# Wife has separated from me (extremely long...Sorry!)



## Kincade (Feb 17, 2012)

Hi, new to this board and recently separated from my wife of 14 years (her choice). I find it very difficult to understand exactly what has happened and how I got to this place in my life, and I could use all the advice/encouragement I can get right now. 

My wife and I married at the end of 1997 in the New Orleans area. She is originally from the area and I'm originally from Mississippi. I moved to this area after beginning my relationship with her. We met through a mutual friend and began talking on the phone and the internet constantly in the beginning of our courtship which graduated into trips to see each other (we were three hours away from each other at the time). I eventually moved in with her, as she was a senior in college and trying to finish school. We were very much in love and I enjoyed spending time with her family as well. We eventually bought a house on the northshore of Lake Ponchartrain and began working on our careers. It was at this time that my wife began having panic attacks and anxiety issues off and on. 

Her anxiety attacks were fairly infrequent and I tried to help her through them the best I could. They worsened, however, when she was hit head on by a 17 year old kid who had come in her lane while she was driving to work one morning in 2004. She escaped the accident with numerous contusions and a damaged knee. This also caused her panic attacks to become more frequent. Again, we dealt with them the best we could, taking her to the emergency room when necessary and she took Ativan as needed. At no point through any of this was there any sign that there was a problem with our marriage.

In 2005, she became pregnant with our first child. We were very excited and we had had the child's name picked out since we met in 1996. She went along fine (with zero anxiety issues during her pregnancy) until the end of August of that year. She was placed in the hospital for high proteins in her urine the Friday before Katrina hit. She was released on Saturday, and we evacuated to Jackson, Mississippi on that Sunday. During the nine hour evacuation to Jackson, she went into labor (she was still six weeks early at this point). I got her to the best hospital I knew in Jackson (where I was living when we met) and they were able to postpone her labor until that Wednesday, two days after Katrina hit. Our son was born on August 31st, 2005 and was 4lbs 13 oz. We were obviously concerned about him being premature and he spent 16 days in the NICU. When I saw all the other children in the NICU (some barely more than 1 pound) I realized that my son would be okay and felt bad for many of the other parents that we would see on a daily basis that their child didn't have as good of a chance as our son to be a healthy child. We stayed in the Ronald McDonald House in Jackson during his NICU stay and were glad to have a place to stay in the wake of the evacution.

We brought our son home a month later and began to get back to our lives. I began a career in IT at the company I had been working for the past seven years and she began working at the same company I was at in a supervisor position of another department just a couple of years later. In 2008 she became pregnant with our second child and was put on bed rest for 11 weeks. Again, while she was pregnant she showed no signs of anxiety or worry that she did on a normal basis. Our daughter was born in March of 2009. To this point we had no issues with our marriage that I was aware of and seemed to be enjoying every aspect of our children's lives. We gave our children lots of attention and were never apart from them. When she went back to work after maternity leave, the company I work for told her that her position was no longer available and that she would have to take another position at the same salary. After three months in that position, they told her that position was no longer available. Before she went on maternity leave she was given a promotion to assistant manager over say 75 employees and a large salary increase. Three months after coming back she had no position, although she did not want to pursue legal matters because she felt she couldn't deal with the anxiety of it all. She began working for the same company in a work from home position that was much lower than the one she previously held. At that time, I told her I thought it was best that she find another job somewhere else because the position would not challenge her, which she enjoyed with her previous jobs. She decided she would like to work from home to spend more time with the kids. At the end of 2009 (I was 34) I was diagnosed with a germ cell tumor of the Thymus. This required surgery to open my chest, saw through the breastplate and remove the tumor. She was terrified that I would not make it through the surgery, although I had no doubts I would be find and tried to allay her fears. The surgery went fine, but there was a long recovery period for me to get back to normal.

I went back to work after three weeks of recuperation and began trying to take some of the strain off of her from having to take care of me and the kids. She began working longer hours in the stay at home position due to forced overtime, and I began to be the primary caretaker of our children. She began to get more and more stressed in the position and wanted to quit. I told her she should quit, but that we needed her to find another job first if at all possible because money was extremely tight with us just having our second child and my cancer surgery. Because of my surgery, it took a long time (almost 18 months) before I could sleep in the bed with her again at night because I sleep on my chest and could not take the chance of rolling over. I would still lay in the bed with her and we would have sex, but not as frequently as either would have liked it as she was working the late hours and I was tired most nights from taking full care of the kids. In January of 2011 she had what I can only describe as a breakdown and quit her job (after numerous panic attacks). She began to see a therapist was put on medication (Lexapro and Celexa being the main ones). After my cancer scare and her breakdown I felt it best to try and move closer to her family. She seemed happier when we went to visit her family (25 miles away) and our kids absolutely love being around their family. Her parents owned a vacant house across the street from them that was previously owned by her grandfather who had passed away at the beginning of the decade. We decided (and it was a “we” decision…we would not have gone forward if she wasn’t on board) that we would move back to the southshore and buy the house from her parents after it was renovated (it was damaged during Katrina and had not yet been renovated). Because of the new school year, we decide to move in with her parents to get our son into school and while the house was being worked on. She got a job in New Orleans (she was out of work for 7 months) and I kept working across the lake where our current home is. I would stay at her parents’ house with her and the kids almost every night of the week and we would all come back home on the weekends.

It was during this time (a few weeks after we moved in with her parents) that she began to act totally different. She wasn't as loving with the kids, she was short with me and her parents, she would come home from work and fall asleep and then wake up and be on the computer until 2 a.m. some nights. At the end of September she told me that my constant rejection of her by not always sleeping in the bed with her and not always wanting to talk at night were causing problems with our marriage. I told her that I did not realize this, and immediately began trying to rectify this. I began attempting to spend more time with her at night offering to watch tv/movies or just lay and talk, or just hold each other. I tried to initiate sex as much as possible with success only a few times over the past six months. Most nights she would come home from work and fall asleep for two or three hours and then wake up and be on her laptop (which she always placed in between us in the bed) until 1 or 2 am. In October, I was looking for a movie my son wanted to watch that I thought might be on her laptop when I came across essay papers on her machine from her former boyfriend when she was a teenager. He currently lives in the Houston area. This was her boyfriend that she had been seeing up until about 9 months before we met and had cheated on her with another woman and married the other woman. I was upset and confronted her about it when she got home. She explained that this was part of her therapy and nothing was going on. Apparently I’m an idiot because I fell for it. In late November, I found more files from him but nothing incriminating. In December she asked me to begin spending more time across the lake so she could have more of a break from me. This didn’t mean every night, and I didn’t realize this was her idea of a separation. Once the Christmas holidays came, things began to get better and I was hoping things were going in the right direction. She was nice again and we were doing things with the kids together. 

On December 30th ( a Friday) we all came home to the house we’ve lived in for 13 years. While we were eating dinner, she asked what the kids and I were doing for new years. I told her that I thought we would all be doing something together. It was then that she informed me that we were separated, and that she was going to Texas to see the former boyfriend and would be back on Tuesday. Needless to say, I was a wreck that weekend and could not believe that she would do this to me and the kids and especially in this way. I began to see a therapist myself to deal with all of this. She has gone to Texas one more time to see him since then and we are separated. She now rents the house we were going to move into and the kids stay with her during the week because of school, and I’m living in the house we own and am beginning to fix it up to sell. I get the kids on the weekends and she has them during the week. She is also beginning to threaten me with moving to Texas once the summer comes and I told her that I am fully opposed to it since everyone that cares about our children are here in this area. She told me what is best for her is what’s best for the kids and I explained that if she assumes that making herself happy is going to make the kids happy she is likely in for a rude awakening. Our kids are happy here being around their family. Our kids still don’t know what’s going on. I spent the first two weeks after our separation trying to get her back and have not tried again since then. I talked to her best friend that second week and found out that I was only making her angry by trying to get her back. She also stated she had tried to talk my wife out of all of this many times to no avail and that it was my wife that sought the boyfriend out, not the other way around. She told me he didn’t want anything to do with her in the beginning. 

Now I’m extremely lonely and only have my best friend that I’ve kept in constant contact with over the years. I have devoted all my time to my wife and kids over the years and now am all by myself (except for the weekends). I’m sorry for the length of this (and this doesn’t tell the full story), but I knew of no other way to explain it. While I want my kids to grow up with both parents being together, I no longer trust my wife as she has cheated on me (whether emotionally or physically or both, it’s the same to me), and I know that in her current state she is not the woman I fell in love with and have been faithful and loving to for 14 years. Any advice you can give me on how to move forward with this wreck of a life I currently have and maybe how to prevent her from moving with the kids would be greatly appreciated.


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## Shaggy (Jul 17, 2011)

Wow - get to a laywer immediately and file custody papers for your kids before she runs off to texas to her affair partner.

She can't take them out of state without your permission.

Sorry, but what you're dealing with is a simple old cheating wife. The way you deal with that is to:

1. see a laywer
2. seperate your money - and credit cards
3. file for full custody of the kids and inform her she cannot take them out of state without your permission.
4. expose the affair to her family and friends.
5. find the OM and his wife. Contact the wife and tell her what your wife is doing.

Oh, don't accept her having you babysit the kids so she can go for a sex weekend with the BF. 

The first time she did that you should have filed for divorce and cut off her access to any joint money.


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## Kincade (Feb 17, 2012)

A few things I forgot to mention after seeing your post. 

We have separated our money, and after her being out of work for seven months and my credit taking a hit from the numerous medical bills, I only have what's coming in from my paycheck every two weeks. I don't have the money for a lawyer right now.

Her parents and family know about the other man, and are confused and upset about it, but this is still their daughter/sister. They're not going to give her a ton of grief about it.

I don't think the OM is still married to the woman he cheated with. But I have very little info on him and she won't tell me anything. I have no idea if he is married/has kids.

I can't file for custody at this moment because I still live 25 miles away and can't bring the kids to school and pick them up. I'm currently looking for a job in New Orleans and will get an apartment once the house sells.

At this point, I don't care what she does on the weekends. Our money is separated and when I have the kids, I'm so happy that I could care less what she's doing at this point. I've kind of gone from blaming myself for the whole thing and dying to have her back in the beginning to seeing what a horrible person she's been to me the past few months and questioning whether I would want her back if she was interested. If she was the person she was two years ago, I'd take her back in a heartbeat. She's not that person anymore.


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## warlock07 (Oct 28, 2011)

> 5. find the OM and his wife. Contact the wife and tell her what your wife is doing.


This is very important. Please do this. It won't cost you much. This has much more repercussions than just revenge. 


Your story is heart breaking. She totally blind sided you. Expose that scum


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## This is me (May 4, 2011)

What a sad story. I am with Warlock expose him. She will likely find out her fantasy from the past is not a greenier pasture.

180 and move on. 

I wish you well!


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## arbitrator (Feb 13, 2012)

Whatever you do, get custody of those kids. If you don't have funds, go to legal aid there in NO and have them file the paperwork for you. Granted, those legal aid folks will likely be 3rd year law students from Tulane or Loyola, they'll be able to help you out. That's what legal aid is for.

If your STBXW wants recline time with her BF in Houston, then she doesn't need those kids. You can definitely make it most difficult for her to take those kids out of state without the Court's permission.

Hang in there! We'll continue to be in prayer for you and the kids! All of you are deserving of so much, much more!


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