Jerhico

AzurePhoenix speaks wisely. The Force is strong in that one.

First, a disclaimer: I'm a cynic. Please consider that as you read the following: Based upon what you've said, and the time-frame involved, I believe your wife really is trying to decide what she wants: Her marriage with the man she has children with, or to continue an extramarital affair she's kept from you. The times she's been going out and returning point to a liaison rather than a person just wanting or needing space. I'm certain a little digging will turn up the proof you need. If the behavior change was sudden, it makes me even more certain in my gut that there's more to this picture than what she's showing you. Good luck, and if you're inner voice is shouting something at you, it can't hurt to take a moment to listen.

Speaking from the perspective of the guy who is with a woman who dumped her ex of 10 years, I do have a bit of insight, though your mileage may vary...Everyone is different, and every relationship is different. My girlfriend was married to a military man and had three children with him. Their relationship was very troubled on the inside, but outwardly, friends and family alike thought they were the textbook marriage. Essentially, the guy was constantly deployed. She talked to him about getting out of the service on a number of occasions, citing the eroding marriage, but he felt the relationship could survive the deployments long enough for him to finish his 20 years. When they were home, all they did was game. They played online games to the exclusion of just about everything else. Sexually, they were constantly in conflict. In other words, he always wanted it and she didn't. Libido disparity, I think it's called. Finally, after learning that he'd reenlisted for another six years despite her urging him to look at alternate employment, she decided to end the marriage. Pretty cut and dried on the surface, no matter whose morality you subscribe to. For her, having a stable life was more important than the marriage, and for him, having a career he enjoyed was more important. After she and I got together, I began to pay attention to her relationship with her ex. During the first few months, she seemed like she was happy to be rid of him, and didn't even want to discuss him. I did notice, however, that when she talked to the kids on the phone while they were with their father, she always spent as much time talking to him as she did to children. Warning flag #1. Since she or he talked to the kids nearly every day on the phone, the net result was that they were spending upwards of four hours a week on the phone with one another. Then she began to talk bitterly about how he hadn't made more effort to hold on to her. Warning flag #2. She seemed angry that he was moving on without making a better effort at getting her back. By itself, one might consider this to be the natural response to pride being bruised. It's hard to step back and see the whole picture, but if your intuition exceeds that of a ball-peen hammer, it shouldn't take too long for things to come into focus. When he got a new girlfriend, things really started to seem amiss. It's not uncommon for the dumper to obsess over the dumpee's successes and failures in their love-life after the fact. I do believe this is motivated by pride and a morbid competitiveness as to who's "doing better than who post-breakup." But that's not the entirety. There are still feelings there. Depending on the length of the relationship, those feelings can be as strong as love or as petty as simple jealousy. Usually it's a scary quagmire of all sorts of emotions that I wouldn't try to navigate if my life depended on it. The worst of all happened when she figured out his yahoo mail password. She obsessed. She saw how many women he was sleeping with, and the sex acts they were engaged in, and something inside her snapped. Seeing that level of intimacy being shared with others by a 10-year partner was too much for her. Feeling like he had moved past her with little or no effort tore at her self-esteem. The suspicion that in the end she had just done what he wanted all along by leaving him was a constant internal debate. We couldn't flirt around without her making caustic references to the sexmail text she had read. "If I'm a naughty girl, will you spank me until my butt is crimson-red?" or suggesting mockingly (sarcasm directed toward her ex) that she'd only make love to me if I ejaculated on her breasts and face, as his emails had detailed. Sorry if that was TMI for some. That is when I realized I had "damaged goods." The big picture could not be ignored any longer, and I faced the decision of leaving this woman who so obviously hadn't moved past her ex. This may be what your ex and her new partner experience, or some level thereof. She may be one of those rare people who can totally bury their feelings and never look back. For her, the relationship may have been emotionally dead long before she left, and thereforeeee she has already had "closure." My bet is that your ex's new partner is in for an ugly ride, and that even if she has a change of heart, to think very very VERY carefully before getting on that train. Good luck, sir. I don't believe for a moment that you're not thought of, or never come as an issue in your ex's new relationship. What, if any, satisfaction there is to be gained from that, I do not know. Time may not heal ALL wounds, but it does heal most. And what does not kill us only makes us stronger. Keep the faith!

One of the unfortunate trade-offs in love is that you actually have to make yourself vulnerable to do it. When you really open yourself to someone and show them the real "you" and they decide that's either not good enough for them, or that they'd really rather being spending their lives doing something else, it's the ultimate in rejection. It strikes to the heart of everything you are. Many people spend a large portion of their lives slowly building self-esteem. Lots of people had zero self-esteem for so long it's less a building process and more like paying off a credit card. For something that builds so slowly, it's amazing how quickly your account can be overdrawn if you open it to another human being who has their own wants and needs--Which may or may not coincide with your own. Rather than philosophize on the mechanics of rejection and heartbreak, however, I will submit the following and hope it helps: This person may truly be the only other human being on the planet who could have touched you the way she did. In fact, I'd say that's likely. But there are literally billions of others out there who can touch you in a subtly different ways, and that's a big number. Of those billions, it's probably safe to say that a million or two would find you intelligent, caring, fun to be with, and some may feel worth spending their lives with. I assure you, some of those who would feel like that would connect with you in a way that may make what you're healing from right now seem faded and run-of-the-mill in comparison. Each failed relationship is training for the real thing. Take what you've learned with this one, and focus that same caring and love into the profound connection you find next time. Remember the things she did to hurt and alienate you, and make sure you never make your next partner feel that way. We learn not only from our own behavior, but from those of our failed partners. If/when you have children, and they come to you hurting because they are going through the same thing, the sum of our experiences will no longer be a burden...They will be the gift that allows you to empathize with your kids (and friends) and provide them with the understanding and support that only someone who has been there can. I know...Variants of the "other fish in the sea" argument and "it can't rain all the time." Those sentiments always seem to help everyone except the person actually in pain. Good luck, and steady at the wheel.

Thank you all for the outpouring of advice and experiences, and particularly to Auburnslp for relating history that is obviously still very close to the bone. This came to a head on Friday. I was headed out to do some shopping and my GF informed me she had spoken very briefly with the ex regarding clothes for the kids. Since her ex had the kids last weekend, I asked her if she'd had a chance to talk to them, and she said "no, they were outside playing." I didn't think much of it, but as I was out and about, I decided that if I was going to end the relationship anyway, I'd do some checking. I'd already checked our firewall logs. I felt guilty about this because spying on someone you supposedly love and trust is a slippery slope. It's just not honorable. This time, I checked the phone records online. She had indeed talked to her ex. For 20 minutes, without talking to the children. I was incensed. She chatted me up at work over MSN, and I basically told her I didn't want to talk to her, and we'd speak in person when I got home. She asked why, and I told her that in spite of our talk, I know she'd been talking to her ex and checking his email, financial data, and other personal stuff while I wasn't around. I also told her I was tired of hearing how she felt when her ex-husband was sending sex-mail back and forth with his latest conquest. She asked me if I was going to break up with her, and I told her that we'd discuss it face-to-face. She fell to pieces. She promised she'd never look at his stuff again, never speak to him on the phone unless it was absolutely necessary, and that she wanted met to check up on her to keep her honest. She said she didn't know what was wrong with her, but that she felt like his behavior was kicking her in the stomach, and that her pride was getting the best of her. I'm still trying to decide what to do. My gut feeling is to adhere to the old "fool me once, shame on you...Fool me twice, shame on me!" proverb and give her one more chance. The only reason I am extending that opportunity is because this is the first time she's been "caught" and also the first time it's overtly threatened our relationship. Now she knows without a shadow of a doubt how seriously I take it. At the same time, I made clear that there are no third chances. That she's not a bad person for not having healed from her marriage, but that if she could not put it behind her, she is an unwise choice on my part as a partner. I told her that I would not check up on her, but that if I noticed something was up again I'd confront her on it. If the weirdness didn't go away, then I may start digging again. It sucks loving someone who isn't fully there with you, but it would suck worse to push someone special away without making sure they are truly damaged goods. I'm crossing my fingers without much hope here. I'm praying there isn't a repeat. Thanks again, everyone, for your thoughtful input!

1. 5 years 2. Yes, I find love with time after breakups. I will say, however, that I have never found exactly the SAME love again. It's unique to each partner I have had. If YOU think it's true love but it's not returned, then my opinion is that it probably isn't. Love is a selfish thing, in spite of all you're willing to sacrifice for your partner. You wouldn't do it if you didn't get some form of fulfilment in return. At link removed, there is a great article on primacy and privacy being the foundation of lasting, true love. I don't believe this kind comes easily or often. I have only had this once. Hopefully, I won't have to look again. 3. Healing is different for everyone. The single biggest enabler to healing is time. In my mind, there are two aspects that need to be dealt with individually on a breakup. The first is the blow to your ego/pride that a) The other person wouldn't move heaven and earth to stay with you, and b) The nagging suspicion that you weren't worth holding on to. A breakup strikes the core of the dumpee's self-esteem, and only people who are very self-confident can sustain this blow with anything approaching nonchalance. The second aspect is forgiveness. Forgiving yourself for your failures in the relationship, but also forgiving your former partner. When you can truly let the anger, bitterness, resentment, and blame go, you will find in their place a collection of memories, perhaps some tinged with sadness. You will also have gained the objectivity to understand that you could not be the wonderful partner you are for your NEW love without the benefit of the experiences you learned from your failed loves. As for healing, I am an advocate of the no-contact philosophy. Get involved in activities you would not normally do. When I broke up with my ex-girlfriend, she ran a triathalon (believe me, she was no athlete) and joined a softball team. These things built confidence and kept her occupied and her mind elsewhere so she could focus on life by herself instead of her life + my life as it was. Treat love as an addiction...The only way to cure it is to change your playground, change your playthings, and change your playmates. Not sure this is what you were looking for, but it's my $.02.

He truly is dumber than a sack of packing peanuts. He has no clue she's snooping, though he's starting to get suspicious about some of the strange things that seem to be happening with his accounts. She's obsessed and storing up bitterness, that's certain. She's in total denial about it too. I checked my firewall logs. She gained access to his email account on the 31st of Aug and so far she's accessed it: 4 times on the 31st 14 times on the 1st and 7 times yesterday. Of course, she claims she doesn't check his stuff at all and that she's "totally past him," which is patently not the case. In fact, if I question her fascination with all things "ex-husband" she throws it back at me and says that she can't move on because I don't let her. I keep bringing him up and allowing him to come between us. Huh? No, I just want her to stay out of his private life, let go of the anger, and build a life on her own or with me. Hanging on to the tattered pieces of a failed marriage is no way to live. Harboring anger and vindictiveness is an express-ticket to misery further down the road. Thanks again everyone for your input!

Well, I thought about this a lot yesterday, but then a few developments happened which really set off my alarm bells. First, a friend of mine who also happens to know her ex-husband said that he was very angry because somebody had canceled an online gaming account of his and changed the password so he could not log in to play. I figured I had a pretty good idea of who that was. My girlfriend also told me she had realized she was still a joint customer on their cable internet and cable bill, so she had called to cancel it that day, and didn't bother to tell her ex about it. When I got home, the browser caches, temp files, and cookies were all cleared on the computer browser again, but a look at the firewall log confirmed she'd been to the account website for the online game in question. Look, I don't like her ex much. He is a chronic liar and has other issues that affect my quality of life because it makes caring for his kids more difficult sometimes. But what my girlfriend is doing is vindictive harassment. I love her, and would give anything if she could purge this malice from her system and move on into the future with me, but it's becoming increasingly evident to me that she is obsessed with what her ex is doing and cannot stop messing with him or prying into his business. I'm angry at the moment, but my gut tells me it's time to cut and run. I deserve a woman who is willing to commit to me, not to a shadow of an unhappy past.

Thank you for the prompt advice. I think she'd be indignant if I suggested counseling. I guess I'll tell her she needs to move out tonight...Needs to find herself and do some healing before commiting to someone else. I won't bring up the counseling unless she asks if there's anything we can do to save the relationship. I know she'd dismiss it out of hand if I told her I was going and would like her to as well.

Heya all, I'm a 33-year-old guy who's been divorced for about 6 years. I know my divorce was hard, but I've been through denial, bargaining, and finally acceptance. A year ago, I met a wonderful woman who was separated (but not divorced) from her husband. We hit it off, and fell in love. She eventually moved in with me, and when the divorce was final, we got the kids from her previous marriage. As time has gone on, I've begun to get a little nervous about some behavior I've witnessed. Her ex-husband isn't particularly smart, and is not computer-savvy at all to boot. As a result, he's never changed passwords on their formerly joint bills and bank accounts, or apparently has chosen such easy-to-guess passwords that my girlfriend was able to figure them out. I started noticing little things at first. Her ex-husband signed up for an online dating service, and my girlfriend made fun of him for doing so. I did happen to catch her trying to figure out how to get into his dating service account once, though, and when I checked the browser history after work one day, I saw she'd been trying to get in for several consecutive days. She'd also sent him an email containing nothing but the text he'd used to describe himself on the singles website, prompting a surprised "huh?" from him. Well, one night she let me know that he had met someone on the dating service, and she was angry at him because he had the kids until the school year was out, and he was introducing a strange woman into the house without informing her. I could tell it went deeper than that, though. I knew she was either hurt or jealous that he'd already apparently moved on. She could see the subject was making me uncomfortable, so she stopped talking about it, but I think this is when her fascination with her ex-husband's life really began to bother me. She has three children by this man, and an 8 year marriage that failed. She left him, and claims she is happy to have done so, but whenever she talks to the kids, she spends as much time on the phone talking to him as she does to them. Sometimes there's awkward pauses like she's trying to think of things to say to extend the conversation more. I've also noticed a tendency to try to make her phone calls to the kids when I'm in the shower, or otherwise occupied. She claims I'm always welcome to be around when she makes phone calls, but I can't shake the feeling she prefers privacy for these. It wasn't long before I noticed she was comparing the new woman in her ex-husband's life to herself, and looking for flaws in her. I wrote this off as normal female competitiveness, but I could see she was building herself up to hate this other woman, and got especially angry if her kids mentioned her in an approving manner. Well, things came to a head when she found out he was lying to her about a supposed business trip. A mutual friend of her ex's and hers let slip that it wasn't a business trip, but he was actually flying out to meet a girl he'd been chatting with on the internet. My girlfriend couldn't stop talking about this, usually couching her anger in terms of him being able to afford a "$1600 booty call, but not have enough to help buy school clothes for his kids." When he got back, she kept rationalizing that the trip must have gone bad, because he's not said anything about it, and the kids had yet to talk to this new woman. By now I'm getting really concerned about her constant discussion of her ex-husband's personal life. We had a fight about it, at which point she insisted she was totally over him, that she was happily with me, and that's the way she wanted things to stay. I didn't quite feel like her perspective adequately explained what I was observing, but I kept that to myself, despite my misgivings. Just last week, she finally figured out his email password. Now there are no secrets. She found out that her ex-husband is not just sleeping with two women, but is working actively on a third - None of whom know about one another. She's read detailed accounts of their sexual experiences and lurid fiction her ex and these women are sending one another in email. She spent that night off someplace else in her head, breaking down and crying from time to time. I love her, but at that point I nearly broke up with her...She does not know this. I feel like she's holding on to the past. I did put my foot down and told her that we needed to agree that the past is the past, and we need to focus on the future to move forward. I told her that I didn't want her going into his email or other stuff anymore, and I would not discuss her ex's personal life unless it was absolutely necessary or affected the welfare of the kids. She reluctantly agreed she'd stop snooping, but seemed indignant that I thought she was still hung up on him. She clung to the claim that she just checks up to ensure the kids aren't being put in a bad situation, and was being a responsible parent. I told her she was illegally spying on a man she has no legal right to, obsessing on the results, and that there was no gray area here...That she was wrong. Even if it wasn't morally wrong, it was wrong for our relationship - Since it's focusing disproportionately on issues that don't directly affect it. She says she's stopped checking up on him, but I know she still is. Every day when I come home from work, the broswer cache is cleared as well as cookies and temporary internet files. I came in the door yesterday quietly, and peeked around the corner and saw she had his email up. When we're out shopping, she makes snide comments about some of the sexual things she apparently read about her husband doing with these other women. For instance, he apparently enjoyed spanking one of his "bad girls" with a hair brush. So, my girlfriend and I will be walking through a store, and she'll grab a hairbrush off the shelf and say, "So, you want to spank my butt until it's crimson-red? I've been a bad girl." This is apparently a verbatim statement from one of those emails she read that she's simultaneously mocking and obsessing over. I don't want to end this relationship. I feel horrible since I'm not just sending her from my home, but also her three kids, whom I'm really attached to. At the same time, I may eventually have to since I won't compete with the shadow of a man no longer in her life. Does anyone have advice or experiences they can relate that may impact my decision?