# A year on - here to help anyone who wants to ask me anything



## The Count (Aug 14, 2011)

Evening all. It's been a while. Thought I'd check in and see how people were coping. Lots of similar stories around since I went through it all. I feel for each and every one of you. 

Anyway, I'm not going to go over the details of the start of my story, it's on my posting history for anyone who wants it, but me and my wife split up about two years ago after her dropping the bomb on me, within days she was seeing someone else, and her dealings with me were some of the most spiteful and brutally inconsiderate you could imagine. I was a total mess, but I turned it all around. I became a better Father, a better friend, a better all round person because of the split. I discovered depths of resources and character I never knew I had. My split worked for me in ways I could never have imagined at first. 

After about a year of separation, we tentatively reconciled, and have been going stronger than ever for over a year now. Now I don't come here merely to convey this news, but to help anyone who is just starting out on this road. A lot of the time people forget about this place once they've moved on, which is fair enough, but it doesn't give this forum much in the way of a different perspective from people who have gone through the process. Or at least that's what I thought at the time. 

I know there's a forum for reconciliation, but it looks more suited to low level romance fiction than any actual useful advice. Obviously I cannot guarantee reconciliation, or even that anything I have to say is useful to everybody, but I found out a few things, often the hard way, and I think it important to reassure people on here, people in a whole world of pain, anger and frustration that however you feel right now, that it feels like you'll be this way for ever, and that you'll never be able to get your life back, I am here to tell you 100% unequivocally that you most absolutely will. 

So if anyone wants to ask me anything about my experiences going through separation, or want me to expand on any aspect of my reconciliation (now that is a bit of an eye opener) then please feel free. 

I know all too well what it's like out there. This place is invaluable, it makes you realise that you aren't alone, and there are some extremely patient and kind souls on here who really made a difference in helping me when I just needed someone to talk to. Hopefully I can add some of that for someone and give a little of the support back that was so freely given to me when I needed it.


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## almostsingle30 (Oct 5, 2012)

What were some positive and negative things you did during your time apart? My husband left tonight...


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## Jack spade (Dec 29, 2012)

Hi Count - thanks for your post.

I have read through your threads and there are alot of similiarities. I got ILYBNILWY and now my wife wants to divorce. Our whole marriage she has had to control everything. Particularly the last couple of years she has been incredibly hurtful and just emotionally abusive to the point it think I am going to break. I constantly walked around on eggshells with her and nothing I did was ever good enough for her. All i did was try to please her and make her happy.

My question for you is how did things turn around? From talking to my wife it sounds like there is no chance for R but somehow I still have hope. Was just curious. Thanks.


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## lucy mulholland (May 18, 2010)

I'm with Zappy. How do you trust that you will move on? I'm on month 5 of separation, I spent the first 2 months protesting/trying to get him to work things out...overloaded myself emotionally while he acted rude, hurtful, implicated another woman, etc. 

Why am I not glad to be done? Ready to move on from such poor treatment? I don't know. I want my family back. I want the chance to work on our issues rather than run away from them (him) or have them be this unsolved heap of ****e on my shoulders (me). 

I know you reconciled but is there a point when you "clicked" and felt free, before you decided to reconcile? I sure hope I don't have a whole year of this hell ahead of me...

thanks a lot


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## The Count (Aug 14, 2011)

almostsingle30 said:


> What were some positive and negative things you did during your time apart? My husband left tonight...



Hmm. Negative stuff included brooding on her for days on end, not being able to let it go, replaying painful scenes in my head to feed my victim status, allowing her to dictate every outcome in the early stages of the split, drinking insane amounts of, erm, everything in sight. Continually. Getting sucked back into the web by engaging her in text wars, which she didn't always initiate. Usual stuff. 

Positive things were all process based. Things I was developing instead of things that I "did" if that makes sense? Working out who I was again, what I liked, didn't like, what made me happy, re-evaluating my priorities in life, letting it go, stopped dwelling on the past, realising that even difficult decisions gave you something back, living in reality again, rediscovering my (as it turns out substantial) backbone. But the most important one was coming to understand that my sense of self worth can never again be bound up in the fate of one individual. 

The best thing you can do is try to relax. Hard I know, but I got hold of some hypnotherapy MP3's, and played them as I was trying to sleep and they did help a lot. Also practise breathing properly, right from the diaphragm, helps you to keep calm and centred.

My only word of caution is not throw yourself straight into something that consumes you, as you miss the comfort of being defined by something. You are going to feel exposed and vulnerable, but you need that feeling to keep you honest about who you are. Don't suppress anything, and be honest with yourself, even if you suspect what you are thinking is unpleasant. You'll find out some things about yourself you won't like. That's fine, it's a healthy impetus for change.


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## The Count (Aug 14, 2011)

Jack spade said:


> Hi Count - thanks for your post.
> 
> I have read through your threads and there are alot of similiarities. I got ILYBNILWY and now my wife wants to divorce. Our whole marriage she has had to control everything. Particularly the last couple of years she has been incredibly hurtful and just emotionally abusive to the point it think I am going to break. I constantly walked around on eggshells with her and nothing I did was ever good enough for her. All i did was try to please her and make her happy.
> 
> My question for you is how did things turn around? From talking to my wife it sounds like there is no chance for R but somehow I still have hope. Was just curious. Thanks.


Ah, the big one! Well, if you read these forums, and others like them, enough, you'll see that there is a common wisdom that there is no magic bullet to achieve a reconciliation, but there kind of is. Well, at least for Men anyway, I'm not sure how this would work out from a female perspective. 

Now, before you get intrigued, as though I'm going to give you a list of things you must do or not do, you need to understand something. This worked out for me precisely because it was the total opposite of being needy, manipulative, underhanded, or trying to be what I thought she wanted. 

Truth was, leading up to the reconciliation I simply didn't care about any of it anymore. All the pain, hurt, recrimination, I let it all go. It had got to the point where I was making myself feel ill every day, and I literally just had enough. Resentment is like drinking a bottle of poison and expecting the other person to die. 

I came to realise that there is a point where your ex isn't hurting you anymore, or screwing up your life. It's now you yourself who is doing it. It seemed strange to me that having gotten out of a horrible and damaging situation that I was now, of my own free will, carrying on her job for her. 

And so I thought about it, and gradually my thoughts and my feelings started aligning. So she has another Man, so what? Knowing what she is like, is she now going to be living in some bloody domestic paradise, or is she going to be repeating the same mistakes, and end up dissatisfied, alone, and miserable? Why was I romanticising her other Man for her? Was he going to be so much better than me? A veritable Superman, combining the looks of Brad Pitt with the wit of Oscar Wilde and the body of Taylor Lautner? Or was he exactly what he was? An unemployed builder who couldn't count without using his fingers and looked like Squidward? 

Good luck to you madam! I thought. Nope, this isn't going to work out, but frankly I couldn't give a sh!t anymore. She wasn't my problem, nor my responsibility. And I realised that I felt fine. More than fine I felt great. It's been about six months by now, and I'm sick of fighting, and stressing, and thinking about her. Good riddance. 

So I phoned up my solicitor, had a chat, left her with instructions to inform madam that as of now I am paying her child support for my son and that all other financial arrangements will be settled by a judge. I cancelled all my direct debits pertaining to anything I was still paying out so she could roll in clover at my expense, set one up for the child support, sent her a text informing her that "I am no longer paying for your lifestyle. Your boyfriend now has that privilege. My solicitor will be in touch regarding how you may reimburse me for the previous months". Shut my phone off for two days, and went to the pub to watch the football. 

Every time she tried to contact me over this, I just referred her to my solicitor and reminded her that this was what she wanted after all. Nothing more, nothing less. She tried to initiate tit for tat exchanges but I refused to bite. In the end I just went dark on her. No contact of any kind. No texting, only about the kids. I used to receive reams of them, so I got a disposable mobile phone and told her I had a new number, and just picked it up to text about arrangements for the kids and deleted everything else without reading it. 

That was it. Well for me anyway. Of course what really tore it for her was when I got a new girlfriend. Now THAT was like Hiroshima being dropped on her (as she told me a few months later). I had to find out about her new Man via oblique hints on facebook or via third parties, and still haven't gotten a straight piecing together of events that are consistent. Not that it's important to me per se, but it does highlight the chronic need for a wayward spouse to never, under any circumstances, be seen as the bad guy, hence the lying about things that are obviously preposterous. 

Anyway, to wrap it up, my oldest friend passed away February last year. I was being tentatively civil to my ex by this point, still largely ignoring her and quite indifferent to whatever she was doing, but I noticed the children got a bit anxious around me if the subject of their Mother ever came up, so I thought I'd follow the example of Switzerland and remain diplomatic, though remote, around her. She was starting to tell me how much of a hard time she's been going through around now, but I shut it down every time. I didn't care. Not my problem. I was engaging in a whole new world, one where I could make bacon sandwiches at three in the morning, where I could go to the pub after work and stay as long as I wanted, one where I would hop onto a train and get off wherever I fancied and go walk around, sometimes with the kids, sometimes with girlfriend, sometimes on my own. And much better on my own to be honest (the girlfriend was starting to annoy me, clingy, desperate for reassurance, too happy to try and please me, all the things I'd been doing to my ex when we were circling the drain. Ironic isnt it? And an eye opener of huge proportion); there are few finer experiences than hopping onto a half empty train in the Autumn sunshine, stretching out ones feet, uncorking a bottle of white wine, and cracking open The Guardian. If you could smoke I would have thought myself in heaven. 

Anyway, his funeral was the first time we'd spent any time together in the same room since we split about seven months earlier. She tried to be all matey and chatty with me, and I didn't want to know. I was courteous, but aloof. I was at the bar post service (really needed a stiff brandy after that), and she came up to me going on about how one of the other attendees was hitting on her. I just said something like "well go and shag him then if you want. What you do is none of my business". And I meant it. She knew it. She got a bit upset. I wished she'd leave. I was here to say goodbye to my friend not put up with her histrionics, and told her as much. Amazingly she shut up, actually looked abashed, and became pretty good company after that, like we used to be when we first met, though I had to shut her down a couple of times if she started talking about "things". Not interested. Talk to my brief. 

So things progressed from there. We starting speaking more as friends. I even took her out for her birthday with the kids (their idea) as they were happy that Mummy and Daddy were getting on finally (it made a huge difference in them). I was enjoying myself, but she looked really uncomfortable, and a bit haggard. Said she wasn't sleeping well and felt things were getting on top of her. I didn't ask, didn't want to know really, none of my business and my life was just fine as I wanted it. I'd gently broken things off with the girlfriend, and was genuinely happy. She picked up a bit when she heard that, but there was still a strange vibe. She was very withdrawn and I was the bubbly one. Total role reversal. 

Then she came round mine one day soon after that. Had a massive breakdown in tears, said how sorry she was, how she screwed everything up, never realised how much she missed me, how much she still loved me, had had a terrible time with her boyfriend who turned out to be an aggressive control freak who she'd made a huge mistake with......

Yes you did, I thought. I told her, rather coldly what was on my mind, and let her know in no uncertain terms exactly what she did to me, and what I thought of her back then. Not a pleasant experience for her I'm afraid. 

We ended up sleeping together (how very cliche!), I tried to pass it off as a mistake, shouldn't have done that etc, but felt sanguine about it. Very nice it was too, odd how you can miss someone, but still had massive reservations. But we started doing more as friends (basically we were back to courting without realising it, or "dating" I believe the word is if over the pond), and it sort of snowballed on for a few weeks, and then finally, without a great deal of fuss, I packed my bags again, put my wedding ring back on, and went home to my wife and kids.


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## The Count (Aug 14, 2011)

zappy88200 said:


> Hello Count - What shall I do not to think about my wife (separated 9 months) any more.
> 
> The pain never subsides?
> 
> Zappy


The pain does subside. You are probably doing it the hard way. By that I mean you are probably brooding on it and expecting it to just evaporate on its own accord. Which it will, but could take years to just magically go on it's own. You've got to be up for the fight to help it on it's way. 

Start thinking of you first and foremost and what you are going to do today. Give yourself a kind of holiday period. You may be thinking that you are worthless, your job is worthless, you are unattractive etc, all the thoughts that a really good shredding of your self esteem will do to you. 

Make a pact with yourself to stop judging yourself harshly. Tell yourself that you will rise again, but you need to take extra special care of yourself initially, and live a quiet life for a while to just help you give yourself some real recovery time. 

There are some coping mechanisms, like if you find yourself replaying the greatest hits in your minds eye, then replace it with a positive thought or image. Something unique to you without any triggers. This can be hard, but in the end I settled on snow. I have always liked the snow, so I used to think of snowy mountains, or walking around in a blizzard. Sounds crazy, but it helped. 

The other thing I did was learn how to breathe, and to concentrate on that, giving myself fully over to the process. And learn to be present in the moment. If you are having a conversation, then fully engage in that conversation without your mind wandering off to you-know-what. Or if you are having a beer, give yourself over to the taste and sensation of that beer. Avoid triggers, like listening to sad songs and depressing albums. Listen to some life affirming, go get em Tiger type stuff, and start working out. It helps keep your mind off it all, tires you out, and makes you look good which helps your self confidence. 

You might want to start keeping a journal and writing it all down. I did this and used to write pages upon pages, and eventually I got sick of writing the same thing over and over and over again. 

And this may seem counter productive, but unless you really need to, stop talking about it with other people. I know people say that you should get it all out, and that's true, but it can get to the point where if you are talking about it all the time then you are reinforcing it in your own mind as the end all and be all of your own life. 

Find five things a day that you are grateful for, and say them to yourself out loud when you are feeling a bit down, and go to your happy place. Try to go out more and socialise a bit when you feel better. Just remember to stay focused and present, and you will move on far, far quicker.


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## hank_rea (Mar 13, 2013)

Your story pretty much is the fantasy I keep playing out in my head of how my story will end. The thing is, though, I wasn't really supporting my wife....may as well just call her my ex wife. She's dropped my name from her facebook page (going by her maiden name again) and the divorce is final on the 15th. She is still living the same exact life she has been all along, except I'm not there. And she has a very large family and really close friends she can rely on. The only reason I could see her second-guessing her decision would be due to financial reasons. She is going to have a rough time paying for all of those diabetes meds with only her income. But, alas, her parents own the house we lived in and it's paid for. They're not going to put her out on the street. Also, we don't have children. Plus, from what I gather, she kind of has a history of doing this sort of thing. Break up with someone and completely detatch (basically, she's doing the "180" on me right now). The fact that I live 4 hours away from her now is probably just making it easier. It's one of the main reasons I didn't want to break contact with her.

Still, you give some really great tips on how to move forward. I just have to let go of the hope of reconciliation (or at least move it to the back of my mind) and start living to make myself a better person. I'm attempting to will myself in that direction and it is hard as hell. I know one thing for certain, though, I don't want to spend the rest of my life waiting for someone who doesn't love me and may never again. I deserve better.


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## Awakening2012 (Apr 13, 2012)

hank_rea said:


> I just have to let go of the hope of reconciliation (or at least move it to the back of my mind) and start living to make myself a better person. I'm attempting to will myself in that direction and it is hard as hell. I know one thing for certain, though, I don't want to spend the rest of my life waiting for someone who doesn't love me and may never again. I deserve better.


Right there with you on this, hank_rea -- amen!

Thank you, Count for this helpful thread and for so generously "giving back" to those of us still walking through the pain, transition and uncertainty.

Cheers,- A12


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## maincourse99 (Aug 15, 2012)

_I came to realise that there is a point where your ex isn't hurting you anymore, or screwing up your life. It's now you yourself who is doing it. It seemed strange to me that having gotten out of a horrible and damaging situation that I was now, of my own free will, carrying on her job for her._ 

What a great point! It was hard for me to finally realize that there was nothing she could do to cause me any more pain. I tell this to myself every day, just to reinforce it in my mind.


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## Pops001 (Feb 10, 2013)

So glad to hear your good news, I'm in the early stages of reconciliation and it ain't easy. How long did it take to become a live together couple again from your early stages of reconciliation? 
Most importantly ...What are the biggest challenges in the early stages of reconciliation?


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## Jack spade (Dec 29, 2012)

Count - thanks very much for sharing your story and answering questions.

Please let us know how things progress with R. I'm rooting for ya and best of luck.


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## Forever Changed (Sep 18, 2012)

Wow, thank you Count.

I will read this over and over again. The pain does go away you say? I do believe that myself and brother Zappy are doing it that hard way.

Thank you again for sharing. Made my day.

FC


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## The Count (Aug 14, 2011)

Pops001 said:


> So glad to hear your good news, I'm in the early stages of reconciliation and it ain't easy. How long did it take to become a live together couple again from your early stages of reconciliation?
> Most importantly ...What are the biggest challenges in the early stages of reconciliation?


Fairly quickly actually. I stayed over one night and never went back to my other place. We didn't have a discussion about it or anything, it was quite natural. I think you can analyse these things to death if you wanted to, and I also think a lot of Men make a huge error by talking over every little thing with their wife. 

I'm going more on a general way of thinking here, and it seems counter-productive, but by acting in a people pleasing "lets talk about how you feel about this" way, you will eventually kill off your spouses attraction for you. Wondering and worrying and trying to get inside her head is futile, and makes you look weak. The sooner you realise that she's responsible for her own happiness and it isn't your job to provide it for her, the better off you'll be. Likewise, it isn't her job to make you happy. It's yours. 

Anyway, going back on point, the hardest, or most difficult, part of a reconciliation is the ease with which you can slip back into old patterns. You have to watch out for that. If for no other reason than it didn't work out that way the last time. 

I mean, I went through quite a lot, and that seriously changes a person. In my case it simply wasn't feasible to slip back into my old routine. I hated the old routine anyway, but was too much of a people pleaser then to do anything about it. It was all about her, never myself. 

It's different now, but the main thing is to find a rhythm that suits you. Your changes will be hard won, and you shouldn't give them up. Remember, this is what has reignited your wifes attraction for you, so if you want it to work you'll keep hold of your emotional self sufficiency. 

I found that my wife would try to sh!t test me, prod me with words or behaviours to see which way I'd jump, or if I could be broken. My advice here is to come down on her as hard as possible. She pulled one stunt on me which would normally have had me scared witless she wasn't happy and was going to leave. This time I just told her "I will not tolerate this kind of behaviour" and walked off to the pub. I went dark on her, and two hours later an apology by text, and no repeat of that incident. 

She has tried to threaten me a couple of times with "I'm not happy with x,y,z, and it needs to be addressed or else" kind of thing. So I bat it right back at her, "I'll address x,y,z but so will you. Blackmail me again and I'll walk off for good myself". 

Don't stand for it. Stay strong. Don't be manipulated, don't repeat your mistakes, and always be kind to yourself.


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## maincourse99 (Aug 15, 2012)

The above is great advice. I agree 100%, you can't figure them out. Operate from a position of strength, don't put up with any crap and be prepared to leave if they revert to their bad behavior. Your advice is right on target.


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