# 14 years now a breakdown



## ellsd36 (Jun 14, 2017)

Hi Guys,

I could really do with some advice on a really complex issue and would like to put my situation out there for you to advice.

I have been with my wife for 14 year, married 6. We met when we were 18 and in 2013 we had our child who is now 6 years old.

When my wife was 16 she had a relationship with an older man, who forced her to have sex with some of his friends on more that one occasion, sometimes just one on on and other times with a group. She had very low self esteem and came from a family background in which both parents had clinical depression. 

Our relationship went well up until about a year before my son was born, when she started to become quite disinterested in sex with me and my son was conceived on my Birthday!! In that year before my son was born i noticed that she began to sleep alot and would spend entire days in bed on the weekend and left me to do the majority of housework and decision making.

When my son was born she found the experience of giving birth very traumatic and began to fall into a deep depression, she had nd still at times has a crazed look in her eyes. We saw a specialist but she said she felt judged and ended the sessions. AS time went by we fell into a of her sleeping most weekends and neglecting my son while i did the hard wark(nappies, feeds, pick up, drop off), she would occasionally organised a fun day out , but when we returned home she would become ill or tired need need to sleep, i cooked meals for her and my son, i would often come home from work around 9pm and she would not have fed him or put him to bed, while she did not harm him phsyically she was really neglectful and at times would tell him once he began to speak that she wanted to kill herself. During this period her behavior got worse, she would end up in tears over the slightest(at tiimes infont of my son) thing and return to bed on weekends, however she was always up to go to work on Monday morning. For the next five years this pattern would repeat and she would continue to reject my sexual advances and at times due to the fact that she had very poor hygiene i became disinterested, additionally when she had her bad moments she would take it out on me (eg one occasion i stopped to get a coffee on the way to work, it took 2 mins, she went into a tirade about her being late and it being my fault, this would happen most morning, at times infront of my son, she also had anxiety problems and became very anxious over being late for work). Somewhere in the middle of this realized that there was a problem and i tried numerous times to counsel her but it was never enough, took her places she wanted to go etc but she would always end up with her in tears and in an almost emotional abusive and draining situation. My needs be it emotional, physical and sexual were bottom of her list. During this time i spoke to her parents twice and they ignored it(not in support of the marriage anyway), mental health services (they advised that they had to have her consent and she refused). i began to feel burnt out and exhausted and under appreciated for all i did and my efforts to support her and stick by her in the hope that it would get better. I am naturally a kind hearted and decent person and it takes alot to get me angry or upset, However things did not change and we began to have some bad arguments as i felt she was doing the family a disservice, now when she attacked me, i would attack back and i called her a bad mother on a few occasions and told her that she was a mess, my tank was on empty.

Around three years in she tried to take me to marriage counselling, i went to two sessions but i felt that the counselor sided with her and did not have a true reflection of what was going on, the narrative that she had given to the counselor was that i was somehow neglecting her and just being an evil misogynistic man! the counselor bought it.

Any how last summer things got really bad and we had some very big arguments which led her to move into my son's bedroom, stating that she wanted a divorce and that we should attend mediation. After two or three months of this i convinced her to give the marriage another go and move back into our room, on the proviso that we got marriage and individual counselling. In January this year we started going to counselling, mainly individual but with a few joint ones too with the same counselor, additionally i organised several fun activities and found a babysitter , such a go karting and luxry spa weekend, cinema, dinner you name it we did it, we got to around april and i began to notice that she had not organised one thing for us to spend time as a couple, her phone was always protected and we had not had sex since our split the previous summer . So i got suspicious and started to notice that she would often look at guys while she was with me, perhaps to see if they were looking at her(i link this to low self esteem) and did some snooping and found out that she had been having explicit sexual chat with a guy that she had met on an online game, they had sent pictures and videos of each other masrtubating, some of which she sent while we went out on dinners etc. The last message broke me in which they had agreed to meet, she actually took the day off work(work is everything to her and the one thing she continues to do without breaking down, i had to beg her to take a half day for a recent spa day) and went to meet him in his hotel, she denyed it all at first, however then she came clean although she swears that when she got there she was so anxious and the situation was awkward that nothing happened, however she stated that if she was not married that something may have happened, she is not very resmorseful and is continuing to keep having conversations with him. my wife has now said that she want to seperate and divorce and has booked mediation again and moved back into my son's room, i feel lost and not sure if i should be fighting to save this for my son as on the occasions that we do have good times, things can be good and i know that it would break my son to see the family split. She says she wants to split fairly and know that i have been a major influence in my son's life and wants it to stay that way. i feel at a crossroads not as devastated as this time last year but confused as the situation is not straight forward and her mental health issues confuse things.....i have stopped trying to reconcile and i am trying to use the emotional detachment technique as deep down i still want it to work but i feel as if it has gone too far now please help


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## TheTruthHurts (Oct 1, 2015)

Hard to read. Try paragraphs.

You can fix her. Plus she's a cheater. Why are you trying to save this? Just curious


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## Stang197 (Aug 31, 2015)

If you really want to save it then it's 180 time and you need to take control of the divorce.


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