Greetings from TN

For the record, some people seem to have some kind of absolute brain blank when it comes to keeping to a schedule/plan. They just simply can't seem to comprehend that people make schedules/plans for a reason and that when they fark it up, it affects other people.

(Dude does this ALL of the time - it is one of our major issues. I will be thinking: "OK, he is going to this and that, then I can meet him here for this next step, and if something holds that up then plan B is to thus-and-so." and will arrange my day accordingly...Him: "Well, I was thinking of doing this and that but this other thing grabbed my attention and I never got around to thus-and-so. Well, I guess I'll do it sometime next week." I will think that we have a firm plan, and for him it is just a vague "maybe" possibility. Aargh!)

So one question for me would be - has W always been so blase about time-frames/plans/schedules or is this a new development? I can understand that occasionally plans go awry (which is why I generally have a back-up plan...or six) but does she generally make an attempt to stay on track? Or is this a "new guy"/NRE related phenomena?

JaneQ
 
Re (from learninginTN, Post #75):
"This weekend my wife and her guy went to a conference that he wanted to attend."

Oh -- oops I kind of spaced on the weekend thing, I was thinking they were only gone on Sunday. Well, that does make a bit more difference then, especially if the weekend included Friday.

Re: the ups and downs ... I am going by posts in the past where -- well, like there'd be one post that sounded more positive/upbeat, where she had seemed to do some kind of nice/hopeful thing such as sleep with you and do some physical contact. Or, like today, when she volunteered to take care of the kids although I realize this is not enough to make up for the bad stuff.

If it has gotten to the point where it is all downs and going further down, then maybe it is time to get a divorce lawyer. Does the counsellor know how bad things have gotten? Make sure she knows, and don't let W hijack the counselling session with all the "boo-hoo things W is suffering." 50% of the counselling session should be going towards what you are suffering.

I can see that things have gotten pretty horrible. It's a little more tolerable when at least W is improving and gradually acting better, but when she's acting worse it really sucks. It is definitely unfair that you get none of her sexual attentions while her boyfriend gets plenty (for example).
 
As to the sexual intimacy issue, the last time I brought it up (last week) she simply said she's not ready. She didn't say no. But I just got her to read "Opening Up" by Tristam Taormino (and her guy is reading it, too). The sections on NRE and others may get her to re-examine her relationship with me. I just started reading "Intimacy and Desire" by David Schnarch. It is supposedly a fantastic book about resurrecting the desire in a marriage. After I'm done with it I'm going to urge her to read it.

My experience is that if someone has any interest in having sex with their spouse, they'll be doing it or working on it on their own. My experience, for what it's worth, is that pushing spouses (and spouse's boyfriends!) to read books to convince them you want and need more sex from her is not going to do any good at all. If she cared at all, something would have changed way before that.

...The anger and borderline emotional abuse ... the bi-polar diagnosis...

....The trust issues....she had her affair.

The anger returned pretty much after she stopped taking the meds. ... She wants to be "herself" regardless of the collateral damage. ...

You're right about the NRE. It is the explanation for a lot of things, but can't be used as an excuse for a lot of the bad behavior.

Plus taking off for most of the weekend, not being there for her kids, screaming and yelling at them when she is...and in one of your posts, you're worried about whether you'll ever get up the balls to ask a girl out.

Bluntly here, you're not in junior high school. You have two children who need you. You have a home life and marriage crashing down around your ears and theirs.

They need a mother, too, and at this point, she needs tough love from you. She needs to be told clearly to start helping herself because she has two little girls depending on her, or to stop with the collateral damage she's doing, and simply leave, so you can give these girls a peaceful home.

(Just a thought--I work with kids and one little girl told me yesterday her mother is back from an extended trip. I said, "You must be happy!" She said not really, now there's all kinds of screaming and yelling in their home again, that it was peaceful with just her and her dad. This is where you're heading. Kids DO say things to the teachers and adults in their lives. Is this what you want your daughters saying to their teachers?)

I see in this thread all kinds of concern about scheduling and NRE and getting sexual needs met.

WHAT ABOUT YOUR CHILDREN? Who is meeting THEIR needs?
 
After a long telephone discussion with W during lunch today, I'm seriously considering going ahead and putting a stop to all this. So now I have to decide whether to:

1) Tell her we're done with this polyamory experiment and let her make her decision. I'm pretty sure she'll decide to keep seeing her guy. So then I would go ahead and start divorce proceedings based on her adultery, or
2) Sit down with her and start working on the divorce ourselves, with me telling her what I want for me and the kids, or
3) Go to an attorney and start the divorce based on some kind of other thing, like the fact that she's emotionally abusive, unstable, dishonest, etc.
4) Talk to W's guy and tell him we're stopping the polyamory. He agreed when we started this he would not want to do anything to interfere with our marriage.

If we pursue the divorce and all the polyamory/open marriage stuff comes out, will we be in danger of having our kids taken from us? If this were a possibility, I would not even examine the idea of divorce.
 
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Just as an FYI, if W is so very much in the whole "I want you a secondary, I never wanted kids" mindset even if you do number 4 you still may end up with a divorce.
 
Just as an FYI, if W is so very much in the whole "I want you a secondary, I never wanted kids" mindset even if you do number 4 you still may end up with a divorce.

I guess the only difference between numbers 4 & 1 is that in the case of #4, there is the wildcard of not really knowing what her guy would do. He's still not fully divorced, and greatly worried about what might happen in his own case if details of this thing got out. His STBX is a bit hard-nosed, and could make an issue regarding his custody of his teenaged son.
 
If we pursue the divorce and all the polyamory/open marriage stuff comes out, will we be in danger of having our kids taken from us? If this were a possibility, I would not even examine the idea of divorce.

You need to speak with an attorney and find out what the law says in your state. Here in CA this would be a non-issue, then again so is adultery. If she is abusive, you have an obligation to protect your children. You can't make these decisions without knowing the facts, so meet with an attorney and find out the facts.
 
Re (from WhatHappened, Post #83):
"WHAT ABOUT YOUR CHILDREN? Who is meeting THEIR needs?"

Yeah, I feel pretty bad for the kids (and admittedly should have said so sooner). W is acting really selfishly in general, from what I can tell.

And I agree with SNeacail, it wouldn't be a bad idea to at least have a consultation with an attorney, and find out what's at stake here. #=!!, I think I'd also consider talking to W's boyfriend and at least letting him know how bad things have gotten. See what he says ...
 
Date night tonight! I hope it does some good. In the past she's been on good behavior during date night.

Good friend of ours (and occassional FWB) had a heart-to-heart with her last night. He feels she is out of control and attempted to convince her to give polyamory a rest for two to three months. I still don't know whether he convinced her to actually do that. Hopefully we'll talk about that tonight.
 
Not such a good date night. W went on and on about how she doesn't like the schedule now, that's it's too rigid, too confining, she feels trapped. Feels she's not seeing him enough, blah, blah, blah. I tell her I designed the schedule pretty much exactly the way she wanted, and she's stretched time out with her guy by many hours. She actually wanted to reschedule our date night and go see him, but she knows how militant I am about our one date night per week, so she didn't even ask me beforehand.

I keep re-iterating my points that I'm not having my needs met. She claims that's not her job. I say "au contraire, mon frere" ( I didn't phrase it like that). That's the job of everyone in a relationship. It just gets more complicated in a three-person relationship.

Then she talks about her meeting with our friend last night. She says he's being driven by his own jealousy - that he wants her to spend less time with her guy so that HE can spend more time with her. She claims he has, on several occasions, recommended she get out of her marriage because it was "making her unhappy". So fantastic - just what I need, a "friend" who is not a friend of the marriage.
 
Re:
"I keep re-iterating my points that I'm not having my needs met. She claims that's not her job."

It might not be her "job," but it might be a requisite for her staying in a marital relationship with you.

I am aware of her history of fibbing, and wonder how much of the truth she is telling you now, such as about what the occasional-FWB friend has said to her. I also wonder if she's telling her boyfriend that everything's fine between you and her.

As the others have pointed out, you have to keep an eye on whether this marriage is good for you, and on whether it's good for the kids. :(

Do please keep us posted, regardless.
Sympathetically,
Kevin T.
 
I keep re-iterating my points that I'm not having my needs met. She claims that's not her job.

Hi TN, I've been following your post for a while but haven't spoken up until now. I'm so sorry that you're going through this, I can't imagine how painful it is for you.

This line, in particular, though is alarming to me. Not her job? As you said, "au contrair!" It absolutely IS her job as your wife! When she married you, I would imagine her vows were not "until she got tired of doing it and would rather be with someone else". I happen to agree with the thinking that when you marry someone, not only are you promising to love them for the rest of your life, you're also promising to either fuck them or make sure that their sexual needs are taken care of otherwise for the rest of your life. You have been a saint up to now, putting up with her blatant disrespect towards both you and your marriage. I know you've said that you have a breaking point but you just haven't hit it yet and I have to commend you, because mine would have been a while ago. But have you thought about what your breaking point might actually be? It may help you to have a clear idea in your mind of what is too far.

There is a difference between being caught up in NRE and actively trying to trash your marriage in favor of a new relationship. I actually just recently posted about my own concern about the NRE in my relationship with my new boyfriend and how I wanted to make sure it didn't adversely affect my marriage - and that's because I still WANT my marriage. She does not give any indication in either word or deed that she still wants her marriage and in fact has been doing the opposite.

I think that you likely feel that you have to stick it out to the bitter, butt clenching end and I understand that. I know I always want to make sure I don't have any "what-if's" when ending a relationship, however from my outsider perspective here, I don't know what else you could possibly do to save your relationship with her as she pretty clearly does not want to do the same.

I would not presume to tell someone what to do in their relationship, however I would suggest that you think about what YOU need and whether she is able and willing to give that to you. YOU need to have your needs met, both emotionally and sexually. YOU need her to put in more face time with you and your family, etc. Then, if she is not willing or able to provide these things, you should maybe ask yourself if you can honestly continue in a relationship where you are asked to give so much and expected to accept so little.
 
Thanks for your words, naturalblue. I feel this week, I am very close to that breaking point. Last night, when she was practically threatening to ditch our date night to be with her guy, I was running various break-up scenarios through my head, planning to make the break. But she relented and went on the date night with me, and even though it was full of a lot of her NRE-induced B/S, she did go home with me and sleep in our bed. Today she was actually kind to me the few times we communicated, but she is headed out tonight to be with her guy and won't be back until tomorrow night. She knows about my 24-hour rule, and we'll see if she tests me on that again.

I've decided what I'm going to do about that. If she crosses 24 hours and is not home, I'm going to call her. If she comes up with some lame excuse, or downright refuses to come home, or tries to invalidate my feelings again, I'm going to go ahead and call off the polyamory, and call her guy and talk to him about that (because honestly I don't trust her to relay my frustration to her guy adequately). Then we'll finally get some resolution one way or another.
 
Late to the thread

It seems that she doesn't "see" you anymore. NRE can be powerful stuff and blinding. The fact that you are putting your foot down and making an effort not to be lost in the fog shows me that you are in it but is it with two feet or just the one?

It can be frustrating to watch the NRE. Sometimes it's cutesy but including, sometimes it's down right meddlesome.

Hopefully she wakes up and realizes you hurt so. :)
 
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Would more emotional-based communnication help? Trying to describe what you feel like when a boundary gets overdrawn, the physical feelings, pits in your stomach, headaches, etc. ... how it affects your mind, creates confusion and makes you wonder if she really cares about you ... how it affects your heart, how you feel like she is leaving you for another man and it is tearing you up inside, it is making you feel like you're losing your self-esteem ... and even spiritual, how it is causing you to feel as if you are lost in the woods and cannot find your way out.

The above is mostly guesswork on my part, but think of it as an example of what describing the full range of effects would look like. I honestly don't think she knows how much she's hurting you. She sees it on some technical level, but not in any way that really means anything to her.

I feel it's apparent that your marriage is hanging on by a thread. I am trying to think of any last-resort measures that haven't been tried.

Perhaps in a separate conversation, you and she should talk about how the kids feel about all this, how their mother makes them feel. Could even be a conversation that the kids participate in.

I definitely wouldn't trust W to convey information to her boyfriend. You need to get in touch with him directly and let him know how bad things are. You might be surprised to see that he is rather shocked. :(
 
Somewhere in this I think she heard, or read the mantra that she can't make him feel anything ....that he's responsible for his feelings and that also extends to his needs being met.

I'm not sure the emotional base communication will work outside someone saying sorry youre having a hard time getting your emotions or your reactions under control. Sorry youre having a hardtime getting your needs met in some alternative fashion ...like I did/ do.
 
Somewhere in this I think she heard, or read the mantra that she can't make him feel anything ....that he's responsible for his feelings and that also extends to his needs being met.

My ex-husband subscribed wholeheartedly to this philosophy... And while it's true, it still doesn't mean the other person gets to act like a jerk without repercussion. I will have those feelings and I will (eventually, when pushed enough) act on them - if you're not on board with working them out with me, then I'm willing to bet you're not going to like the way I try to work them out.

Good luck to you, TN (and I'm sorry, but I can't call you "Tennessee" without doing the Chumley voice in my head :D ). I hope for the best for you...
 
During the counselling session tonight I'm think I'm going to bring up the idea of ending the polyamory vigorously and see how the W and the counselor react. She's no closer to giving me what I want, and is getting angrier and more controlling by the minute. Last night I had to endure a lengthy rant about my FB posts cluing people in to the fact that I was alone with the girls, and she had to "justify" it to a bunch of close friends.

Then today she came down hard on me for scheduling a date with the wife of the "friend" I mentioned a few days ago, because she is afraid I will spill the beans with her and cause her more "grief".

More controlling behavior. I can't talk or see hardly anyone around here any more. I just have to live in my little chaste bubble while she f**** her guy multiple times/week. I've had it.
 
She might regret all this stuff she's did someday ... but not until after the heavy consequences become real.
 
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