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who cares more the wife or the kids
My wife of 24 years has just left me and moved back to her parents citing my unreasonable behaviour but I am suffering depression and on medication ,I have changed the way I react to people and sent all my phone contacts a text stating I was going to become a changed person ,given up smoking ,been going to a counsellor with my wife and now she says that she has not loved me for a couple of years.I have 2 boys 1 is 21 and in the army the other is 15 and she has left him here with me.she wants her freedom not a mothers commitment but I have no choice in the matter and i am left to pick up the shattered remains of our lives while she goes out all the time now with friends.should I give up on her and walk away or still try to save our marriage ,my boys want me to try and save the marriage and thats what I want to do but how long is trying to save a reasonable length of time.I am 56 and my wife is 44.
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It looks like your grief has brought upon some future positive changes in you which is great for you. I think your wife is just wanting to live life at the moment I think she feels that she couldn't have fun before and be "free" due to commitment. the thing is... one can still go out and have fun even though one is in a committed relationship.
- You mentioned that she has stopped loving you... if this is so, then one needs to move on. You have done your part to make things work/better your conscious should be clean and at peace.
- I am sad to know that she has basically left you in charge of your son. You are a great father I am sure of that... don't worry if she is not taking responsibility... the important thing right now is that you have the love of your sons and you guys are together and in good health I hope.
- An important thing to notice here is that Marriage is a commitment and if it falls... needs the cooperation of both parties NOT one, but both you and your wife need to work together if you guys want to be together. At the moment it seems like she just doesn't want to work things out... thus, you need to tell your boys that if it was up to you, everything would be like it used to but sometimes things don't work out the way everyone wants them to workout.
- I further stress that if your wife truly feels that way she does towards you, then it is time to move on. Live the NEW life you want to live... achieve and try new things you never imagined yourself ever trying.
-Enjoy life the positive way... stay surrounded by positive people and places this will help your depression greatly as well as bring a smile to your life everyday.
Best Always,
-trueadvice3
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They say you have to walk in someone’s shoes in order to know where they have been. I too have suffered from depression; I know what depression can do to you and how it can affect your family. I’m lucky in the fact that my wife is stubborn and stuck with me until I sought treatment.
I’m on medication and have been in treatment with a psychologist for a number of years. My wife has seen me as the man she married go to the depressed person I was to the person I am now. I believe the person I am now is totally different than the other two. Even I didn’t like the depressed person I became but like you I’m sure you understand I never realized I was depressed, neither did my wife.
For some people psycho-therapy is hard to understand. Your wife may be one of these people. I’m one of those people. All I know is it works. How it works is for some reason beyond my comprehension; my therapist and I joke about this all the time. I understand if I am sick the doctor prescribes a pill, if I cut myself I put a band aid on it I get better. I still do not understand how talking makes the depression go away; but it does.
My suggestion is this: You need to take the questions you asked to your therapist. Only you can decide what the right thing is for you and your children. If your wife has given up on counseling you need to get her back to counseling and to individual counseling as well. Family or couples counseling is a great thing but even then some people hold things back. If your wife is someone who does not believe in the value of psycho-therapy then she needs some individual therapy time with the counselor to work through that problem first.
I would like to tell you there is going to be a happy ending to this, there may or may not be. What I can and will say is if the outcome is not the one you want you can at least say you tried.
By the way I am several years older than you.
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You probably aren't going to like what I'm about to say, but this the truth of what I read in this question:
If your wife doesn't want to save the marriage, then it's time to stop trying.
Regardless of what she wants, it's time to stop blaming your wife for so much.
From reading your question I really don't think you've accepted yet how difficult your life together could have been for her. A long stint of depression and 'unreasonable behaviour' is not something that a few weeks or months and a mass text message can heal. It might not ever heal.
It sounds like you've started to work on yourself and make moves towards correcting your behaviour, and that is great! But it might be too little too late to save your marriage and you need to find find a way to respect that.
I have lived with severely depressed people, and I can't tell you how often they did and said things just like what you have said here, only to fall back into their destructive habits in a matter of weeks or months. I could be wrong, but it sounds very much to me like this change is a rather recent one in you. So you must ask yourself, should she trust you right now when you say you've changed? In light of everything that has happened in the past, Is it so wrong of her to have run out of hope? Is it really all her fault if the love between you died?
You ARE left to pick up the pieces. It's not fair, but there it is. You are left to do so because your wife said "I truly can't take it anymore." That doesn't make her a horrible person. She did the right thing. She went to counselling with you and she told you the truth: Her affection has died and she needs out. That was the right thing for her to to if it was the truth.
In this question you call into question her love as a mother, and her responsibility to your family and even her ability to lean on friends in this difficult time for her, and I have to ask: How dare you? How dare you speak so cruelly of the women who stood by you through what has probably been miserable, damaging and at times even plain out evil behaviour brought on by your illness and difficulties, the mother of your children, and a fellow human being who is in as much pain as she likely is right now...
Continue to go the counsellor together, and work out a situation with respect so that your sons can have the relationship with both of you that they deserve and desire. Go back to counselling with a bit of empathy and respect for all the sacrifices and difficulties your wife has faced in your life together. Humble yourself a bit and remind yourself of your respect for her, even if she makes choices you don't completely agree with. Only from that position of understanding and respect do you have any chance of a happy outcome.
Lobby for the best for your sons, but leave attacking her choices out of it. It sounds to me like you are both doing your best. Keep on doing that, and do it with a bit more sympathy and respect for your wife.
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My mother did this to my father about the same time. She was mid-forties and my dad was mid-fifties. I was fresh out of high school and have 3 younger siblings. She, too, wanted her freedom and left all of the kids with my dad to raise on his own.
She said hadn't loved him for a few years, too. They were married for nearly 20 years and she suddenly decides one morning she wants divorce? Yeah.
So, what happened?
My mom was going through menopause, actually. Her periods started to get really screwy and she confided in me one day about it. I had to push and push and push to get her to go to the doctor to see if everything was OK with her. The doctor ran some tests and told her that she had the onset of menopause. He prescribed some helpful medication for her but she only took it for a day or two, claiming it didn't help.
It came out that she had been seeing a younger man. She had emotionally moved on from my father well before letting him know.
She lost it right in front of our eyes. She made my dad tell us each that he was going to divorce her (it wasn't his idea though--he didn't want divorce) until we each began to cry and then she was satisfied. She made him sleep on the couch away from her. She began to take calls from the other man right in front of my dad but when he got a call from a woman (it was friendly--not a romantic involvement) she flipped and got angry and possessive of him.
My dad hung in there through a heartattack from the stress of it. My mother called him liar and said he faked the heartattack to get attention from her. Funny that the doctor's didn't say that and wouldn't let him leave the hospital for days while they ran more tests--oh, and installed a pacemaker and defibrillator.
She suddenly left one day. Moved a few states away overnight. She had actually called my dad and said she would bring him down some lunch (he was at work) in a few minutes. She never showed up. She wasn't making lunch. She was packing her bags.
Now, I don't believe in divorce, but I watched my entire family fall apart. I was an emotional wreck. My dad was lost and confused. My siblings were scared. We didn't know how to function. My dad has still not recovered and it has been years. My oldest brother refused to ever speak to my mother again.
But my mother is still just as crazy. It never went away. Sometimes she'll cry on the phone and say she's sorry for how things happened. She can't even remember how old I am though. Imagine that. Spending more than 18 years with someone you gave birth to and not being able to figure out how old they are now.
My mother wanted to relive her younger days though. She began drinking and "partying" after she moved. It was like she was a teen again.
Your wife seems unwilling to work this out, much like my mother. She may have already moved on. She may be wanting to relive her youth too. She may be toying with you for awhile (like my mother did with my father).
If the marriage can be fixed then there has to be open communication. That's what counsellors get you to do--communicate with each other. If she is not willing to be open and honest with you then there may not be much hope to resolve this.
It's up to you if you want to continue to fix this or not. Reasonable length is problematic to say, really. How serious do you think she is on moving on for good? Can you really forgive and forget all of this anyway? Would she really improve and make the proper changes to not follow this same course again in the future?
My father hasn't remarried but mid-fifties isn't too late to start over. Sure, my dad dated around for a little while but came to the conclusion taht he just needed to be a dad and not to worry about women. He's been content as a single father for a few years now. I don't think he will ever be completely "over" my mother but I'm not sure that is even possible after spending so much time with a person who gave birth to your children, right?
You have to make these decisions though. At some point you will have to make the decision to stop and move on with raising your boy or to hang on forever for her. That point might come tomorrow, next week, two months from now, or years down the road. We can't say because we're not physically in that situation. We don't know everything that has been said. We don't know if she may have moved on. We don't know her personally, you know?
Sometimes you just have to make a decision even if you don't like it. Evaluate the situation. Write things down to get them on paper, in front of you, and out of your head. See a therapist for your own benefit so that you can make it through this in one piece.
I wish you well.
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First I want to say I'm so sorry about that, I'm sure that you're deply hurt by this... And I'm sure time will make your pain a little bit lighter.
I really mean what I'm about to say! I know that your kids really want there Mom and Dad back togeather... And that's exactly what I would want if I were them.
But I really think that maybe you should now focus on yourself and your children. She clearly dosen't want to be with you. And she has given up her responsibility as a mother to go hang with friends. And at the age of fourty four wow!!!!! I would think that a women that age would have gotten all the partying out of her system. But I stand corrected.
And I see that you two has been togeather since she was around the age of what????? 20... She was really young when she took on the responsibility of being a wife and mother. And it seems as if she missed out on a lot of her young adult life. You were twelve years other so I'm assuming thirty two at the time ( Please correct me if my math is incorrect never really been good at it :>)When you meet her she was a very young adult and it seems that she really never had a chance to be a true young adult. She missed out on partying, clubing, road trips with friends and alot of other things.
I'm not trying to justify her actions but I think a small part of her wasn't ready for what she gave you. Some people can handle getting exclusive at a very young age but others can't... And the fact that she did make that choice to wed you and have kids by you and then split, I feel that she is a coward.
She not only left you which is bad enough but she left her children behind as well. And that doesn't make her any better than any dead beat father walking around. So please use everyday to try to heal your heart wounds... And make life a little more easier for your children.
Stop!!!!!!!!!!!!! Trying to focus on getting back togeather with this women... And focus on yourself and your children. She may or maynot ever come back but for the time being you have to continue living.
Do what you have to do to get out of this depression stage. It's so easy to wallow in self pity and be swallowed up in depression.. But sometimes we find it so hard to just simply live and be happy... We don't know what's in store for us in the future... But worrying about people who's long gone out of our lives is heading to no where zone fast...
I have answered some very simple questions on here but yours is the most difficult question I ever came accross. It's really sad... But you gotta move on for yourself and your kids... And even though your siuation is hard, trust me somebody else is a little harder.
- The best of luck to you and always-
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Ok well I think maybe you two should take a break...she said she did't love you and if yall don't have the same connection it really won't work out...maybe you should just be her friend for now and slowly work your way back up...in the mean time maybe you should have your fun too...try getting to know other women because if she's not the one you'll just be one step closer finding someone you're supposed to be with...don't give up...best of luck.
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