Dear Christopher:

In my effort to understand, I ask:

You wrote that her mother lived with the two of you and your son for three years.

When and why did she moved out?

Did your relationship with her mother change recently?

Did her mother’s feelings and attitude about you change recently?

And finally, for now: did your wife’s relationship with her mother change recently?

anita

Dear Christopher:

Reads to me that your wife has been experiencing mixed loyalty- loyalty to her mother and loyalty to you. What changed recently is that her loyalty has finally made its final shift- and she is now completely loyal to her mother.

Her in love feelings for you meant a betrayal of her possessive mother for some time. My thinking is that your wife’s distress has a lot to do with her relationship with her mother, starting in childhood. Fearing losing her mother to cancer and following her mother’s disapproval of you, she chose sides- her mother’s side.

You wrote in your original post regarding her mother: “she accuses me of putting her in the middle of two people she loves”- being in the middle caused her lots of distress, eventually “killing” her in-love feelings for you. No longer in the middle is her solution, a relief of that distress.

anita

Good morning Christopher,

It truly breaks my heart to read your story. You seem like a calm and well spoken individual and I am sorry that you are going through all that. Nonetheless, you do need to respect your wife’s feelings and give her all the space that she needs( from the sounds of it, you are ready to do that). As hard as this may sound, focus on you and start doing things for yourself. You cannot convince someone to love you and never should you feel like you have too. In order for a relationship to function the way it ought to be, the two people in it must really want it! So if your wife wants to let go and you have done all you can to try to work things out, leave the rest to God! As cliché as this may sound ” everything does happen for a reason”. At this point, your son and his well being should become your priority as well as yourself. Focus on you and respect your wife’s wishes.

I wish nothing but the best for you and may God give you strength to get through this tough episode in your life.

All the best & stay strong.

Rox

Just wondering if she might have undiagnosed bipolar II. Just the depression and the wracking up expensive on credit cards could be a bit of an indicator of that. Bipolar II sufferers tend to want to end relationships when they are a bit manic, only to regret it later. Not sure if you noticed any hypomania (which again can be quite subtle).

Those with Bipolar II tend to be more on the depressed side with only hypomanic states, so not so obvious.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by Mia.

I’m sorry to read about your circumstances and would like to share a little advice of my own. I was in a relationship for 5 and a half years and the person I considered the love of my life blind-sided me with the news that he didn’t want to be together anymore. As difficult as this loss was, I can say that I came out the other side. My first step was realizing that I couldn’t “make” him feel a certain way about me. I had to practice a lot of “radical acceptance” (google this term- it’s helped me a lot). Also, when I thought about it rationally, I didn’t want to be in a non-reciprocal relationship. So, I let go. I let him have his space and started to make arrangements for myself. I treated myself to new, nice bedding. I found a new place in a neighborhood across from a park that I loved. After roughly 10 months he actually came around and started talking about getting back together.

Sometimes this happens, sometimes it doesn’t. In my case, I made the decision that our time had passed and I wanted to continue the process of letting go and moving on. This may sound heartbreaking and sad, but I turned to the forums of Tiny Buddha a lot and the advice people gave me was: let go; every single thing in life changes- and sometimes these changes bring us to a path that is happy and fulfilling in the end.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by dreaming715.

Dear Christopher:

It reads to me that your wife is interested in two things, about which she is not confused. These things are a separation and an easy transition to it. She looks for apartments for you to move to (toward a separation) and she tells you that the separation may be temporary (toward the goal of an easy transition, as a motivator for you to indeed cooperate). She may very well be honest about the possibility of a reuniting after separation. The way she is going about the separation is wise, on her part. It is best for your child that his parents cooperate well.

anita