Originally Posted by rokut
Right. 1.5 months on from my original post. Just over 2 months since everything blew up. Just wanted to note where I'm at, and again thank everyone who has been in touch. I can't say I am surprised by the support, because I knew when posting there are some brilliant people on here, but the thought and care has been incredible, so thank you again.
Headlines: we're still together. The girls are nowhere near as aware/ affected by it all, and are enjoying plenty of time with family on the weekends and getting on great with their school routine. I am not as angry in emotion, or as obsessive in thought as I was and can go a good few hours/ half-day without even thinking about what has happened.
I've got a really good psych therapist at a private clinic not too far outside Windsor, paid for by my companies Private Healthcare, and I am now three sessions into that and even though weird to say, I am 'enjoying' it. It's freeing, pragmatic, practical and really lets me mull things over and reach my own answers and conclusions with a helping hand.
My working days are back to being productive rather than annihilated by unwanted thoughts creeping in. And I have managed to get a job move during it all too and will be moving into my company's sales team (currently in Marketing) by the start of December. Not a knee jerk btw, always been in my career plan, just funny timing.
I am blaming myself less. I am more pragmatic and less angry/ frustrated. I am more emotional (sadness) and able to cry than I have been for a very long while, and actually let this wash over me much more than I thought I would.
So, what's the catch? My wife is in a very bad place. Still on her meds, not suicidal - but generally very frayed around the edges. Knackered. Drinking, disordered eating, over exercising and focusing on her work which is one of two things she feels generally in 'control' of. The other being her eating disorder, which she is aware controls her, but she falls into the false sense of security it gives when everything else feels out of control.
We go through big ups and downs, in generally a 48hr pattern - sometimes euphorically happy with each other, physically close, emotionally attached, positive etc. But within a couple of days there is nearly always a fall down the other side into a pit where we find ourselves without trying too hard. I see it, she sees it, we are doing what we can to level it off but absolutely its still a bit crazy.
She needs help. She knows it. But she is terrified about her mental state if she reaches out again, the therapist doesn't understand her again, and there isn't much 'helping' rather than bringing up old traumas. I see what she's saying. She doesn't have the energy or the mental bandwidth than to do the basics right now. It's not an excuse, because the longer it goes on the closer it must get to taking actions on her behalf but against her wishes. I know this is a last resort, but if the destructive behaviour continues there may not be much else to do. We shall see.
Around two weeks ago I found further messages from an ex-colleague of hers on LinkedIn, very one-sided, but absolutely focused on wanting her/ sex/ even a torso photo of him sent to her. (on LinkedIn! lol). No real replies encouraging or enjoying what he was doing from my wife, but I absolutely told her that to a guy - if you're not pushing back on that or blanking him that you have left the door open to more.
What does this tell me? Her low self-esteem drives a need to be wanted, to be a focus, even when it's a 'negative' one. Her want to look a certain way, be seen a certain way by people who don't know her like I do (issues and all) and her encouraging/ supportive/ happy/ flirty ways of communicating mean that it's another disaster waiting to happen.
So as you can imagine we have spent a long time talking around inappropriate relationships and communication and the need to handle them so they don't go too far. There may well be others but I have to admit there isn't too much evidence to suggest so. Could she have done it/ things before? Yep. And this brings me onto my final portion of this post... where it leaves me.
Honestly, I still love the girl. I still want to find a path that we can both tread and make life consistently meaningful and worth the work. I want to be with her for me, for us and for the girls. BUT, and this is a big BUT, I now have a much more balanced emotional response to the thought that maybe this can't work and it may never actually get better. This is a continuation, to some extent, of what I have known for 9 years. In that time I have always felt I was the weak link - angry, pissy, cold, caused her hurt with another female early on (only messaging, on work server, nothing to the level that she has now done). But now I see that actually she is just a victim creating more victims. And I am one of them, unfortunately the girls are too. As people say - 'hurt people hurt people'.
So I am a long way away from giving in or giving up. A long way away from running away. But for the first time I feel at ease with the thought that I may not be able to help turn this around and that I may need to find a new way of living my life.
Anyway, thank you for reading, thank you for your support and I apologise if this is something you didn't need to know. I hope it might give some insight or even help for anyone else that might be going through something similar. If not then it's a good release for me.
Cheers, and here's to better times! Rich
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