I have just found out that my marriage of 17 years has ended. I cam back from a work trip and was presented with this. Before leaving a week earlier, we were discussing starting to save to take our son to Alaska for a holiday and planning Xmas.

My wife is not even interested in discussing the problems or considering trying to solve them. She had recently changed jobs and said she also wanted to change all aspects of her life, including me. She said she had discussed this with her closest friends, all of them also divorced and they had told her what a good decision it was.

We have a wonderful 7 year old son, who is already stressed from this as my wife has been planning selling the family home and talking to him about the changed arrangements, even before we went to a single counselling session.

I have already been to see my GP and have gone onto anti-depression medication as I was clearly not coping and was not able to control my emotions in front of my son which was making him more upset. I have no idea how to progress now – I am just numb. There will be serious financial difficulties ahead for me – my wife always earned more than I do, but together we had a comfortable life. I am worried about how to maintain contact with my son who means more to me than anything in the world.

Greg S

Greg

I can only imagine what you must be going through... First and foremost your health is the most important thing right now, apart from spending time with your son. I am sure there will be financial challenges for you in the future but right now I can only suggest focussing on the here and now.

A few questions:
How much time per week are you seeing your son?
Are you able to talk to your employer and get some time off work?
What are the current living arrangements, have you moved out of the family home or has your wife?
Is the house in joint names?

Chin up Greg, the contributors on this board are fantastic and I am sure will give you some really practical advice to help you along.

Thanks Dadoftwo.

At present my son is on holidays and I was able to get approval to work from home, so I am seeing him morning and afternoons. He spends the day with my wife's parents who come up to look after him during vacation so he does not have to go into vacation care. Tomorrow, I am spending the whole day with him, as he wanted to go to mini-golf and swimming, so I am using some leave.

I could get some leave but to be honest, I am scared of being alone next week after Marty goes back to school. Even on medication to keep me calm, I am surprised at what little things will trigger memories and cause me to lose control.

My wife has moved into the spare room and we are essentially living separately except in terms of interactions with Marty. We will not be able to sell the house and property until probably the new year, given the current market situation, and neither of us can afford to move out. We bought acreage property so we have a lot invested in the house. The house is in joint names.

I am concerned that I am not dealing well enough with all of this to know what is really happening. My wife has not shown any emotion about any of this so far, at least overtly, but she does have a network of other divorced business women she has discussed the whole process with, so perhaps she is just further along in the process.

Greg S

Hi Greg and welcome,

Try not to expect too much from yourself right now this will have come as a major shock to your system and I have no doubt was totally unexpected.

One of the first things I found out was that the average decission to leave is made aprox a year before the event then, ergo the reason why she's not upset is because she is over the event and has had time to deal and disassociate herself from the emotional side of things.

Although she may well have a support group and masses of information as to what is the best way to achieve what she wants it would not be her friends who are responsible for her actions and in most cases there are quite a few untruths told to gain sympathy.

Being alone at first is hard there's no two ways about it, especially when everything happens as a shock to you. I spent many hours doing the self blame thing as well as trying to figure out what I did wrong, but it wasn't about me, even though I was used as a scape goat I was not the planner or instigator and to fact later I found out how much I had been played. This discusted me.

You have found a place to talk here where you will be listenend to so talk about whats happening and don't worry if it's all messed up just write it all of us are all over the shop when this happens so doen't expect your thoughts to be orderly.

Hope to here from you soon best of luck and make sure you take care of you because there's no dad for your son if your not well, you are a very important person so don't forget it.

Hi D4E

I guess part me understands what you are saying. I sit here feeling like my heart is being ripped out from my chest, while she asks whether we should get someone in to trim the hedges and will I be able to make sure the area around the dam is cleaned up before the house is sold. I can't understand why she has been able to move on, but maybe the decision was made more than the 3 weeks ago she claims.

Then I am left to cope with all the things we had been planning and organising - not just an overseas holiday, but getting rid of our very old car and buying new furniture for the house. All money I realise now should not have been spent. But how the hell can someone sit calmly and talk about a new car and a holiday one week and 7 days later decide to leave?

I just do not know what to say to my son when he asks will he be able to keep Sam, his dog. We bought him an Old English Sheepdog because we had 2.5 acres for him to run around on and we had always told him that we could only have a huge dog because we had lots of space.

I have been reading the posts here and they have helped a lot but within that there is the picture of loss of access - Marty is the light of my life - now the only product of what was apparently 17 years of wasted life - and I cannot bear not to be with him as he grows up. When I think of all the things we like doing, they are all things we did as a family - camping, bush-walking, swimming. He always talks about these things in the context of the 3 of us and now I just don't know how I can face his disappointment at not being able to do any of this as a family. I also know she will be able to throw money at these sorts of things - buying whatever is needed to get him through the rough patches.

One day at a time is just to fast for me at present - I do not know how to move from minute to minute.

Greg S

No two situations are the same Greg and we all deal with them in our own way, you being the dad are left with the fears and your sons mother is left with the promise of a new and fresh life gauranteed in her mind to have control of your son.

Fortunatly this is all in her mind but one thing is for sure, she moved on a lot longer than 3 weeks ago, my X signed mortgage papers for a family home and left on the weekend we got the keys, well I should say moved into it on that weekend. She told me it was spontaniouse because of the pressures of living with me. I tore myself up about it for month before I learned she had planned 8 months prior and even gave friends and her daughter a time frame.

I doubt you will ever find out the truth or her reasons, even if she does allow you to hear why there is a good chance it will be only what she wants you to hear, the reasons become less important as you regain yourself but in the begining the desire to know " why " is consuming.

To her the priority is to get the family home ready for sale so she can organise her new life to you it's figuring out if this can be saved and to find out where you failed. I don't know if it can be saved but you haven't failed and who cares who's to blame when you have a wonderful son that needs you.

Try and find an adopted home for Sam when the time comes, later when you have accomidation see if you can have dogs there, taking him for a walk when your sons at his mothers will work as thearapy and you will keep a conection with your son. His mother may not of even considerd this.

I know all too well of the feeling of robed time and how finances seem to be misused for the benefit of no-one to keep up the appearances of being a family when the truth is the X had planned it and willingly missled and abused trust. It will get better and you will have to let a lot go, try not to hold onto the bitter taste too much remember you did your best.

You mention doing things as a family and your son thinking of it in 3's, well kids are a lot more resiliant than we think and the way he see's his parents deal with their home life is what will help him adjust, we all want our childrens mothers to be part of our childrens life amd we all want whats best for the kids but doing this means we have to let go of certain things.

For three years I tried to encourage both my daughters homes to have the same rules and consistancy, I kept our home consistant and seeing as it was just us two it is a very calming place where she knows her enviroment and flourishes, her mothers home is chaotic and more aggressive and abussive verbally but there my daughter is panderd to incase she decides to live with dad and leaves them. My daughter is not like that she loves her mum and dad as well as her sisters and brother.

Point being is that you control your enviroment and the kids pick up on it in no time and settle into a routine, keep life as normal as possible when it all happens and take the time to show your son how beautiful nature is by sharing when you go for a walk and stuff and you will be a legand forever.

Trinkets and bling only last so long before their underlying reason surfaces, " dad doesn't buy me everything under the sun but he has time for me and is there for me " show him that it's nice that mums buy's him those things and it doesn't worry you but explain the reason why you don't occassionally in an ethical way.

The thing is it can be good and even better but it's up to you, you can make it what you want for him and he will follow the lead from both his parents seperatly.

If you work from home or can finish and start in school hours then there is no reason 50/50 won't work.

Right now the pain is all consuming but the quicker you can work through it the quicker you can set your goals on a grounded relationship with your son, hell if his mum is working why not go for full care and give her every second weekend.

As usual my post is long but I hope you can see that there are solloutions for everything in time, you just sometimes have to fight for it.

Hi D4E

Had a great day today - my son said he would rather spend the day together than go on a planned trip with school friends. We went to min-golf then swimming at his favourite pool and then to buy some presents for a birthday party he is going to on Sunday. He is so wonderful and kept thanking me for taking the day off work so we could have fun. Every time we joked about something he would get wistful and remark that it was a shame Mum was not there because she would enjoy it too.

I think the first step for me is going to have to be not clinging on to this (false) hope that she may just change her mind. I know deep down it is not going to happen but after 17 years and moving back and forth across the world as we followed BOTH our careers, I cannot at present process this.

I have worked up the courage to tell some of my friends and they have all been great although everyone is just stunned - the overwhelming comment is they cannot believe it and we were the last couple they would ever have envisaged separating. At some level it helps to know I was not the only one in the dark about everything.

Have started back at the gym this week and have decided to work towards participating in a team triathlon in December. I know from experience that maintaining health is critical in sad times, although I had not ever envisaged that it would now feel like a life buoy for me.

Hey Greg

Glad to hear your day was a good one, nothing makes it fair or understandable, you have some good ideas there and any bouy you can grab hold of certainly makes a difference,

hang in there and make sure you talk to someone when you need too, the guy's on the forum will always be here and if you can get to a DIDs meeting real face are there.

Post any time you want a chat D4E

I don't know whether I can do this. It is my birthday tomorrow and I cannot bring myself to look forward to it. None of my family apart form my wonderful little boy are in the same state and he still thinks we are going to be doing all the things we had been planning for the day - together as a family.

I got up this morning and looked out across our yard - freshly mowed and green after a little bit of rain - down to his play house I built by hand for him two Xmas ago. I looked at the scar on my arm where I had got careless when putting together his trampoline the following Xmas and one of the springs caught hold of the skin. He will lose all of that once we all move to something smaller and affordable for two separate families. And I don't know why. The canoe is still out, cleaned for spring and ready to be used - we were going canoing for my birthday so we could catch little native fish to put in the dam. It is too heavy for me to lift by myself it needs two adults and one of the adults has simply left our lives with no discussion or warning.

I just cannot see the point in getting up once he is gone from my life every day. I sat this morning just watching him sleep, his eyes flicking as he dreamed - hopefully of happier times, or perhaps of all the things we had thought we would do together. I cannot bear how this is going to tear at him, having to be apart from one of us, however custody ends up. I do not know what to say - how do I tell him I still love his mother more than life itself but she does not feel the same way. I do not want to go down the path of saying to him anything against her in any way - she brought him into my life and is wonderful to him in so many ways - yet she has chosen to walk out on our family, without even talking about it, or warning us.

Why can't she see what she is doing to us? If I could see even the slightest emotion I could at least feel she cared at some point. I got a lovely letter from her parents yesterday, saying how sorry they were and that I would always be part of their family - I have seen more emotion and caring from them towards me in the last week or so than from her. I know this is mostly because they know they have to buffer my son from the trauma, but she has not even been trying to do that.

I just don't know how to move on.......

Hi Greg

Each time I read e-mails from people who have just found the site and have no support it cuts deep. Your pain is felt by all those who read your post and most of us wish we were close enough to pop in and have a coffee and a tear.

Having a family one day and a hole the next bring so much pain that tear run blood red on the inside yet you know you just can't show them on the outside, lets face it the X doesn't care and you don't want your son to suffer because of this, my family and friends were far away as well but even if they were close I wouldn't have talked to them, I just didn't know what to say or tell them.

I won't say it gets easier straight away to tell the truth it gets worse normaly and after some time it does become bearable and then easier. I know right now there doesn't seem to be a future where you can be happy but if you hang in there it will come and your son will still be in your life.

I had my birthday a couple of weeks after the split, I was lucky enough to have my girl the night before as well as the day, two of my step-kids rang to wish me happy birthday but were very offish and that was the last time they have ever spoken to me. We went out for the day for a picknic in a park where I can't even remember and I took her back that evening. One of the best birthdays ever because it was just me and her with no pressure.

I know how easy it is to drag the dooner covers over your head and seek sanctitiy from the world and because of the toxic shock your body is going through you may well have to just sleep and give body and brain a rest.

I found it very easy to fall out of love with my daughters mother because of how uncaring and unloving she was with the things she had done, of course add this to an affair and there you go. I still hoped to remain friends but her assault continued along with a few other prize decissions and four years later came to what I have now.

I still battle but instead of with the X. I battle rather like playing chess to keep my daughter grounded because of conflicting situations in her mothers home.

You have a long way to go but your future is there, like I said it takes time and don't be too hard on yourself. You deserve time to get use to the idea don't forget she has been planning this for some time and is more than six months ahead of you the fact that she is doing what she is shows she has convinced herself that was she is doing is the best for all concerned and that she has to be hard with you. This may well be a false reality but you can accomplish many things if you start to believe your own lies, especially if you have peers who back you up because they believe your lies too.

By now you will notice I use my X as an example a lot, this is because she is text book with most P.A.S. and other forms of alienation.

She started planning to leave me aprox 1 year before the event ( usual for this style of person ) whilst planning she created a false realit to excuse her cruelty, she then started to discuss this reality with close friends and family members who of course rallied to her defence, then she begged them not to confront me or treat me different because her and the children would suffer, when people where over she would be unargumentative and friendly towards me, when they left she was agressive and pick fights over nothing until I arced up and used logic, after subduing the arguement in this manner I was repaid by weeks of no communication until I had won back favor.

The short point is that she created an enviroment then dragged me into it, I tried hard to appease her and the whole thing would cycle again, she would become remorse and realise that she was wrong only to berate me days later.
Hense establishing me to be the bad guy. It was in the least a very confusing marriage that became worse in the last year but in saying that she always made sure I thought the marriage was secure and that she loved me dearly.

To me she blamed herself for her actions and made an effort to change to others she constantly blamed me.

It ends up a trap.

No one knows how to move on but there are things that help and one is to release through writting and talking. Myself I hope sharing some of the stuff helps other see that they had no choice but with the future they do so aim towards it little by little.

GF

Hi Colin

Thanks for your words - being in contact through the forum has made an enormous difference. One of the things I am finding most difficult is trying to understand how my wife and I can be in such different places. It is just so obvious my son keeps wondering why I seem sad and his mother isn't.

I took my son to a birthday party Sunday afternoon. He is good friends with the boy whose party it was, but he did not know anyone else because they go to different schools. As is the usual way, he was left out a bit once all the kids got together. Normally, he would have just introduced himself and got involved, but he was unable to. He came to me and in tears asked why no one wanted to be with him. Nothing I could say could console him and we ended up leaving as he was so distraught. The parents are good friends and they had seen my wife and son the week I was away and they are just stunned also because she had been talking to them about our plans for holidays etc.

He was great for my birthday - hand-painted a birthday card and he must have talked to his mother because she agreed to come canoeing with us - something he had planned ages ago. It was a lovely morning - we had most of the river to ourself and the water birds.

I just want to take him away and make all of this better but I do not know because I do not even know why, apart from vague statements about wanting to move in a new direction in her life. I am going back to work today - school holidays is over and it is so much worse to be around the house when he is not here. I hope he is OK at school.

GregS

Hey Greg

It's not easy when you don't know why but you may as well throw the questions to the wind and let them fly away because it's doubtful that an answer that makes any sense will ever be forthcomming.

Your son is old enough to be concerned but by the looks of things you have a good relationship, if you are still concerned have a chat to the school councilor and let them know your concerns and ask to be informed if thing are difficult for him.

We forget that kids get use to things in time but they still need to feel secure and safe in the mean time .

Best of luck your doing really well considering all thats happened, take pride in that.

GF

Hi Colin and D4E

Thanks once again for taking the time to offer your thoughts and observations. I have been so up and down (mostly down) that it seems the roller coaster will never stop. Just as I think I get my thoughts under some sort of control, something will happen. I am really struggling with the fact that no one who knew us as a couple can believe any of this has happened. While the sentiment and support I am getting is making all the world of difference, the confusion and hurt about not understanding just gets made worse. I have finally accepted though that there will not be any chance of reconciliation. As the week has progressed, my wife has become more and more removed - not showing any emotion - anger or sadness. She does not react in any way to anything.

I was doing OK this week until I got an email from her today with a day-to-day plan for the next 3 months of what she will be doing, what nights she will be out at parties and so on. It laid out all the details of what would happen in precise detail and then led onto what she considered appropriate as custody arrangements. Just presented, with the addition that she would consider having a final "family" holiday together as my son had requested, if I would agree to all of this. While I am grateful that the proposal is for 50/50 shared parenting, I do not believe the specific arrangements are remotely what is best for my son as he would be left with no stability from day to day. The arrangements were all based around her need to travel extensively for work, plus attend extensive social activities in the evenings.

Today has set in my mind that it is over and while it is going to take a long time for me to begin to get my head around what has happened, I realise now that this has been planned for some time. There has been too many changes in her behaviour that are so uncharacteristic that close friends who know us well say she has become a totally different person, as if she is trying to relive her young, single days. My son and I seem closer than ever and he seems to be coping well but he is scared of the moment when we are no longer a family and he will not get to see both of us each day. I feel sick to the stomach as soon as I realise exactly that - I will not get to hug him as soon as he wakes up, or cover him up as the last thing I do before heading to bed, or always be there to hold him when he is hurting, physically or otherwise - and he knows this as well. Tonight all he could say through his tears was why did our lives have to change as he was happy with his life and did not want to be forced to be apart from one of us. I just have no answers for him. His mother loves him but she does not seem to have considered at all what this is doing to him and how it will affect him into the future.

GregS