I think you mentioned that you had consulted a lawyer, Hopeful? What did they suggest you can it should do given the situation as it is?

Bc right now it sounds as if you are waiting for another hammer to drop while you and your kids are living in a kind of war of emotional attrition. And yes, it is abuse and yes, it does feel like putting your head in a blender. Sadly, many of us know all too well what that feels like and I am so sorry.

Tbh it most likely changes when you reach a point when you decide to change your current circumstances. And that’s a hard pill to swallow bc changing our circumstances usually involves actions that we never imagined we would choose to take, thinking differently about how we see what we are dealing with that really challenge some of our deepest held beliefs and a plate full of more losses and changes. Plus tbh we humans have an extraordinary ability sometimes to sit in slowly boiling water for so long that it starts to feel normal. I suspect we often don’t quite get how not normal it is until we much later find ourselves on dry land.

The fact that you are now seeing how abusive and plain horrendous her behaviour is, and the real effects of it on you and your kids, is a big step. An awful one, but an important one. That you now have months/years of data that her behaviour is simply not influenced by what you, the kids, or anyone else, says or does. That her reality is simply not your reality, and there is nothing you can do to change that. But I think it is also true that when one sees a situation through a changed lens, things change inside us and we feel ready and able to make different choices ourselves.

All one can do is change one’s own lens on it, and therefore one’s own responses to how it is. Hopefully, your very wise IC is helping you adjust and adapt.

One of your lens seems to be about not moving forward legally bc of a fear about how your kids will judge you? Another seems to be your attitude towards ‘suffering’ as an aspect of commitment. Maybe it’s as simple as you don’t want to be the kind of man who turns his back on those he loves and promised to walk beside? Idk. Will you feel absolved in some way if she is the one who finally pulls the plug? How much worse would things have to get for you to choose to do so? We all know that these are big questions, questions of self and values and perhaps faith; they are not easy and there is no ‘right’ answer that fits all.

But I would humbly suggest that what you DO know is that the current situation is damaging you and your kids profoundly, and that it does not seem to be getting better, and it does not even seem to be making your wife stable and happy either.

What I can see from your previous posts is that your past life was built on a lot of We. A shared business as well as shared finances, homeschooling your kids, a house on a big plot of land doubtless requiring effort to maintain and run from both of you. I find myself wondering how much of Other there is in your life and your kids’ lives….things and people that are not dependent on the We. And your wife has taken a flamethrower to the We, hasn’t she? Fwiw, I would encourage you and your kids to reframe a new We, and one that involves more Other. If only bc the old We is no longer a safe and sustaining place.

On a practical level - and I’m so sorry - that’s a whole lot of We to unpick and unravel. Which is why imho you need legal advice on how you might do that without exposing yourself to more legal or financial damage unnecessarily. For example, if it were legally ok, I would start by removing as much dependence on the actions of your wife as you can. Therefore informing her rather than trying to consult with someone who won’t talk to you. Consider ending homeschooling. Remove her from all joint cards and accounts and from any authority over the business. Give her a small personal allowance, but remove her from buying groceries, meal planning, all the practicalities of We life. Let her do as she pleases with that small allowance, inform her that this is the new transitional arrangement until or unless she is ready to talk to you directly or propose via a lawyer a way of unpicking all these previously shared things as part of her plan to live without you. Likely she won’t much like it….but you and your kids do have the right to reclaim some control back over your own lives, truly you do. Bc right now, you are all slightly being held hostage, aren’t you? But all this practical stuff is a bit of a legal minefield so you do need legal guidance.

And again jmo, taking these kinds of steps is based on getting to a different lens on how things currently are. I suspect you may be reaching something close to that, we all tend to know when we do. It’s awful, and it isn’t your fault, but right now you have a wife who seems to want a life without you, a deeply unhappy woman who is blaming you for a whole host of things beyond your control. And who is dealing with those feelings with silence, rage and emotional abuse. And who feels ok enough about that as a way of dealing with how she feels to keep doing it. It isn’t fair and it isn’t your fault and you don’t have to be mean to her, but what if you accepted that your wife simply no longer wants to be part of the old We, that she believes - rightly or wrongly, time will tell - that she wants something different?

What if you just decided to open your hand and let her go, Hopeful? While you and your kids reclaim and rebuild a different kind of life? I am really not saying that any of this is easy, or that your brain hasn’t jumped to a whole list of ‘what if’  fears….thats normal and not unreasonable. But what if you also accepted that the current approach is not really working well for any of you? What might ‘slightly better than this’ mean for you?

Unpicking the old We - and it will probably feel like unravelling the strands of a thick rope - is not an easy or pain free thing. Practically, it may require divorce, it may not. It probably will require separating your living arrangements, work lives and finances. And the law varies depending on where you live. But if you started with two operating assumptions….that your wife does not want to be part of the old We, and that you and your kids no longer want to live under a hammer walking on eggshells of uncertainty….. what do you now feel ready to do about creating something different?

Things may change in your wife’s perspective and behaviour; that’s the nature of life. And you can choose to keep a mental and emotional door open to the positive aspects of that if you wish. But right now it is as it is, and it has been that way for quite a while now, maybe it feels like it’s getting worse, idk, and  the future is unknown, so imho all one can do is make choices that reduce the damaging effects where possible and start to take steps towards a different kind of new normal.

I think that with the enormity of the pain post BD, it is hard to completely remove the fear of that level of pain. It is tied to a person, so perhaps hard to dissociate from that person even though their actions no longer cause pain (except through S and D).

As a stander I want to thank you all for your input. We’re almost at 15 months and she’s still at home. I’m taking every ones advice and living my life. If and when she comes out of this I’m hoping to be Baxter 2.0. Until then I am grateful that I have this forum to vent and get great information, and hope, thank you!

It's also pretty normal to remember good times and romanticize the relationship at this point for you.

What you need to come to terms with now is you want someone more honest than he is. Someone who has some morals and character. Raise your standards.
And no this was not a mature normal break up.

I've read that at the end of a relationship is who they really are.

Well it sounds like all that cockiness and arrogance got magnified.
We all have flaws and toxic traits
However there needs to be a limit of what you put up with. You can only be so kind, caring, go -with- the- flow and patient. You teach people how to treat you.
Boundaries

I think you dodged a bullet not marrying him.