The Apology

The second try at reconciliation wasn't working and I walked back in April. I kept my boundaries strong, life is good and I am moving on. In mid September she tells me she has something she wants to tell me that just won't work over text. After a couple of weeks, I cave and talk to her. She offers what I feel, is a non apology. She says something like " I know I acted terribly and hurt you. I am sorry." I got mad at her and we argued for over an hour rehashing the past. When I cooled off for a moment, I asked her "What exactly did you do to me?" she said she had some ideas but forgot.

During the conversation, she told me she was going to therapy, growing and working on herself. For an instant, the hope came back that she might be finally the person I always thought she had the potential to be. So some sadness came over me for a split second that I had walked away for good knowing change wasn't possible and I was done with her. Now maybe I was too harsh, but I know this was all a scheme to try to get me to come back.

Not seeing her for a while was the best thing I could do to get some perspective as I could see her trying to manipulate me with false hope. Just like she did when she lured me back the second time. I felt angry, misunderstood, gaslit and back to where I was in April after 2 hours of talking to her.

I know what started all of this was me telling her I was moving on with someone else. I felt I owed it to her to be honest about my future plans since she was a part of my life for 27 years. She wanted me to be single for a year or 6 months and get to like myself again and come back to her. What a crazy delusion she is under, as she was so awful to me for all of our marriage, especially the last 7 years.

My guess is the consequences of her actions are finally catching up with her now that she is 100% on her own now. She wants the old life back where I was trapped with her and she could treat me as poorly as she pleased. I was expected to bring my A game as a husband while she did nothing but alienate me from affection and cheat on me. How she can think I would wait another year for her is just crazy and delusional. The old me might have, but fuck her for being that arrogant and thinking she is worth that.

So the call took me back there and it took me a couple of days to process and calm back down. Lesson learned and I saw how miserable she made me when I saw her every day. No wonder I hated life and was stressed out when a 2 hour call made me this upset.

Back to my new life I went and was amazed at how easy it is. I am validated, loved and understood. Also, reality is on the same timeline with the new partner and I don't feel gaslit. Boundaries up going forward and this blog post will remain a reminder to do so.

Why I can never go back to my ex-wife, a short list. She apologized recently for hurting me and doing devious things, but for some reason she couldn't tell me what she did when I asked her. So basically, it was a non apology and just fucked with my emotions.

1. She lied to me and cheated for 5 years before I found out.
2. She tried to get me to quit my job and move with her to be closer to her affair partner.
3. She admits to not loving me the last 8 years of our marriage and just using me for financial security.
4. She admits to purposely throughout our marriage acting like she didn't like what I did to make me feel rejected and unloved.
5. She admits to doing the abuse cycle in our relationship the whole time. Idealization, Devalue, Discard. It seemed to be on a 3 month cycle.
6. I felt so alone and abandoned in early 2018, I wanted to die.
7. The 2 times I went back to her and tried to reconcile after filing for divorce she kept talking to her affair partner.
8. The 2 times I went back to her she denied me affection, and nothing changed.
9. Her work life balance sucks and she is never available. I always thought it would get better when the season of life changed, but it just carried over to the new realm.
10. She only apologized when I finally left her for good and hadn't seen her for a few months. The thing is it wasn't sincere at all.
11. Throughout the 27 long years of our relationship, she projected her own self hatred on to me and acted like it was my fault.
12. The marriage was one sided and I always felt tired and unloved.
13. The marriage was going to kill me, through self-harm from drinking or suicide.
14. When the kids found out about the affair she gaslight and denied it. This caused them to carry the burden of knowing before I did.
15. She deliberately with held kissing me for 5 years and never initiated any physical affection.
16. She was unable to fully function as an adult and relied on me to do everything.
17. When I had a crisis of faith and needed her support, she abandoned me and chose to have an affair.
18. The marriage was over in 2009 when I made some changes in my life and quit doing everything her way.
19. She emotionally abused me the entire time and took a sick pleasure in my pain,
20. She told me on the eve of our 20th anniversary that she wouldn't date me if we were single. Then she later gaslit me when I confronted her about how much it hurt me.
21. She accidentally sent her affair partner an "I'm horny" text to our family group text instead. Foolishly, I thought it was for me.
22. When she and my daughter went on a trip to Texas she sent me a random nude pic. Come to find out later, she gave her phone to her cousin to take a picture of them and she saw the photo. She sent it to me to cover her ass as it was for the affair partner.
23. I took her to dinner on Valentines day 2014 after pictures of her in her lingerie showed up accidentally on social media. She never sent the pictures to me and when I confronted her later she lied to me.
24. After repeatedly asking her to fix things between us over the years, she blew me off.
25. She used the guise of having penpals to carry on an affair and abandon me.
26. She controlled me and I lost my social network and all of my friends.
27. Whenever I needed her help she was unavailable. She would take a shower to avoid moving something.
28. She never took the time to know me. All conversations were about her and there was no time for me.
29.I could never rest on evenings and weekends with her. We always had to be doing something or I would escape to get away from her.
30.Vacations were exhausting and I did all of the driving. One time when I wanted to take a nap she woke me up and made me meet with her relatives after telling me I was on vacation and could do whatever I want.
31. She was very controlling and I never had a voice in the relationship.



I know I did all I could to save our marriage and she was the problem. Sure, I wasn't perfect and acted poorly at times after repeated mistreatment. I can never go back to that and am fearful for any one who gets tangled in that womans web. Good riddance to her.

Met Her

I was at a local punk rock bar with my friend in 2016 and I was introduced to her. It was on the cusp of my wife going out of town to spend a month with her unbeknownst to me affair partner. She was wearing a blue dress and there by herself dancing to the local band playing that night. I was interested and impressed that a woman liked punk rock music and wanted to get to know her better. Unfortunately, it would be a year before we would meet again and I would see her at the film festival office when I was there for screenings. I wanted go and say hi when she would walk by the screening room, then I remembered I was married and why would I do that?

Fast forward a few months and she ends up coming out for a late dinner and drinks with several of us after a screening. I got seated next to her at the bar and we ended up talking for that evening. I was still pretty raw from my religious deconversion and  very lonely in a loveless marriage. The conversation with her was so fulfilling and like rain on a parched desert. She was so smart, funny and empathetic. When we went to leave, she hugged everyone since she knew them better than me. I asked if she would give me a hug and she did; wow, it was amazing and something I hadn't ever felt. 

I would see her on occasion over the next few months but then I got her to come to trivia night with our friends. From there our friendship would blossom.

What Happened?

My biggest fear was my marriage failing. I heard stories of friends through the years that were going through a divorce and it absolutely terrified me. I saw how my wife and I were never on the same page and I couldn't win no matter what I did. There was a lack of affection and alienation throughout our marriage and I took the blame for all of it. If only I could do something different and avoid her getting mad at me, then I would get frustrated and act out then feel worse. I tried to reason with the unreasonable and stayed in misery. Even as the obvious signs of infidelity were creeping in on her part, I still tried to save things. Even as I met someone who finally loved me as I wanted, I rejected her twice and went back to my wife and the shitty treatment.

I realized I was addicted to the highs and lows of an abusive relationship. I finally realized the hope I had that my wife would actually step up to the plate and be the partner I deserved was a fantasy. Everyone around me saw the mess it all was and I had to be strong enough to move on.

Running Errands

For over an hour we were driving around in the car on a Saturday. It was actually one where she didn't have homework and could come along, with conditions of course. She couldn't eat where I wanted to since she is on a diet again... Ugh! On top of that, the conversation with her pen pals was more interesting than me anyway.

I finally get the courage to speak up. I tell her it would be nice to have a relationship where I had a friend who was interested in me. I told her how ridiculous it was that for over an hour we didn't speak to one another. I also mentioned at home she goes into the bedroom by herself and doesn't interact with any of us. I awaited her response, hoping this time she would get my point and things might start to get better.

It would not be as she projected back on to me everything I just told her. As I have gotten braver and shared my feelings of emptiness in our marriage, this is always the response. It is like she steals my emotions like a black hole sucks in light. There is no being heard by a narcissist, or an apology. Hell, they never do anything wrong in their mind and you are just a puppet in a warped reality in their head.

The eve of my 20th anniversary

We had grown apart over the last 2 years. The home daycare and the church change were very stressful on our marriage. Actually, we joined a gym and started working out together. I was feeling really good about the state of our marriage as we were close again. Then one night a week before our 20th anniversary, my wife tells me that she wouldn't date me if we were both single. I was heartbroken, and I  realized I was not dealing with a healthy individual.

This was the same day she received a job offer so she could quit doing the home daycare. Of course it would be a large pay cut, but she was going to go back to school. There is one constant in our marriage, I am the responsible adult. There was no way to have an adult discussion about this emotional black eye and she went to bed that night and slept like a baby while I stayed up and fumed.

I realized as I sat in the dark that night that there never was a relationship where I was loved by her. I projected my neediness to the situation and got just scraps. Three years later, the slap to the face still stings as I try to keep it together for the kids sake. The weak grip I have is starting to let go.

Narcissistic Evangelical Wives

I was out shopping with my wife today and was reminded of the narcissism that was the norm at my old Southern Baptist church. I noticed 2 couples from our old church there talking and it served as a stark reminder. The women were chatting it up, while their husbands stood there waiting for the conversation to be over. This gave me a window into my past, when we would encounter people my wife deemed valuable enough to engage in superficial conversation. While during the whole exchange I wanted to be elsewhere, doing something  productive.

I tired of the shallowness and the beliefs attached to that world and hoped there would be a happy ending. However, it was not to be. The shallow relationships my wife craved were sought elsewhere once the church relationships dried up. I correctly saw that the church was in the way of having a close marital relationship, but I didn't realize there would be no focus on that by her.

I basically removed the main source of her supply and there would be hell to pay for it. I lead our family to a healthier Lutheran church and for the first time became involved at church as an adult. All of the efforts I put forth as a spiritual leader were rebuffed and it was made impossible to continue my involvement there. After some soul searching, I realized my faith is dead after the years of struggle to believe.

The wife has had a mid-life crisis after leaving the church and has tried to recapture her youth. There are penpals she chats with endlessly while I sit there like a bump on a log. Or the sororityesque group she has joined to further engage her narcissistic tendencies. Most recently, she has gone on an extreme diet to be come a body builder. All of this weight loss has been acheived just in time for her to go out of town for a month to work at a company where one of her pen pals work.

A normal husband that hasn't been beaten down would protest all of this and not allow the month out of town. From the bottom of my heart, I am breathing a sigh of relief. Do I sit at home for a month and eagerly await her return.? Or do I go out and have some fun and find a couple of opposite sex penpals of my own.

I thought I made  a move to better our family to leave the old church and maybe I did. The thing I learned from this was, my marriage was never healthy and maybe I have outgrown it. I no longer feel inadequate and like I have to save my significant other. I want someone who is open with me and is on the same intellectual level.

Don't  know where to go from here, but something will be changing soon I can tell.