# Update - Nothing New



## hurtnohio (Jul 17, 2011)

Hello,
After taking a few weeks to unplug, I thought I'd update anyone here who cares to know.

Really, there's not much of an update. We're still separated. She still blames me for everything and continues to say she's done "nothing" (her exact words) wrong. I have started enforcing boundaries when I can. But any time I say, "I'm not OK, with...." she just makes excuses, or says she didn't do anything wrong, or blames me for being too sensitive. So I can tell that she's still a LONNNGGGGG way from taking responsibility for her part in this mess.

We continue to try to hammer out an agreement on the dissolution. There are some sticky issues for which we might need to seek mediation. We're hoping to avoid a protracted court battle.

It was good for me to unplug for a while. Between this forum and texting and e-mailing some close friends, I was beginning to become co-dependent or something like that. In essence, I was becoming hooked on that temporary "high" I would get from having somebody validate what I was thinking or feeling or doing. I realized that I had to be OK with my decision, just between me and God. If others validated me, great. But I had to do what I felt was right.

I'm feeling more centered and at peace nowadays. It's not that I wanted to end up divorced, but it's almost like losing a family member after a long battle with cancer. You don't want them to die, but you're almost relieved when they do because now their suffering is over. It's like that with my marriage....I didn't want to be a divorced father at age 44. But the reality is that the emotional abuse I was living with was unsustainable. I'm sad my marriage is ending, but I'm relieved the suffering is over. I hope that kinda' makes sense.

There are still some issues that I need to address with her. My mother told me the other day that my wife is still telling people about the phone bugging (which she accused me of). Since we had asked the local phone company to check our lines up to the house (at my wife's insistence), if there was a bug on the phones, it had to be done from the inside. All my wife is telling people is that we "discovered" our phones were bugged. So that leaves an interesting question....either she believes some nameless, faceless stranger broke into the house and bugged the phones without leaving a shred of physical evidence behind. Or else she thinks I bugged the phones. Either scenario is damned disturbing. And it's clearly evidence of her paranoia.

The other issue I need to address soon is the behavior of our small group leader at church. Not once since I moved out has anyone from my former church "family" contacted me to see how I'm doing. I do have one friend from that church who still talks to me regularly; he says the attitude is one of total sympathy for her, as if everyone has bought her story that I abandoned my family for no apparent reason. Even though I am no longer attending that church, I believe I need to write a letter to the group leader to serve notice that I am not OK with the way the situation has been handled.

This is not the place I would have chosen to be at this place in my life. But there came a point where I believed the chances of improvement if I stayed were almost nil. I believe I had to get out to get healthy myself, and to try to become a healthy model for my son. Divorce stinks, but it sometimes really is the least unhealthy of all the options available.

Thanks for the kind thoughts and PMs that have come my way from time to time. I really do appreciate it. I hope you are all well.


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## donders (May 9, 2012)

hurtnohio said:


> All my wife is telling people is that we "discovered" our phones were bugged. So that leaves an interesting question....either she believes some nameless, faceless stranger broke into the house and bugged the phones without leaving a shred of physical evidence behind. Or else she thinks I bugged the phones. Either scenario is damned disturbing.


Wait.

Either a nameless, faceless stranger broke into the house and bugged the phones without leaving evidence OR you did it?

If I was your wife I'd think you did it.


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## Conrad (Aug 6, 2010)

Hurt,

"I'm not ok with you telling people I bugged the telephone"

The hell with the small group leader.

I'd make an appointment with the pastor.


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## hurtnohio (Jul 17, 2011)

Conrad said:


> Hurt,
> 
> "I'm not ok with you telling people I bugged the telephone"
> 
> ...


The church is in a period of transition. There is no permanent, full-time pastor right now.....


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## Conrad (Aug 6, 2010)

hurtnohio said:


> The church is in a period of transition. There is no permanent, full-time pastor right now.....


President of the Church Council.


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## hurtnohio (Jul 17, 2011)

donders said:


> Wait.
> 
> Either a nameless, faceless stranger broke into the house and bugged the phones without leaving evidence OR you did it?
> 
> If I was your wife I'd think you did it.


First of all, the phones never were bugged. 

But around the same time that she was telling people the phones were bugged (unbeknownst to me at the time), I had crunched the numbers and realized it was cheaper for us to drop our landline and get unlimited-plan cell phones for each of us. Shortly after dropping our landline (at my suggestion), she told me she believed I was bugging the phones. But by that time, she had packed up all the phones and donated them to Goodwill. So I don't have any way to "prove" I didn't bug them. And she has no way to "prove" I did. It's basically her word against mine.

I did ask her why the hell I would suggest dropping the phone line if I was getting all this great intel from a bug on it. She said she wondered about that, too, but she figured I probably also knew how to bug her new cell phone.

The paranoia knows no boundaries......


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## donders (May 9, 2012)

hurtnohio said:


> First of all, the phones never were bugged.





hurtnohio said:


> There are still some issues that I need to address with her. My mother told me the other day that my wife is still telling people about the phone bugging (which she accused me of).


Ok got it. 

You can maybe see why it appears the phones were bugged from the way you wrote about "the phone bugging" as compared to "the alleged phone bugging" or the "suspected phone bugging" or the "fictitous phone bugging".


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## hurtnohio (Jul 17, 2011)

Oh, I forgot one other item of interest....

I think I mentioned on here that her mom and dad had moved several states away. They had various reasons; they wanted a place in the country. But they also wanted to have a place where they can live off the land when the economy melts down in a few days (or weeks or years). 

One of the stressors this past year was my wife's insistence that we buy property in the country with her family, and my insistence that we NOT do that. She accused me of not caring about her and our son because I was - in her exact words - "willing to let us die in the riots that are coming instead of moving in with mom and dad." I kid you not. That was an exact quote.

Anyway, her younger sister also went to her husband at about the same time and told him she was moving to her mom and dad's property with or without him. Wanting to save his marriage, he agreed to go out there to their new place for a visit. Said visit occurred over the July 4th holiday. Not being welcome in the family any more, I'm not privy to exactly what happened during said visit. But here's what I do know....he came back from the trip and immediately filed for a divorce.

Not sure what transpired out there, but obviously something he saw about the family spooked him.......


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## hurtnohio (Jul 17, 2011)

donders said:


> Ok got it.
> 
> You can maybe see why it appears the phones were bugged from the way you wrote about "the phone bugging" as compared to "the alleged phone bugging" or the "suspected phone bugging" or the "fictitous phone bugging".


It's a pretty complicated timeline....I tried to not make it too wordy, but I guess I may have miscommunicated.

Even after all this, she still talks vaguely about "the phones being bugged." From what I'm hearing, she's not directly implicating me, but she's still just throwing this out there and letting people draw their own conclusions.

So if anyone believes her story, they're only left with two conclusions...either someone broke in, bugged our phones and left no evidence. Or I did it.

OK, so let's reason this out.....if she believes a stranger did it, why has she never called the police? Even if we no longer have our landline, isn't it troubling that someone could break into your house and bug the phones? Couldn't he or she have also planted listening devices in the walls? How far does paranoia like this go? 

Of course, the other option is that I did it. Except I know I didn't. Again, it's her word against mine and the physical evidence is long gone. But by just randomly tossing out phrases like...."we dropped our home phone when we found out it was bugged," she's able to indirectly implicate me without actually coming out and saying she's accusing me.

It makes my head hurt just thinking about it. This thinking is so disordered it literally hurts!


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## donders (May 9, 2012)

hurtnohio said:


> OK, so let's reason this out.....if she believes a stranger did it, why has she never called the police? Even if we no longer have our landline, isn't it troubling that someone could break into your house and bug the phones?


Obviously she thinks YOU did it.


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## Conrad (Aug 6, 2010)

hurtnohio said:


> Oh, I forgot one other item of interest....
> 
> I think I mentioned on here that her mom and dad had moved several states away. They had various reasons; they wanted a place in the country. But they also wanted to have a place where they can live off the land when the economy melts down in a few days (or weeks or years).
> 
> ...


Dang, I must say those two sisters sound like real treasures.


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## hurtnohio (Jul 17, 2011)

Conrad said:


> Dang, I must say those two sisters sound like real treasures.


Hey, and they'll both be available soon!

Don't even get me started on the third sister.........


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## Conrad (Aug 6, 2010)

hurtnohio said:


> Hey, and they'll both be available soon!
> 
> Don't even get me started on the third sister.........


Stars in the Witches of Eastwick re-make?


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## hurtnohio (Jul 17, 2011)

EddieSantor said:


> I'd make an appointment with the pastor


Been there, done that. The pastor at the time told me it was my duty to - this is a direct quote - "Stay, and become a human punching bag, if necessary....."

He then resigned and moved to go pastor another church.

So the church is in a period of transition. But on top of that, I didn't feel like I was getting the wisest counsel in the world even when we did have a pastor.


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## hurtnohio (Jul 17, 2011)

I gently confronted my wife about the phone bugging allegations and what she told my mom...here's her story.

She says she told my mom that we dropped our home phones to save money (which is the truth). She says my mom expressed some concern about the phones being bugged (because I had told my mom some of the weird allegations). 

According to my wife, here's what she told my mom: " We thought the phones were bugged, but (hurtnohio) says he didn't do it. But it doesn't matter anyway because we dropped the home phone service to save money....."

So my mom's version of events wasn't EXACTLY accurate (not surprising, because my mom is pretty disordered herself). But it still shows some paranoia on my wife's part. Notice how she said (by her own admission):".....he SAID he didn't do it...." and also how she wraps it up by saying, "...but since we dropped the home phone service to save money, it doesn't matter any more anyway...."

So even though my mom may have put it a little more dramatically than what actually occurred, there are still just enough "WTH?" things in this conversation that are still pretty damn disturbing. 

Am I reading this wrong? It still appears to me that there's some disturbing pathological paranoia going on here. It's just a lot more subtle than my mom indicated to me.

I'm telling you, this stuff makes my head hurt.....


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