I am very sorry that you have to find yourself here, Palladian, but glad you found us so early and found the courage to share this awful situation with a bunch of strangers.
Nothing about this situation will feel ‘right’ to you perhaps for quite a long time. And early on, our normal and natural instinct is to step towards someone we love who seems to be unravelling in front of our eyes. Which means that a lot of the hard-earned advice here probably feels counter-intuitive. Almost like writing with your left hand if you are right-handed.
We get that. We have all been there.
Which means we may have a perspective that you do not at the moment, but it also means we will respect your choices as you move forward even if you do not want to follow our advice lol.
The most important thing I want to say to you is that you will find your own way through this to the other side. It may not feel like that now and you may not be able to see what it looks like, and indeed HS people create different paths forward, but it will not always be the way it is right now. I don’t know what will happen to your wife or your marriage, but I know that there is something worth having on the other side of this.
I know the current advice is to take distance and GAL (which I'm trying to do to the best of my efforts, going out, seeing a psychologist, adding new routines to life),
Well, you are doing well so far.
these things matter bc, regardless of what happens in the future, your life has just been turned upside down. The impact of that can have a big effect on our physical and emotional health, although sometimes we are so concerned about our spouse that we forget to be concerned about ourselves as much. Basic self care - eating, sleeping, exercise, doing things that make you feel just a little bit more normal and a little bit better in yourself - matters. And a decent IC can allow us to feel heard and supported when our spouse is doing neither and folks in RL may simply not be able to understand our reality. So, well done, you
but the speed in which things are changing from BD, moving out to 'first doubt' in just 2 months, seems wrong.
yup, that sounds very hard, a real rollercoaster. And it knocks us off balance doesn’t It? It takes a little while to adjust our lens from the old ‘normal’ to the reality of a new ‘not very normal’ that we don’t like, want or understand.
Especially since - and this will sound crazy - I get that she feels so bad, that an affair feels like the solution. To be clear, I'm not ok with it, but in a f***** up way, I do understand it, I feel bad for her.
Well, if you think there was some emotional co-dependency between you bc of your mutual FOO baggage, that makes sense. I think all LBS operate under a bit of a pendulum effect for quite a while until we find a place that feels more fitting to us and the situation. Most of us start by being much more concerned and empathetic towards our MLC spouse....then we tend to swing to the opposite end of emotions bc of the damage their actions cause and bc they often seem to have little concern for us or our kids.....and then, with time, we seem to swing back to a place somewhere closer to the middle. You will find your own place as time and events unfold.
So, here I am, not knowing what to do. Do I distance or do I engage (e.g. to go for a walk in 4 weeks or so to hear how she is doing). I see her every week as well, when we bring the stuff for our daughter to each other's place, so that makes it extra hard.
Fwiw - and others will come along to support you with their advice too - there are a couple of mindset shifts that all of us have to go through but struggle with . These will help you answer your own question, usually with a bit of trial and error involved
The first is that if your wife is in crisis, nothing much you do will make any constructive difference at all to her path or behaviour. You did not cause it, you can’t control it and you can’t protect her from the consequences of her own actions. You can’t nice her back, you can’t rescue her, you can’t influence how she thinks or feels or what she does. That’s a very hard thing to process after years of a shared life isn’t it? Most of us start trying and then slowly stop bc we experience the futility of it and hitting your head against a brick wall hurts after a while
and tbh trying to understand the (to us) inexplicable or ride the rollercoaster of someone else’s extreme emotional shifts is exhausting and can be a bit crazy-making. You don’t have to behave like a vindictive a$$hat, that’s true, but eventually you will be forced to accept the very real limits of your influence or control. Which is hard so i’m sorry. The good news is that it will feel easier when you climb off her rollercoaster
....tbh you will be busy enough dealing with your own
The second is that going slower that it feels you should is often a helpful thing. Your nervous system is sending lots of signals now about action....if you do this, it will fix it or if you avoid doing this, it will fix it. All normal. That’s the lovely little bit of your reptilian brain trying to keep you and your family safe. Unfortunately, we don’t always do our best work when our inner lizard is in charge
We tend to flail around a bit, react rather than take a breath and respond. Your power and control over your own life and the wellbeing of your daughter normally lies in that space between stimulus and response. So we talk here about the Rule of 3 in decision-making and interaction with an MLC spouse.....teach yourself to go a little slower than feels right unless you or your daughter are in immediate risk. So, for instance, bc you have a child, bc your wife has moved out, bc divorce has been mentioned, it would be wise to seek legal advice about your situation. But that does not mean you have to rush to act on it unless the legal advice is that you must.
The third shift in mindset is imho rebalancing the order of priority in your head and therefore in your choices about what you do or don’t do. This does not mean you have to stop caring about your wife, or even loving her. It just means that you have to care more about what happens to you and your daughter. You have to put YOU first bc your wife will not (or is unable to if you use an MLC lens)....these folks can be staggeringly self-absorbed and remarkably indifferent to anyone’s else’s needs or feelings....so your job is to make sure that anything you do starts with thinking FIRST if it serves you and/or your daughter best. Or indeed if it damages you. Your wife needs to come - at best- no more than third on your list of people to be considered. That’s going to probably feel very strange, quite wrong and even a bit selfish after a long marriage....but you are the cornerstone now of you and your daughter’s future wellbeing. Expecting an MLCer to do it is like expecting a cat to bark
I hope some bit of my thoughts are helpful. If not, please feel free to bin them lo..
Regardless, we are here to support you as you plot your own path.
My tormented wife and her MLC tragedy
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