how did your marriage end

sad one, considering this forum in its heyday had a couple of stories like this (although i only heard later through gossips). but always a much different perspective and realization to see it from the other side of the screen. 

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It was the day before my family’s annual vacation. My wife and I (married 14 years at this point) had decided to take my 7y/o and 3 y/o to Disney World.

To everyone else, our relationship was great. We were a good couple, good family values, got married out of love instead of the usual Indian arranged marriage. But J and I had been struggling for a while. A long while, actually.

I think I first noticed it when we went to a marriage conference (which I had suggested). I wanted to attend because I was interested in taking the relationship to the next level. I was very much in love with her and thought the conference could give us ideas on how to take a 4 y/o marriage and spice it up. On day 2, the leader asked us to write a love letter to each other. After reading my 2 page letter to her, I was excited to hear what she had wrote to me. She had nothing. Not a single word. We left the conference early that day and I spent the next 10 years trying to figure out what was wrong with us. We had moments of reprieve from the turmoil and emotional distance at the birth and toddler years of both of our kids. But I never got an honest answer from her about why she wasn’t interested in the marriage.

I was a romantic, so I tried letters. That didn’t help. I made sure to celebrate her birthdays and anniversary with thoughtful gifts. No change there. I asked her to go to a marriage counselor. No interest. I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out what was wrong or how to fix it.

Back to the day before the annual vacation. She had been online a lot for the past year. I mean A LOT. But also very secretive about it. The night before our vacation, she left her computer open as she went about to get ready for our vacation. As luck would have it, she was logged in to her email and to her MySpace account and I went to work quickly. I saw a shit-load of emails to people I didn’t know. Not knowing when she would be back, I quickly forwarded the messages and emails to my account and deleted the forwards from her “Sent” box to leave no trace of what I had done.

Then I started reading and reading. It had started about a year prior to our vacation. She met James online on MySpace. James was a software engineer in Australia. And she shared everything with him. Pictures of her dressed up ( she had asked me to take photos of her quite recently which I loved doing because I was into photography at that time and she was a pretty model) and pictures of the house and various rooms. She had almost daily contact with James about her feelings and what was going on in her life. She fawned over his stories about technical challenges at work. She loved his sympathy and advice to her about leaving me. And then there were the intimate conversations: very sexual, very explicit conversations. There were many chat sessions where they sexted and “came” with each other.

Needless to say, the plane ride down was miserable for me. I hadn’t slept the night before and I couldn’t stop reading through the hundreds of messages. I maintained my cool for the sake of the kids and didn’t let on that I knew about her “relationship”. During our first meal, she tells me and the kids that she wants to get her own apartment. I was devastated, floored, angry. In spite of that, throughout the rest of the trip, I made a last ditch effort to reconcile and to get her interested in me. My romantic side really came out. But, no luck.

After we got back home, I let her know that I knew about her relationship and that we needed help to resolve this. I reached out to her sister/brother-in-law to help us work through this. But things only got worse as I found out that James wasn’t the only guy. Apparently, there was a guy in Africa with whom she had intimate conversations with. That one reached the point where he threatened to inform me about her affair if she didn’t do a naked video chat with him, which she obliged more than once.

I told her and my family that we were through. They recommended one last attempt to cool off and work through it. They didn’t know the details of what happened. They only knew that we were having issues. The only people I had shared some of the details with were her sister & husband and my younger brother. (For some weird and unknown reason, my younger brother became her protector and terminated his relationship with me, my mom and the rest of my siblings. I still haven’t figured out what’s going on there.)

We gave it a try. She only got more restless and angry as more people got involved. We even tried marriage counseling at this time ( my recommendation).

It was a messy divorce. Lots of emotions working out finances and schedule for the kids ( this was the hardest part for me). At one point, she tried to accelerate the process and get me out of the house by filing a restraining order against me ( her lawyer advised her to use that as a tactic to get me out of the house ) and kept me away from the kids for a couple of weeks. (The judge recognized the tactic and insisted that I be allowed to be with the kids again).

In hindsight, I should’ve listened to my intuition. It was weird but I got a sense early on that she wasn’t really into the marriage. I don’t think any of my efforts to fix it would’ve helped.

It’s been 10 years and I’ve moved on with my life. I wish I can say that I’m completely free from her, but unfortunately I had a bad lawyer and am still paying a shit load of alimony (even though she is employed as a nurse).

But regardless of all the crap I went through, I’m thankful for my kids and the life and relationship I’ve had with them. I’m also thankful that they didn’t have to grow up witnessing the constant tension and emotional distance between their mom and me.

There seems to be quite a bit of incompatibility between this guy and his ex-wife, their love-marriage notwithstanding.