[Baxter1]

A-

I am doing my best to keep her here. This has been(and continues to be) a crazy ride. I hope your wife swallows some pride and makes some attempts to come back.

[Baxter1]

Journaling-

Yesterday was our 22nd anniversary, I was curious to see if she would mention anything,
She didn’t but that seems to be part of the MLC package it would seem.

W is home on a Friday and Saturday night, this is rare but I believe part of the new pattern. I believe the OM is gone, she’s home more, restaurant receipts from the town where he lives in have stopped. Came home the other night to see a picture of all 4 of us on the fridge. Texting/talking is slightly increased. She’s taking more interest in the home.
Seems like these are good things but I know that things can change in a heartbeat and I am very much aware that MLC is much longer then 18 months. Getting ready to go to Hawaii soon, we are spreading my father’s ashes there as his final wish. This trip will take place during the kids first weeks of school so I decided not to have them come. Not that she would want to but I don’t ask W to come either.

[forthetrees]

I am sorry that you will be making the trek to Hawaii without the support that one would expect to have. You might break down when the totality of it all hits so give yourself a lot of grace. Know that people are thinking of you as you honor your Dad´s wishes.

[Standing Strong]

Hey Bax,

What a nice thing.... honoring your father like that.
I lived there for a few years....... where are you going to do it?
I think it's nice you are going alone. Very good. Very healing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3DELFIcy74

Nice and slow..... take care of yourself. 

-SS

[FrenchHusband]

Whatever you can do to keep her at home do it.

I can see now that getting a spouse back home is going to be very hard to do. At this point I think she would rather divorce me than swallow her pride and come back no matter what I say.

Hi Atari and Baxter,

I would like my grain of salt to your words, as I have a different point of view. "Whatever you can do" is too much in my opinion. From what I see, Baxter you are doing well with your life and your children at this time. No need to change it and to try to transform in Superman. I guess you are aware of that.
And anyway, if your W needs to live your home "whatever you can do" will never be enough IMO.

I had W at home during 15 months after BD and it was a good thing for me and for the children (for W maybe). From the beginning she had the crazy MLC projects in mind (fly to Switzerland, divorce, abandoning the children) and she "had" to do it from what I understand now. Nothing I could have done would have prevented the crazy project to happen, I believe. Now I don't want to do anything to make W come back. I don't think that would be good for me, for the children and even for herself. W leaving us more and more the last 4 months has changed the dynamics at home and maybe also for the MLC process. The children are not asking her to come back full time. They only ask (and me also) when she comes back as she does it for a few days every 2-3 weeks. 

I think getting back the spouses, preventing them to leave or making them swallow their pride is not in the power of the LBSs. What we can control is only ourselves. If the want to come back, they know the way, and some of our spouses will do it, not the majority to be honest.

[Treasur]

I must admit I agree with this.
Not that them staying - or leaving - is a good or bad thing, I have no idea. Some stay, some go, some come and go. Whatever drives that is about that Me thing imho….nothing we say or do, nothing our kids say or do.

But I think it is a surprisingly freeing thing to open one’s hand metaphorically and accept all of the many things you can’t control and are also not responsible for.
It’s painful too, and it can feel like giving up perhaps, but imho it is just a very deep level of acceptance of the kind of limits that usually come with being human.
We can choose what to say yes or no to, we can choose how we respond to events and we can choose which of our thoughts and feelings we give more weight. So, we can choose not to throw them out but we can’t make them stay. We can choose to keep the door open if they leave but we can’t make them walk through it. And sometimes those things carry heavy costs based on LBS stories here.

What if anything do you think you would do differently if you completely surrendered even the hope of influence or control over your wife’s behaviour? If you just shrugged your shoulders and opened your mental hand? Anything?

I hope your trip to Hawaii goes as you wish. Death and loss is a thing we usually can’t control either which is maybe why how we mark it can matter a great deal.

[Baxter1]

Thank you all, it will be a bittersweet trip. Being there with my mom and brother will be nice, but having W there would be even better.
 
As for what happens with the rest of this MLC stuff who knows. I still see glimpses of her in there at times and for that reason I won’t give up. That being said I’m just going with the process of MLC, I’m staying in our home to protect our children from any ‘visitors’ and protecting our finances. Other than that there’s not much I can do or really want to do. She needs to see this to the end, as do I. Will she chose this life that we’ve made for 25 years, maybe, maybe not. Her choice is just that, her choice, all I can do is be me and hope that she sees that the grass isn’t greener out there.

[Baxter1]

Journaling:

Getting ready for the trip and I can’t wait!
W had a car accident the other day. She is fine and so is the other driver: she called 2 friends, one didn’t pick up and the other was busy so she went to the bottom of the list and called me. Picked her and brought her home, on the ride home she admitted she made a huge mistake. She recently switched jobs (“To make more Money so I can leave you”) and she absolutely hates it. She wishes she had never left the old job, I empathized and told I’m sorry that it sucks. It seems all these failures are finally adding up. Hates job, OM is gone, friends don’t call back, family is siding with her husband, and the fact that we will lose the house if D goes through.
It appears all of these things are putting her into a new phase. She goes to the beach,  she stayed out of town and goes to the mountains, she eats dinner alone. She processing her life, looking  at her decisions and her life. In the mean time she is talking to me a little more, leaving dinner plates for me, cooking and cleaning more. Occasional glimpses of old her are coming through. Time will tell how this process goes. In the mean time I’m doing my own thing in the man cave with Baxter by my side.

[FrenchHusband]

Hi Baxter,

good to see your update. Last year it was very funny to see how your story and mine were very similar with one month delay. But this year our stories have different paths : my W has left home and lives in another country, yours is still at home.

What is the cause of the difference between our cases ? It might be, I guess, the OM. In your case OM is gone, in my case, I feel (no more than a feeling because I don't snoop anymore since January) OM is still in place.

More important, you are doing well, and you are able to handle the situation at home with the children. Well done my friend !

Please continue to update.

[Baxter1]

More journaling:

Got back from Hawaii and it was an amazing trip. It was nice to spend time with my mom brother and his wife. We spread dads ashes in the ocean and it was a lovely ceremony. I go to swim with sharks, go surfing and plenty of walking along the beach, it would have been nice to be there with W and kids but it wasn't in the cards for this trip it would seem.

Other than that W is still home and stays home most nights. We talk  almost everyday, about the kids, bills, Baxter whatever is going on that day. She keeps complaining about the bills being so high, that what happens when one is in college and the other is a teen. There is no discussion about feeling or the D or any of that, just light conversations.

We have a pre-trial meeting coming up, I'm getting all my ducks in a row. I'm hoping that this is one of those "file and does nothing" situations but I'll be ready for whatever happens. I don't see any logical reason why she would go through with any of this but the MLC mind is all over somehow never can tell. From what I can tell OM is gone and she's just going out with friends but even that has slowed down.

In addition we are just co-parenting very well and the one remaining kid at home is doing well at school and doing great with the football team(American football)