Tolerance or breaking with the past?

The question I'm seeking help for is whether or not I should become decisive and create clarity in my life and cut the cord with my wife. Or should I just let time pass and give her all the space she needs, no matter how much it hurts me. We are separated at her request. In Singapore it takes 3 years to get divorced if you separate.


Seven months ago, my wife announced that she wanted to separate. We had been married for 12.5 years and we have 2 beautiful young daughters. This sharing of emotions and decisions came as a total shock and surprise to me but I felt instantly that she was very serious about seeing this become reality. She said her bucket was full, she felt overwhelmed and she just came back from a business trip abroad. She felt I don't give her the love and attention and care she deserves. She wants to find out what she wants.


I could literally not speak. I felt upset and very sad and lost my self confidence for quite a few months. But I knew and felt right away that I must give her the time and space for herself that she was asking for. Otherwise I'd certainly validate that I don't understand, appreciate, love and respect her, but also because it would be the only way to save our marriage and rebuild our love. It is necesssary we both know what we want in life and she indicated that what she had was not good enough. I thought the opposite for myself, but I am quite a bit wiser now as I recognize I suppressed important emotions as well.


Of course I wanted to see a counsellor together. In fact, we saw a counsellor 2 years prior to help us decide whether or not we should stay in Singapore. We had great friends that went through divorce at that time and we said we're not going to let that happen to us. Every company I work for wants me to move to the US. But my wife has her own profession and feels it's not fair to be asked to just follow me and she feels I won't support her enough if we do move. In the past, it was me who followed her in her strong desires to move to the USA and then Asia. With help of the counsellor (5 sessions in 3 months), we decided our love is more important and I changed jobs. Meanwhile she made a commitment that if I found a great role and love it and they would ask us to move to the USA, we'd do it but only after 2-3 years. Thanks to the counsellor we learned our communication styles are quite different. I'm very sensitive and take things very personally when emotions rise, which means I can get jumpy or lock up completely as I can't handle my emotions. My wife is much more well versed in expressing emotions (part of her profession) and is action oriented. She demands to see consistent follow through on words, but I would say I'm imperfect in that, no matter how sincere I am in my words and commitments. This does relate to household matters too. Hence she feels I don't listen to her and that I don't respect her.


So I found an apartment and moved out 2 months later. Until then she had not been sleeping with other men, ever, but she clearly stated that she wants to find someone else and explore relationships with other men. And in a small place like Singapore it's not exactly hard to find out that she is on the pursuit today.


This is the emotional torture I have such a hard time with.


I love her that she is a beautiful, very attractive,ambitious strong individual who needs love, appreciation, care, friendship, romance, fun and attention. I do too, but I'm a believer in love, through ups and downs. We can grow together and overcome this period if we do truly want to love each other. I want that, but she does not know and makes sure she gives me absolutely no hint that could result in positive hope.


Just like many expats, I have been working and traveling a lot over the past 9 years that we've been in Singapore as I have a regional management job. Weekends are dedicated to my kids and during the weeks I don't travel I put the kids in bed 2 times during the weekdays. My wife works 3-5 days in her own company, rides horses, volunteers, takes care of kids activities and is pretty happy with that balance.


Of course we used to make time for each other but too little in my view. She never said that to me, but I can feel it. Our lives are just filled with social activities, with friends, kids, sports, and we did not invest enough in just romantic time together or quality talking time together. Yes we did have weekends away, went to theater & movies and we loved it. Dinner nights in nice restaurants were great, but I guess the romantic spark disappeared withouth noticing it as something obvious. Our discussions centered around practical manners. We both love romance, letting go, talking about life & love, and more spiritual matters. But to give you an idea, we used to share thoughts about films we saw, books we read and loved to exchange ideas, political, spiritual, social. I know that disappeared years ago and miss that. We used to be best friends and while we talked about everything openly, our true friendship started to hide beneath the mundane.


We are not seeing a counselor together anymore. We went to see her a couple of times but only to talk about the kids as my wife stated explicitly that she did not want to talk about anything else. I've never seen her so determined, cold, disciplined and focused. She is trained in coaching and is top notch. She knows how to control her words and emotions in a way i've not experienced before. It scares me and I crumble.


I've gone from self-blame and losing self confidence to anger. I'm hoping that I can reach acceptance and forgiveness soon as I want to find peace with my situation. I don't want to be blamed, nor blame. But I am still angry she is not willing to fight for our marriage and friendship. I'm angry that I have to endure the mental torture of letting her experience complete freedom and that she is looking to date other men. Not just for sex, but for relationship, attention and friendship. Sex would be simpler to accept and I'm not exactly worried about her sleeping around. It's about the fundamentals of our relationship that she is now exploring with others. And at the same time she has driven the initiative for a financial separation agreement, to protect herself. My dad screwed my mom royally when they got divorced and she's afraid I'll do the same. I hated him for the financial troubles during my childhood. And yes, it means I worry about finances no matter how much I earn. I'm a very different person though and feel hurt by this insult. I know that once divorce starts kicking in, we need to understand conflicting interests and settled fairly for both, not just for one party. we also need to ensure we keep communication between us, for the kids.


I'm angry she is not a believer in commitment and growing together as we built our love on a foundation that was sound. So we used to think.


I'm in need of finding out what I really want and need. I can't stomach the thought of not being with my kids, so I'll stay in Singapore for a while. That I do know. I love them too much and I will be there for them. My time with them has been tremendously fulfilling. I've been very happy with the great friends and familiy I have. I've done lots of fun things like skiing and partying to get my mind out of the misery. But everytime I sleep in my apartment, I dream about all of this. So I'm signing up for a class, called "Art of Living", meditative techniques to relax the mind. I'm looking forward to that.


I'm putting down a lot here, but I'm looking for help. I am a pretty decisive person and my fear is that I decide too fast that I now need to file for divorce. By the way, I'm a Libra and she's a Capricorn :). Thoughts and feelings appreciated. Thank you!

Thank you. Spot on. I am taking counseling for myself because I will not become a bitter angry person. The "protecting yourself" theme, is also something my close friends keep telling me about.

Flashback - you speak words that come from somewhere profound. I am grateful for who I am and where I stand in life with my kids, friends, family and work. Accepting that the journey from here on forward is going to be without someone I really still love very much is the hardest part.


A dear friend gave me the advice yesterday that I should just hold off on any decisions of accelerating divorce on my end. Not because of hope but because I'm still in the angry phase. Moreover I committed to her and myself that I would live with the ambiguity until March next year. Then I can file for divorce if she hasn't. That way I'll not regret giving it my very best.


Life is too precious and I do believe there's a new freedom I'm going to really enjoy. Well beyond parties.


And to respond to the last question, no, my wife is not Asian. She's an eclectic white American lady

Thanks so much, Flashback.


It is the first time I post such personal feelings out on a bulletin board. I don't have problems talking about my situation with friends and even with people at work whom I care about or simply need. But this little experiment shows me that there certainly is a world of new people out there with so much experience, perspective and insight. And yes, some of it, I wish it wasn't happening, but I'm a bit idealistic and perhaps cerebral in relationships. But reality bites sometimes. It's not just self-blame that makes one feel sad. Ideals and dreams do evolve and can become less aspirational over the years together.


I'm going to have intensely beautiful moments again and I look forward to living those.

If you believe in the astrology stuff,Librans and Capricorns are never going to work.I've been in a relationship with a career driven goat and felt I was drowning in their needs and mine were never met.

Your wife is too driven and focused on her career and not good at the daily grind stuff.She wants it all.Librans,well we are in love with the idea of being in love,the idealistic and elusive person who can make our world go round sometimes seeing that person through rose coloured glasses and not what they actually are.You need balance and a peaceful status quo and when someone rocks the boat your life can go to pieces very quickly.

You sound like a very giving person and your wife a pretty selfish one but at least you've got a grip on the situation.Don't do the Libran thing and become obsessed with all the good things in the past thus idealizing the realtionship you had with your wife.You need to move on with this,she has already and is treating your separation with a business like approach.Separate your emotions here don't get sentimental.

Don't be the laid back indecisive Libran,take action on this,it's over and you need to protect yourself or your wife will run the whole course of your divorce to her advantage.

Get a good lawyer as others have suggested take more control of the situation you are in because it's never easy with kids involved.

I think your wife thinks you are too easygoing so show her that you're not.Instead of wallowing in the past memories go out and enjoy yourself,go on dates,make plans to move to the US it would be good for you.

Wishing you all the best.

Great to see JC and Momo join in and share. I feel good reading your thoughts. Thank you.


I will attend the Art of Living class in a few weeks time and will gladly share my experience if you like. Funny thing is that I'm far from a groupie and I am giving it a shot to experiment and learn something new. To relax, to cry my eyeballs out, to state what I'm grateful for, to learn to accept the present and the future, and to ultimately forgive and let go. Yes, starting with meditation and breathing techniques. Indeed there are followers of Ravishanker, the swami fellow, and I look at that very cautiously and suspiciously as I don't believe in idol worshipping. But there is energy between people, we all feel it. It's not just about words and body language. Nobody told me to enroll in this class. I just dream about feeling at peace again, this is a step forward.


My other steps are quality time with friends and partying with new people I might bump into. Who knows what can happen. I love going wild once in a while and just let go of all thoughts and constraints (and I don't have to be completely drunk for that, nor do I have to be separated). It's a great feeling. Dancing, silly jokes. And those around me in those moments are completely infected with positive energy and that makes me happy.


So, momo8, I am not an astrologist. But since I'm exploring, I'm just amazed by some of the 'analyses' that come up from websites and there must be some set of reasonable statistics underlying the commentary about our characters.


As said, I'm trying new things. A few months ago I also spoke by phone for 1 hour to a 'healer' who is based in the USA. A close female friend recommended that to just have a chat. Frankly, this bulletin board may already have been more useful. You see, I tend to value results and not enough the process. His insights were along the same lines except that he came up with a stunning fact such as telling me where I was born. Can you do that when you don't know which country I'm from :)? I like David Blaine, it wasn't him. Good experiment though. He also spoke about leadership qualities I possess which at work I've heard over the years. Quite something to pick some of that up. It's not like he asked a ton of questions. I just conclude I don't understand it all but do like this. There's more to life than our thoughts and feelings. Some collective energy that is positive, I'll contribute some and so do you. So I can be cynical about healers and the 'truth' factor, but they do have a place and this process step even helped me.


In the less esoterical world, I'm an ENTJ (Myers-Brigss :)). My wife is ENFP. We never discussed how it affects how we communicated and demanded attention for our needs or how we interacted. That's what you might do at work when doing team offsites, right? Well, it's sometimes useful to know earlier in the relationship cycle, what you stand for. Libra or Capricorn. ENFP or ENTJ. Whatever combination, it does matter. Easy to fall in love, trust your feelings, take risk, make decisions, move in, grow up, get kids etc. But i think we don't necessarily understand, respect and learn from each other if some of the basics aren't spelled out. You can't only rely on your feelings or actions. Don't worry, I'm not going out on a date talking about my ENTJ character and asking someone what they are, so I can gauge what to do.

...and as for the actions towards divorce. Yes, I have a good lawyer and I am getting sound advice. By the way, she's a cute human being with a heart too

i guess i'm too intense to sollicit further feedback ...:)

Joking - explain to me why i seem to have sensed this before or why she thought i was going to shaft her? believe me, i take responsibility for the sh*t i caused. i take responsibility for the separation, not because of a trigger event, but a gradual build up of unresolved issues. big or small. but it's a 2 way street. and open communication would help avoid that the sh*t hits the fan suddenly. clearly we didn't have open enough communication or did not want to hurt each other so profoundly that it could cause a break up. so we became obstructive or just unresponsive.

TROLL!!!

Please read my "Flamers and Cyber Trolls" post over in Speakers Corner.With a handle like that 'Just Joking' has got to be joking nothing else he posts is constructive to anyone on this site.He loves to laugh at people,call people immature and takes great satisfaction in the misfortune of others.

Get a life Just Joking or just disappear.(hanging the garlic and crucifix around my neck and preparing the stake)

Ignore him Authetic he's not half the man you are in terms of sensitivity and intelligence.You have lots of good advice here from people who actually care about you and you seem to be doing just fine.Be strong and disregard inflammatory comments.Also don't blame yourself for the separation you're too giving as I said before.

Well said Momo and JC. Hooray! Cheers!

:-)

thanks indeed!

A man with a value like yours is rare to find nowadays (I'm still looking!) She's going to regret it for sure. Take Care :-)

A man with a value like yours is rare to find nowadays (I'm still looking!) She's going to regret it for sure. Take Care :-)

Mmm, nice to get a compliment like that, thanks!


For some reason, I'm getting some unexpected female attention these days. I'm going on vacation next week, looking forward to fun and quality time.

Hey Authentic


I don't really have anything to add that flashback, JC etc haven't already said - but for what it's worth, I wanted to say that I'm amazed at how tolerant, measured & insightful you are with your comments - do remember to pat yourself on the back occasionally at how well you're dealing with this schtuff....

'Until then she had not been sleeping with other men, ever, but she clearly stated that she wants to find someone else and explore relationships with other men."


That is enough to treat her like yesterday's trash and proceed with the divorce ASAP. What did you end up doing?