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Curt
climber
Gold Canyon, AZ
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Sometimes you hang on too long, I did. When splitting up looks inevitable, get it done and move on.....you might be surprised what you find out there.
I was going to say this, but didn't want to be the first. This was also my experience. It's terribly difficult to let go when you're still in love with someone--but sometimes this is exactly the right course of action. Having said that, this is a very hard thing to do and even harder to accept.
Curt
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Lambone
Big Wall climber
Ashland, Or
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Especially with the kid factor. 3 and 4 years old.
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splitter
Trad climber
SoCal Hodad, surfing the galactic plane
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tiogo - more fun and loyal... better lookin also, imho!
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
www.climbaddictdesigns.com
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I'm very sorry that you are going through this, and wish you the best. Having never been married, I am clueless, of course, so have no advise.
However, I did notice that you wrote ..she wants me to be in the kids lives and I'm happy for that.
Certainly no need to acknowledge this or respond on this thread, but if those children are your biological or adopted children, you have every right in the world to be in their lives. It's great that your wife wants you to be in their life, of course, but that's besides the point. Of COURSE you would be in their lives - you're their dad!
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couchmaster
climber
pdx
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I don't know a heck of a lot, but one thing I know with near perfect assurance is that most of the time, paying a therapist to help sort things out in advance of a split is cheaper than paying the lawyers to do so after the fact as you try to untangle it all. Matt, I'd call Daphne's recommended therapist. Getting a good one recommended is awesome.
Good luck, it's tough, and like Donini suggests, hang in there and it gets better.
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scuffy b
climber
heading slowly NNW
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Best of luck, Lambone.
I'd go with Daphne's suggestions, any time!
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splitter
Trad climber
SoCal Hodad, surfing the galactic plane
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tioga - i wonder what "therapists" would say if someone came in with a sheep. planning on having children?
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splitter
Trad climber
SoCal Hodad, surfing the galactic plane
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yep, sheeple.
ya got black sheeple.
white sheeple.
brown sheeple.
mulato sheeple (mixed marriage). etc...
...it's all good!
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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The less compatible you are in a relationship (despite whatever chemistry you have), the more stress is on the relationship when you choose between what you would want for yourself and what you must do to "keep the other person happy" and the relationship tenable. This can lead to pretty unreasonable situations if you don't give yourself the option to walk away.
For years during my first marriage, I thought I was deeply flawed and broken, and that I was lucky to have such an understanding person to stay with me. This led me to be outwardly praising of my ex to our friends and family, but it didn't sit right with part of me. The reality is that we both were both pretty damaged, and our negative patterns fed off of each other in escalating feedback loops and kept us locked in a destructive relationship.
There were many recurrent negative cycles, one of which is immediately relevant to this part of the discussion (no, not the sheep thing! before that!):
1) In my desire for love and making the relationship work, I surrendered important parts of myself, and allowed violations of important personal boundaries that I hadn't learned to defend yet. I shaped myself into what I needed to be to make the relationship work.
2) At first it's ok and worth it amidst the flush of "love." But after a while, I yearned to express other parts of me or at least discover who I was under the facade of shape-shifting to suit the relationship, and trespasses started to add up and if there are any hiccups in the flow of "love" which made the delicate balance worth it(e.g. the other person is having a bad day, or feels threatened and responds defensively, or more stresses pile on with kids and money issues and parents and whatever), then my tolerance for the various stuff I'd put up with would instantly erode and, and we would each go into our defensive patterns. I was afraid of confrontation, my ex was afraid of being neglected or abandoned, and what we each needed in these critical moments was the opposite of what we each had to give, and it would spiral out of all reason.
3) I would feel guilty for my part of the blow up, and that guilt would drive me to try harder and accept more crap as some form of atonement. Whatever my issues were that led up the conflict would remain unresolved because the distraction of our immediate conflict, and I would just swallow the unresolved thing. For a while (weeks? months?) this works, but at some point the same unresolved conflicts and differences emerge again and the cycle repeats.
Over the years of being aware of this pattern, and trying various intellectual ways to fend it off (recognizing what my trigger points were, mentally preparing myself to not get sucked into a predictable pattern), trying to talk through the issues at another time to no avail, well, at some point I figured out that it didn't matter how much I thought it through, eventually a conflict would arise and in the heat of our conflict I was operating from a different part of my brain not subject to the calm and rational approaches I had practiced. It was more like a fight-or-flight mode (more flight in the beginning, more fight when I was literally cornered). When I finally recognized and accepted this, I gave up the purely intellectual approach (which was important for me in the beginning to understand what was happening and why), and shifted my focus to dealing with my emotional maturity and dealing with the original patterns carved deeply into me from childhood. These childhood patterns were being tapped by my relationship at the time, and that led to the fight-or-flight response where I couldn't consistently act from a rational/reasonable state throughout our conflict.
Over the course of years, I became much better at recognizing and understanding these patterns, taking energy away from childhood wounds and effectively reducing the number of situations where I would go into the fight-or-flight mode in my "adult" relationship. "Taking the energy away from" is code for the ugly reality of processing childhood emotions that I didn't have an outlet for as a child. It's a lot of work, a lot of being vulnerable and going into about as uncomfortable mental states as you can imagine. It's looking directly at whatever is the scariest thing you can imagine, and going back into a position of helplessness or terror or furious righteous anger or whatever you felt at the time that the patterns were set. It's not for everyone, it's easy fodder for jokes about healing your inner child, but it was probably the best thing I ever did for myself, that made my current happy life possible.
Anyways, all this stuff turned out to be very good for me in terms of my peace of mind and emotional stability. But, ultimately, it became an enabler for me to have more patience and longer periods of tolerance in an intrinsically unhealthy relationship in which I forced myself to stay for far too long. In short, it enabled the negative cycles with my wife to persist over a longer period of time (e.g. years instead of days/weeks/months). In theory, if my ex had been willing to walk a similar path of healing that I had, we could have turned the corner in a different way and supported each other as we got through the power struggle phase of the relationship into a deeper level of maturity and mutual support. But that didn't happen.
Eventually, as a side-effect or perhaps the main effect of all the other emotional work, I valued myself more, loved myself more, and recognized the insanity of keeping myself in a situation that was irreconcilable. After years of day-by-day survival and not really living the life I wanted to live, walking on egg-shells, etc... we had another fight and I felt such a supreme degree of contempt and resentment and anger that I spit in my wife's face. I was distraught that after years and years of trying to deal with my own stuff and learning to communicate better etc. that it would come to this. That I would lower myself to acting like that. Suddenly the light bulb came on for me that it wouldn't matter how much effort I put in for the rest of my life I couldn't stop the patterns from reemerging with this person. It's like if I was lifting weights and could bench press 200 pounds, but time and again I failed to lift an 800 pound bar. That's not to say all the problems were her fault. More like my part of solving our relationship problems was far more than I was able to do, regardless of whatever she was or wasn't doing to help solve our relationship problems. It was just too much for me to handle, and it was not for lack of me trying. The only way I could fix it was to leave.
There's a lot more to the story under the hood. Pretty crappy stuff on both sides. But I pulled back the curtain a bit to give more weight to what Donini said... If somewhere in your heart you know it's not going to work, it's best to make a clean break of it. Especially if your relationship has the potential to get ugly. I have been with another person for 5.5 years, and there is no hint at all of the ugliness that was obvious from the first few weeks I was with my ex-wife. I think we are all capable of enormously beautiful and ugly things depending on the situation. With grace, we learn to stay away from the ugliness.
I hope all this is useful to someone. I'm at peace with much of this stuff now. But it was so painful for so long, affected me so profoundly, and out of ignorance and inexperience I made decisions that prolonged it and ultimately made it worse. I would like to help anyone I can to not make the same mistakes.
Everyone's situation is different, but I hope this triggers some introspection for those who feel the need for it.
Now, it's time for me to make a yummy late dinner and enjoy a lovely evening with a person who it's easy for me to be happy with- where I can relax and be myself and be happy and we support each other. 5.5 years together and some difficult external circumstances, and we are still deeply in love, very happy with each other, still hold hands in public, and breathe a deep sigh of contentment and satisfaction every time we hug :)
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Lambone
Big Wall climber
Ashland, Or
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Suddenly the light bulb came on for me that it wouldn't matter how much effort I put in for the rest of my life I couldn't stop the patterns from reemerging with this person. It's like if I was lifting weights and could bench press 200 pounds, but time and again I failed to lift an 800 pound bar. That's not to say all the problems were her fault. More like my part of solving our relationship problems was far more than I was able to do, regardless of whatever she was or wasn't doing to help solve our relationship problems. It was just too much for me to handle, and it was not for lack of me trying. The only way I could fix it was to leave.
This is pretty much what she is saying now. :(
I'm still hanging on.
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jstan
climber
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If there are no children involved then it is a simple relationship problem. Relationships involve two ( or possibly more) people. That said, sitting down and asking, "What do you think we should do?" is one option. Pride has to go. That's not an option. Or so my experience tells me.
The problem of pride is easily resolved. If you are involved simply out of affection then you want the other person to have a satisfying life. If the relationship is not mutually satisfying, then you want the problem/relationship to be resolved, however it is to be done.
If the relationship is not based simply on affection, you have managed to state the real problem.
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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stole that from Red Foxx,
you want XXX humor, he is the guy,
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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Nov 12, 2013 - 12:24pm PT
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hey there say, lambone... oh my...
hang in there and just keep being a kind dad, if anything... and be a kind friend to her... and see what happens next...
kindness is what will be the balm, for the future, no matter how it does...
my ex-son-in-law just got divorced after this SECOND ten-year span, of being married (first to my daughter and then, to a nice good gal, after that)...
his treasure, through all this, has been 'whatever he needs to do for the kids'... thus--the kids love him and keep him going...
it was a shock and very hard on him... he did keep the home, though, as, it was too much for her...
the kids took it hard, as, they did not see the drinking-issue and only of recent had 'heard trouble, argues, etc, and the 'd' word'...
after they saw that the parents were still able to be friends and no violence was involved or ugliness, they have settle down and come to terms with this and see the parents, in turns, every other weekend, and
they just want the continued love and attention, of the parents, even if it is not together--they have realized that has happened and it won't go back...
the youngest gal, was not used to this, though the others had been through this before... does not mean this is good, but, it has turned out
better than it could have been--everyone here was concerned to put the kids first over any pain, of their own...
thankfully, too, each parent has a support system of other friends that they had HAD before they were married, so they were not left alone to suffer with isolation of 'nothing left' as to daily 'what and where do i go now' type things...
hope some of this may help...
god bless...
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Norwegian
Trad climber
dancin on the tip of god's middle finger
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Nov 17, 2013 - 06:56am PT
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i've empathy, lambone.
my gal and i get on real nice, once we're allowed to.
though this time of our life: raising kids, tackling monumental bills,
keeping careers, maintaining our core selves, eeking out self-worth (financial and emotional)....
all of these endeavors tax the relationship between us.
my relationship is always close to fracturing,
and it saddens me immensely when i see it teetering,
because i know in my heart, that if i can just
get through this tough era of life,
my girl and i will fall in love again
on the tail of child-rearing,
and we'll get to enjoy the latter aspects of
life together, as friends and lovers.
but i fear that we'll never get there,
because our love is so tangled up in the current overload of responsibilities.
so we beat our brow in this monumental effort to synthesize an empire,
and the cost to us is the partner that we love.
that's f*#ked up.
but hey,
other successful relationships everywhere are failing as well,
in separate but parallel circumstances.
so lambone, if your girl kicks you to the curb
and has enduring riddance of you, i'm certain that
there are other stellar gals out there, with
good hearts and visions, solid life and relationship skills,
that will join your stride thru whatever awaits you.
that's one consolation that i try to remember when
my love horizons look bleak.
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nature
climber
Boulder, CO
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Nov 17, 2013 - 10:26am PT
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neebee nails it.
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SCseagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Nov 17, 2013 - 11:08am PT
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^^^^what he said about what Neebs said. Sometimes it is just that simple...kindness...
Susan
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Lambone
Big Wall climber
Ashland, Or
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Nov 19, 2013 - 12:17am PT
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One. Day. At. A. Time.
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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Nov 19, 2013 - 06:12am PT
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hey there say, lambone... thanks for checking in with us all...
god bless...
also:
norwegian, you are in our hearts, too...
god bless...
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