriage and I just can’t do it all right now.  She’s a pretty smart woman because she is the one who noticed something going on with me, asked me if I still loved her dad, researched on the internet,  told me she thought I was having a midlife crisis and urged me to see a therapist.  Just knowing it was MLC and understanding what that is about was a huge help to me.  It must be so hard for someone not to know that when they are going through it.   I feel like someone has watched over me in many many ways. 

I am so sorry for everything you had to go through and that you are just now learning what it was after the fact.  I hope that your son will be able to forgive you some day and I hope you will forgive yourself.  And I hope you are happy in your current relationship.   Thank you so much for sharing your story.

Struggling

Thanks for your latest response, Girl Next Door. I think I understand where you're coming from re: the post-divorce apologies. Fairly recently, my ex sat our son down and told him she was sorry for "everything I've done and everything that's happened." But he later scoffed to me about her approach and tone. Said it was way too little and way too late. "Sorry!" he mimicked her in a sing-song voice, as though she had apologized to him for running a little late or knocking over a glass of water - rather than upending his entire life and kicking his father out of the house so she could sleep with a college punk.

Maybe your caution is wise. Don't know.

If you don't mind, why is it that your 24-year-old is so hostile to you? I assume you're on better terms with your other off-spring. What made/makes your eldest so bitter? Do you interact with him at all? I'm very concerned that in a few years, after he's reached young adulthood, my son is going to have similar feelings about his own mom. I'd like to help steer him away from that path if at all possible. His mother devastated us and wreacked havoc on our lives, to absolutely no purpose, but I don't want him loathing her.

Thanks in advance.

Basil Duke

It’s weird because my emotions have been so intense probably due to hormonal changes.  I haven’t gone through menopause yet but it is happening.  There are definitely some physical changes happening.    At the same time there has been a numbness toward the people I love.  It’s a weird combination that’s hard to explain but from what I have read from others not uncommon.  Maybe the numbness is self-imposed to quiet the intense emotions.   

-struggling

Please listen to my interview on She Speaks to Inspire I did last week...I explain why you are feeling this way in detail.  You can find the link in the General category.

Shepherdess

PS IT IS TOTALLY HORMONAL>>> the numbness that is...your estrogen and oxytocin levels are dropping these are the hormones women need for mothering/caretaking....breeding/sexual attraction...see The Female Brain book in the WINMLC Bookstore.

Hi Everyone,

First I'd like to thank everyone for the warm welcome.  I was afraid I might be perceived by the LBS as an enemy intruder.  I'm so glad that is not the case. 

Several fellows have written to me asking me to read their threads and to give them any insight I might have.  I have been reading (and reading and reading!)  and have not yet completed a full thread.  Wow! There's a lot of "life" out here! 

I didn't want those that asked for my insight to think I am ignoring their request.  As I read, I try to reflect on myself, and what was going on in MY mind when I was in your wife or ex-wife's shoes.

One thing that comes to mind is this:  (and please understand that I say this having NOT read even one complete story)   There is no doubt that the women spinning out of control are absolutely NOT thinking clearly in many, many ways (and they know it). There is no doubt that many factors have come together to cause their out-of-control spin.  That being said, besides being "in luvvvv" with the OM, I would ask the LBS's if there is ANYTHING you can think of that has come up repeatedly throughout the years of your marriage that your wife felt she was missing out on -- something that she somehow thinks she will receive from the OM?  I've told my story and the needs I had that went unmet for the duration of our marriage. I can say with confidence that had my ex been able to be the husband I needed him to be, I would not have stepped out.   Let me give you two more real life examples:

My best friend is in the beginning stages of MLC and I am trying to counsel her through it.  There is the possibility of OM entering the picture though she has not invited him in yet.  In fact, the potential OM is oblivious to her thoughts but because of the situation she knows him to be in and the history between my friend and the potential OM (before her marriage),  he may very well be game. My friend and her husband "appear" to be the perfect couple. He is a highly paid professional, she is a stay at home mom of two.  He loves her and their children, and gives them everything they need monitarily.  He takes care of the husbandly duties around the house. On top of everything else he is absolutely adorable. To meet him is to love him.  BUT, he doesn't give her something she DESPERATELY needs and that is quality time.  She is a very social person and he is very private and very quiet.  He absolutely refuses to take her and/or the family out.  She and her children will go out to dinner (fast food) or to a movie but he won't accompany them. The one time they tried to take him out to a semi-nice restaurant for his birthday he sat down at a table, looked at the menu and make such a fuss over the prices that they got up and left in embarrassment. (He makes $200,000.+/yr)  In the entirety of their marriage, he has not taken her out on a date.  When they vacation, they rent a house on the beach and go to the grocery store so she can cook their meals.  He is not comfortable socializing with other adult couples. When he is at home, he works in his shop.  He is home but "absent". She is lonely for him. She is starving for companionship.  He refuses counseling.  She is withering on the vine and she feels the situation is hopeless.  (The potential OM is very social.)  If her husband does not wake up and hear the tornado sirens going off down the street from their home, his family is going to get hit.  (I have pointed her to this site so she can read about the woman ins MLC.  I wish I could point HIM to this site!)   I suspect that if/when the tornado hits, he will be more than willing to step out of his comfort zone and try to give her what she needs.  But after it hits, I'm afraid it will be too late.  If the OM were to accept her invitation, I think she would be so swept away there would be no returning.    

Another example: We are friends with a couple who have been married 30 years.  I was friends with the man in high school and we have remained friends throughout the years.  He owns a prosperous oil company.  His wife is BEAUTIFUL - inside and out.  She is a renowned psychologist. She looks 20 years younger than she is and has the spirit and personality of an angel. The MLC tornado hit her husband, ripping their family apart.  The OW: rather homely, noneducated, financially needy, alcoholic pot smoker.  My friends separated. His wife and child were devastated.  I kept in close contact with him as he whirled about in his crisis.  He shared his confused thoughts with me.  He had not ONE negative thing to say about his wife.  She was perfect in every way.  What did the other woman have to offer?  During his college days (early 70's) he had inbibed in and enjoyed pot smoking. As a responsible adult and father, he put aside his childish ways  - for 25 years. He encountered the OW and was intrigued that she had access to marijuana and thought he'd try it again to see if it was still fun. (It was.)  He wondered if stoned sex was still fun.  (It was.) This was something he felt he needed to do to take his mind off of his stressful day at work and something he could not ask his wife to give him.  Though his wife never knew exactly what was going on during their separation (she knew there were other women), she waited on him.  She did not question what he was doing.  She regularly took dinner to his apartment and baked cookies or brownies for him.  She loved him through it.  I listened to him without judging him but I did warn him that his wife would not wait forever.  I held pictures of his wife in front of him and asked him to look at her through the eyes of "the man on the street" and not through his eyes that had been looking at her for 30 years. He WAS going to lose her eventually.  He finally came to the realization that his stressful job was the underlying problem.  He sold his company, retired comfortably, and returned home to is beautiful wife.  They are a lovely and loving couple again.               

In my own new marriage of three years I married a man who meets the needs that my ex was not able to provide.  [My ex's situation was and still is truly hopeless.  He is currently one step away from being on the street. He mortgaged and then lost the home I gave to him and the responsibility will most likely fall on my oldest son to support his 55  y/o father due to his father's inability to hold down a job.]  My new husband is a surgeon, and a GENUINE Christian and spiritual leader for our family.  He is the son of missionaries and much of his childhood was spent in the mission field overseas. He is everything that I was missing in my first marriage.  Ironically, he is missing one thing that was not missing in my first marriage.   That is the ability to CONNECT on a deep level, i.e. having heart-to-heart talks, getting to know each others soul.  My dear husband does not do that.  It is out of his comfort zone. From "The Five Love Languages", it turns out my love language is "Quality Time",with the specific subtype of  "Intimate Conversation" - the one thing my husband does not give me.   Our conversation is very "surface".  (He does not know ANY of what I have written on this site.  He really isn't interested in my inner heart or who I was before he met me.  Intimate conversation is something I NEED to share with him to feel loved and understood and valuable to my husband and without it, my "Love bank account" is often empty and sometimes overdrawn.  Knowing the hunger I feel after only three years of marriage without having this need met, I can imagine how after 20 or 25 years of marriage in this state, I would (rightfully) feel that my husband doesn't have a clue as to who I am and I could become fodder for an unscrupulous person who came along speaking my love language. My goal (this time around) is to try to educate my husband as to what my needs are and gently draw him out of his comfort zone in this important area so we don't end up finding ourselves in a position of vulnerability to outside attacks on our marriage.   We have already begun marriage counseling to work on our communication skills.

I guess what I am saying is that if you could peel back the craziness that your wife is exhibiting and examine what lies underneath, looking for any unmet needs/desires or even over-the-top stressors that might have been present in the marriage (needs she might not even know how or was embarrassed to put into words) and ascertain whether or not you have the ability or willingness to meet those needs...perhaps you would find clues as to what might be neccessary to reach her.   And as hard as it would be to do, a good hard objective look at the "qualities" of the OM/OW would probably reveal some very valuable information - if not for this relationship, then for a future relationship (as without introspection as to what went wrong in the first marriage, we tend to repeat the same mistakes.)   

Again, thank you for accepting me as part of your community.  I would ask one favor.  I would ask that the men limit contact with me to the public forum (vs private email).  I wish to avoid even an "appearance" of inpropriety.  My husband and I have an open computer policy at our home and the very nature of the screen names used here could raise some eyebrows if they were to appear in my inbox.  I hope that makes sense. 

I am very excited to be able to explore and begin to understand this terrible thing called MLC. 

The Girl Next Door

The numbness is a good description. That's just how my W acts towards those of her "old" life.

Add that to other descriptions like, forgetting the old life, distancing, not acknowledging, won't face, ....I like the numbness one, that seems to catch it all.

I wonder if ..you don't mind me askiing struggling, have you been to ur MD. Had homone levels checked and so on.

I have a friend whose wife is I guess he is describing MLC, but she is still at home, but she is on hormonal therapy....of what I don't know.

He tells me she takes it, gets back to "normal" and then with that goes off it thinking she is better, and ghets whacky again.

Just some thoughts if you have been down that road. My wife has not been through menpause, however she is pre-menopausal,  ( she told me that, and her MD) which would give the strong possibility that hormones are playing a role.

I am glad you are fighting the good fight, and you have my support and all the prayers and blessings I can offer. Your telling of your journey is very insightful to me in accepting my W's journey and where she is at.

Thanks

MLBHOME

Thanks for your latest response, Girl Next Door. I think I understand where you're coming from re: the post-divorce apologies. Fairly recently, my ex sat our son down and told him she was sorry for "everything I've done and everything that's happened." But he later scoffed to me about her approach and tone. Said it was way too little and way too late. "Sorry!" he mimicked her in a sing-song voice, as though she had apologized to him for running a little late or knocking over a glass of water - rather than upending his entire life and kicking his father out of the house so she could sleep with a college punk.
Maybe your caution is wise. Don't know.
If you don't mind, why is it that your 24-year-old is so hostile to you? I assume you're on better terms with your other off-spring. What made/makes your eldest so bitter? Do you interact with him at all? I'm very concerned that in a few years, after he's reached young adulthood, my son is going to have similar feelings about his own mom. I'd like to help steer him away from that path if at all possible. His mother devastated us and wreacked havoc on our lives, to absolutely no purpose, but I don't want him loathing her.
Thanks in advance.
Basil Duke

-basilduke

Basil,

Answering your question about my son will be difficult.  I've accepted my (general) responsibility for the demise of our relationship...but I've never actually put words to it. Putting it into words, writing out the details is like re-living a nightmare that I wish I could forget forever.  I joined this site for healing and insight.  Perhaps this is all part of it. 

{deep breath}

My precious son is a special person.  He's very intelligent, very quiet, very soft-spoken. A sweeter person has never been born.  He is the type of person who would give you his last dollar.  Words are not adequate to express my love for him. 

He was 15 when the OM tornado hit. My oldest son was 17. My daughter was 6. In the two years (!!) that followed,  I was checked out of family life and so was my husband. I wanted a divorce, desperately wanted my husband to move out, but he wouldn't.   The house could have burned down around us and I don't think my husband nor I would have noticed.  My husband moved out almost 2 years to the day of the original online meeting with the OM (Jan. 3 - after the holidays.) Following my husband moving out, my son, by then 17 y/o was still living with me but not speaking to me.  I tried to talk to him.  He very calmly said, "Mom, from everything I've seen, this is all your fault.  Dad does not want our family to break up.  I'm angry with you.  In fact, I don't like you.  I don't know if that will ever change but that is how I feel right now."  I told him I understood and that I hoped one day he could find it in his heart to forgive me for hurting him.  I told him I would not question him again nor try to make him feel bad about feelings that he had every right to have. (I TOTALLY knew I deserved it.)  He had met a young lady about 6 months earlier.  It was his first girlfriend. I was happy he had met someone that he could lean on during those hard times.  This young lady became his life.  She was over all the time (he lived with me but didn't speak to me). When he started college, he moved her into our house (never asked permission...he still wasn't speaking to me.) In my guilt, I simply allowed it.  How could I speak to him about what was right and wrong, when I was living a life oblivious to it myself?  How could I ask him to respect me when I had no self respect?  I eventually rented a duplex for both of my sons to share while attending college  - they were to pay half the rent.  My son moved his GF into the duplex.  Now that they weren't living under my roof, the GF's true colors came out.  She was abusive to my son - physically and emotionally.  My son did not have the self confidence or strength of character (thank you Mom) to stand up for himself. He continues to live with her.  She has cut him off from his entire family -- me, his dad, his brother (they were inseparable growing up) his littlesister, his aunt, uncles, grandmother. If she keeps him isolated from the people that love him, she can continue to mistreat him at will.  It is horrible.  It is my fault for not being there to nurture him and teach him during the confusing adolescent years.  He didn't just lose me (that would be bad enough).  He lost his ENTIRE family and they lost him.  And the responsibility rests with me.

I just wanted to let people know that if your responses are too long they may be caught up in the spam filter. until I release them from the filter all your posts will go to this spam box.  Girlnextdoor this is what happened to your posts until now...so please look back through the thread to see if you missed any responses.  I don't think this will happen anymore..  

I haven't had a chance to read through all the responses here....but the bits and pieces I have read from girlnextdoor are very open... transparent and must be very hard for her to discuss with us.  I appreciate your willingness to bare your soul soul here.. I believe our membership will be kind and compassionate with this stage of your healing...thank you again for answering...you are providing a wealth of insight for many.

Shepherdess

Girl Next Door, thank you for your answer to my questions about your son. I know it hurt you to explore that subject, and I'm sorry for that. But if it's any consolation, between you, Shepherdess, Sea Breeze and others, I'm beginning to adjust my perception of the atom bomb that destroyed my family within the last year.

I've always had a very dysfunctional/negative attitude toward women - largely because of my mother (an almost psychotically angry and emotionally and physically abusive person). When my ex-wife first began whirling, I instinctively attributed her carnage to everything I'd 'learned' about females since young childhood. Namely, that their primary role in my life is to cut me as deeply as possible and then mock me when I bleed. 

I'm seeing now that it's not nearly so easily defined, and that my spouse was/is in a miserable emotional state, and had been for a long, long time. I'm not giving her a mulligan for the outrageous turmoil she forced on us, but I DO mourn for her suffering, and acknowledge that the nightmare she unleashed on my son and me was also unleashed on herself.

Basil Duke

I agree. I even to my wife when she came back the first time that (after learning a ton here) she was hurting, I knew that and tried to create an environment here at home that she could work through the issues.

But she convinced herself that we/me were the cause of her unhappiness, and felt leaving and life with OM
was the cure. Well I think that opened a huge pandora's box that she did not plan on.

I know this is not her I know she is sick, however she has made her decisions. I wish she would have reflected more inside to realize hey this isn't right.

However the pain she has inflicted has been done, and is there. I agree with basil there is no mulligan, only redemption, but she has to come out of where she is to work for it, none of us can go in and do it for her.

MLBHOME