Advice for a nice guy: Update need more advice

[BKSkinsFan]

I'm not sure if it is even a good idea to start this thread, my mind is just completely boggled at this point. I'm not one to try to draw attention to myself, or try to get any pity from anyone, I just want outsider perspective on something I'm going through right now.

I'm currently married with an incredible 2 year old daughter. I've been married for almost 5 years and recently found out my wife has not been faithful. I had her move out, and we are in the process of trying to decide who gets what. She seems like she wants to be fair, and we've agreed on the most important part of it all, split custody. I haven't had my daughter for 2 days, and it has been extremely excruciating for me to deal with.

During this, I realize that I have been miserable with this woman for a long time, and she has done things that I can never forget. Yet at the same time, she was over last night with my daughter, and I felt like there may be a remote shot at wanting to just separate, get counseling, and see if we can reconcile. Many people think I'm just being weak and too nice through all of this. They see her as a selfish person, not just from the affairs, but the type of person she has always been.

I just want to be happy, have my daughter as much as possible, and be with someone who not only shares some common interests, but genuinely loves and cares about me. Am I being completely foolish for thinking of wanting someone like this again? Why can't I stop breaking down? Has anyone else here been through something similar, and how did you make it through this?

[PleaseBlitz]

I havent been through it, so im just going to wish you the best of luck man.

[Forehead]

During this, I realize that I have been miserable with this woman for a long time, and she has done things that I can never forget.

I've been through some bad break-ups, but that was high school/college stuff, nothing like this and nothing involving a child, so I may not be in the right place to dispense advice.

However, I highlighted one specific part of what you wrote because that's your gut talking to you. You're talking about a remote chance of reconciliation, yet you realize that you've been miserable with this woman and she's done stuff you can never forget. That sounds like a recipe for further miserable times, even if you were to reconcile.

As long as this is being kept civil (very good thing for the sake of your daughter) I would say you probably want to proceed with getting separated. Down the line, you'll probably be much happier with your daughter, and should you decide to re-marry, a woman who you feel good being around.

Just an opinion, but I know it can be tough to let go of someone you are familiar with, so I don't want to feel like I'm giving you "Do it" type advice. I think you're proceeding down the correct path right now.

[GibbsFactor]

Been there done that. My wife and I split when my son was 3. It was tough for about 2 years but now we are almost like best friends and have a great relationship.

It sucks because I always wanted that American Dream white picket fence deal, at least I thought I did. And it all went up in smoke.

But my son loves me very much and I get along with her better now then ever.

That's my story.

[MikeInJc aka M.I.A.]

I've been through the same thing, except with no kids, just a dog.

I'll tell you from personal experience, you're going to have to lose the nice guy attitude when dealing with divorce procedings and the like, but also know to seperate that when your daughter is around and not let her get dragged into the mucky muck of the divorce. It's going to be hard for everyone involved (you, your daughter, your family, friends, etc.)

The best thing to do is get a lawyer that is willing to negoiate, but is not afraid to come out swinging if he has to. Try to find SOLID evidence of her affairs. This will help you in court if it gets ugly, even though adultery is the hardest thing to prove in court, trust me your lawyer will tell you that.

Become surrounded by friends, get out of the house when not with your daughter and have some fun with your friends. Try not to turn to the bottle, as that will not help matters any, especially if she knows you've been drinking alot and tries to use that against you in a child custody dispute. She may say all these things about wanting split custody, but divorce can make someone completely evil and sadistic. She will try to exploit your weaknesses.

Keep your head up and I wish you the best.

[McMetal]

My wife and I have been married nearly five years and I also have a 2 year old daughter, as well as a 7 month old. Can't imagine either of us doing anything to wreck that at this point, but people are a mystery.

Hard to speculate without knowing all the circumstances, but I would say just try to focus on keeping your daughter happy and well adjusted because this has to be really hard for her to understand.

Good luck with eveything brother.

[MikeInJc aka M.I.A.]

I also forgot to tell you and what a lawyer will tell you. If you split right after you became aware of the affairs and then you try to reconcile, especially sexually, then the adultery is pretty much thrown out and basically the courts look at it as you condoned the affairs. This is what my lawyer told me, so just FYI if you are looking to reconcile, which I believe form what you've said and what Phoward has quoted you should go with your gut feeling.

[Dictator]

Am I being completely foolish for thinking of wanting someone like this again? Why can't I stop breaking down? Has anyone else here been through something similar, and how did you make it through this?

I have been through something similar. You still feel that "spark" or whatever you want to call it because you haven't had enough time yet to deal with everything you NEED to deal with. that feeling will probably pass over time.

If you feel that you want to reconcile, I would suggest you go to a therapist/marriage counselor first, by yourself, to help you sort things out.

Finally, If you have absolute proof she cheated on you, I would not at all be willing to split things "equally". Definatly don't firmly agree to anything until you are in the proper state of mind.

[Dictator]

If you split right after you became aware of the affairs and then you try to reconcile, especially sexually, then the adultery is pretty much thrown out and basically the courts look at it as you condoned the affairs.

Pretty much.

[BigMike619]

Been there done that. My wife and I split when my son was 3. It was tough for about 2 years but now we are almost like best friends and have a great relationship.

It sucks because I always wanted that American Dream white picket fence deal, at least I thought I did. And it all went up in smoke.

But my son loves me very much and I get along with her better now then ever.

That's my story.

This is my story as well. My son was barely past being 1 though. pretty much the same scenario all the way around though.

look brother, i know it sucks being without your daughter for the 2 days or however long it is in-between visits but thats how it will be from now on. she isnt an abusive mother is she? she doesnt do drugs in front of her or in general does she? if the answers are no then she has the same rights as you do.

but my counselor told me one time; it is better to have 2 happy homes then one miserable one. meaning that i wouldnt consider getting back with her because you miss your daughter because she isnt going to be happy anyways with mommy and daddy fighting all the time.

good luck bro...

[The_cavalierman]

Hey man,

I honestly wish you the best. If you are a man of faith then I imagine the good book or a spiritual leader has some words of wisdom/comfort for you.

On a practical sense I would advise you to protect yourself and your stuff legally. I know we have some lawyers here so they can better advise you on that stuff. (some) Women/Men will smile in your face while they walk away with all of your money and your stuff. Obviously your wife is not who/what you thought she was so you have to keep that in the back of your mind regardless of what you feel.

Others here are right about keeping the poisonous atmosphere away from your child. This whole situation is going to suck and their is no way around it but you can minimize the effects to an extent.

Goodluck to you

[DGreenistheBest]

If you do decide to try counseling, then you need to pretty much repeat everything you said in that post to your counselor and to your wife. I feel like you'd be better off moving on at this point, but if you are going to do otherwise then you have to disclose all of your feelings. Whether or not your wife deserves another chance is one thing, but if you are going to give her one then she deserves to know exactly where she stands. Having it all out in the open is not only fair for her, but it's fair for your kid and she's the one that deserves to be treated fairly in this.

And on that note, you should also consider whether or not it is fair for your girl if you are going to try to reconcile but you know in your heart that it's not going to work. Splitting while she's 2 is going to be so much easier than splitting when she's 4, 5, 6, etc. Remember that your daughter's happiness is first, yours is second, and your wife's is third in this situation.

[TheKurp]

This article appeared in yesterday's NY Times. I not only found it interesting, but applicable to an issue I'm currently dealing with.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/science/26tier.html?ref=health

The Advantages of Closing a Few Doors

By JOHN TIERNEY

Published: February 26, 2008

The next time you’re juggling options — which friend to see, which house to buy, which career to pursue — try asking yourself this question: What would Xiang Yu do?

Xiang Yu was a Chinese general in the third century B.C. who took his troops across the Yangtze River into enemy territory and performed an experiment in decision making. He crushed his troops’ cooking pots and burned their ships.

He explained this was to focus them on moving forward — a motivational speech that was not appreciated by many of the soldiers watching their retreat option go up in flames. But General Xiang Yu would be vindicated, both on the battlefield and in the annals of social science research.

He is one of the role models in Dan Ariely’s new book, “Predictably Irrational,” an entertaining look at human foibles like the penchant for keeping too many options open. General Xiang Yu was a rare exception to the norm, a warrior who conquered by being unpredictably rational.

Most people can’t make such a painful choice, not even the students at a bastion of rationality like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Dr. Ariely is a professor of behavioral economics. In a series of experiments, hundreds of students could not bear to let their options vanish, even though it was obviously a dumb strategy (and they weren’t even asked to burn anything).

The experiments involved a game that eliminated the excuses we usually have for refusing to let go. In the real world, we can always tell ourselves that it’s good to keep options open.

You don’t even know how a camera’s burst-mode flash works, but you persuade yourself to pay for the extra feature just in case. You no longer have anything in common with someone who keeps calling you, but you hate to just zap the relationship.

Your child is exhausted from after-school soccer, ballet and Chinese lessons, but you won’t let her drop the piano lessons. They could come in handy! And who knows? Maybe they will.

In the M.I.T. experiments, the students should have known better. They played a computer game that paid real cash to look for money behind three doors on the screen. (You can play it yourself, without pay, at tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com.) After they opened a door by clicking on it, each subsequent click earned a little money, with the sum varying each time.

As each player went through the 100 allotted clicks, he could switch rooms to search for higher payoffs, but each switch used up a click to open the new door. The best strategy was to quickly check out the three rooms and settle in the one with the highest rewards.

Even after students got the hang of the game by practicing it, they were flummoxed when a new visual feature was introduced. If they stayed out of any room, its door would start shrinking and eventually disappear.

They should have ignored those disappearing doors, but the students couldn’t. They wasted so many clicks rushing back to reopen doors that their earnings dropped 15 percent. Even when the penalties for switching grew stiffer — besides losing a click, the players had to pay a cash fee — the students kept losing money by frantically keeping all their doors open.

Why were they so attached to those doors? The players, like the parents of that overscheduled piano student, would probably say they were just trying to keep future options open. But that’s not the real reason, according to Dr. Ariely and his collaborator in the experiments, Jiwoong Shin, an economist who is now at Yale.

They plumbed the players’ motivations by introducing yet another twist. This time, even if a door vanished from the screen, players could make it reappear whenever they wanted. But even when they knew it would not cost anything to make the door reappear, they still kept frantically trying to prevent doors from vanishing.

Apparently they did not care so much about maintaining flexibility in the future. What really motivated them was the desire to avoid the immediate pain of watching a door close.

“Closing a door on an option is experienced as a loss, and people are willing to pay a price to avoid the emotion of loss,” Dr. Ariely says. In the experiment, the price was easy to measure in lost cash. In life, the costs are less obvious — wasted time, missed opportunities. If you are afraid to drop any project at the office, you pay for it at home.

“We may work more hours at our jobs,” Dr. Ariely writes in his book, “without realizing that the childhood of our sons and daughters is slipping away. Sometimes these doors close too slowly for us to see them vanishing.”

Dr. Ariely, one of the most prolific authors in his field, does not pretend that he is above this problem himself. When he was trying to decide between job offers from M.I.T. and Stanford, he recalls, within a week or two it was clear that he and his family would be more or less equally happy in either place. But he dragged out the process for months because he became so obsessed with weighing the options.

“I’m just as workaholic and prone to errors as anyone else,” he says.. “I have way too many projects, and it would probably be better for me and the academic community if I focused my efforts. But every time I have an idea or someone offers me a chance to collaborate, I hate to give it up.”

So what can be done? One answer, Dr. Ariely said, is to develop more social checks on overbooking. He points to marriage as an example: “In marriage, we create a situation where we promise ourselves not to keep options open. We close doors and announce to others we’ve closed doors.”

Or we can just try to do it on our own. Since conducting the door experiments, Dr. Ariely says, he has made a conscious effort to cancel projects and give away his ideas to colleagues. He urges the rest of us to resign from committees, prune holiday card lists, rethink hobbies and remember the lessons of door closers like Xiang Yu.

If the general’s tactics seem too crude, Dr. Ariely recommends another role model, Rhett Butler, for his supreme moment of unpredictable rationality at the end of his marriage. Scarlett, like the rest of us, can’t bear the pain of giving up an option, but Rhett recognizes the marriage’s futility and closes the door with astonishing elan. Frankly, he doesn’t give a damn.

[redskinss]

i cant even begin to imagine how i would feel or react but i dont think i could ever forgive my wife if she cheated on me.

me peresonally i know for a fact that one of the first things i would want to do is get a paternaty test for my two children. i couldnt live the rest of my life not knowing for sure but i cant say how i would react if i found out that one or both were not mine.

I am not trying to say to you that this is what you should do because to some people it doesnt matter i am just saying that is what i would do.

[BKSkinsFan]

I knew there'd be some great advice from people on here, I truly appreciate it.

I did have that thought as was mentioned by MikeInAlexandria, that while she was over last night, and wanting to talk, and things were going well, that maybe she did want to have me end up sleeping with her to ruin my grounds for divorce.

It's so hard when you want to trust someone, but deep down know that you can't. Hopefully I can move on, and not let this affect my future relationships too much.

[jnhay]

It sounds like even if you reconcile now, somewhere down the road you'll get fed up and finally recognize that she's not the right person. If she's the kind of person who takes advantage of how nice you are, which it sounds like it, I'd just break it off now and not prolong the inevitable.

[MikeInJc aka M.I.A.]

Remember that your daughter's happiness is first, yours is second, and your wife's doesn't even ****ing matter in this situation.

Sorry I corrected that for ya;)

If you go through with the divorce, then her happiness shouldn't even be in your sights. She dug and fell into the hole, now let her get out of it. She will have her family (i.e. Daddy and Mommy) to turn and almost no matter what your relationship was with them before and even with what your wife has done, they will still take her side. In-laws are the devil when it comes to divorce, so don't let them persuade you, they are probably not looking out for YOUR best interests.

[DGreenistheBest]

i know for a fact that one of the first things i would want to do is get a paternaty test for my two children

I can understand the compulsion to do that but I would recommend against it. Your kids are yours and you don't need to go planting seeds of doubt in your head about it.

[BKSkinsFan]

My daughter definitely is and always has been priority number 1 for me. Supposedly even though she said there is no good reason for what she did, she did it because I didn't give her enough attention. This is probably due to the fact that my world now revolves around my daughter, and I wouldn't want it any other way.

[DGreenistheBest]

Sorry I corrected that for ya;)

If you go through with the divorce, then her happiness shouldn't even be in your sights. She dug and fell into the hole, now let her get out of it. She will have her family (i.e. Daddy and Mommy) to turn and almost no matter what your relationship was with them before and even with what your wife has done, they will still take her side. In-laws are the devil when it comes to divorce, so don't let them persuade you, they are probably not looking out for YOUR best interests.

I wouldn't go that far. Whatever your feelings for an ex-spouse are, keeping their happiness on the radar pays dividends later on in ways you won't realize, IE through your kid. I'm speaking through personal experience here. My mom left my dad and my dad tended to get pretty nasty with her over the years about it. He was probably justified. But, for whatever reason, I have better realtionship with my mom now than with my dad. Can't tell you why, but I can guess. Maybe if my dad had been a little more civil, I wouldn't have had to grow up at odds with which parent I owed my allegiance to.

[BKSkinsFan]

Sorry I corrected that for ya;)

If you go through with the divorce, then her happiness shouldn't even be in your sights. She dug and fell into the hole, now let her get out of it. She will have her family (i.e. Daddy and Mommy) to turn and almost no matter what your relationship was with them before and even with what your wife has done, they will still take her side. In-laws are the devil when it comes to divorce, so don't let them persuade you, they are probably not looking out for YOUR best interests.

The 1 in-law has been rough for me so far. After I found out and was angered over all this, she came over and started raising her voice at me, and saying her daughter isn't a bad mother, and bringing up my family members past mistakes to try to make her daughter's not sound as bad.

She also sent a cop to my house when I got home with my daughter in our very first trade off of my daughter. So not only was it hard enough letting my girl go, I had to pull up to it with a cop on my front porch asking me if there was going to be any trouble.

[DGreenistheBest]

The 1 in-law has been rough for me so far. After I found out and was angered over all this, she came over and started raising her voice at me, and saying her daughter isn't a bad mother, and bringing up my family members past mistakes to try to make her daughter's not sound as bad.

She also sent a cop to my house when I got home with my daughter in our very first trade off of my daughter. So not only was it hard enough letting my girl go, I had to pull up to it with a cop on my front porch asking me if there was going to be any trouble.

As retarded as that is, I promise you that keeping your cool and staying civil with your wife will pay off for you. As for the in-law, she can go to hell.

[BKSkinsFan]

It sounds like even if you reconcile now, somewhere down the road you'll get fed up and finally recognize that she's not the right person. If she's the kind of person who takes advantage of how nice you are, which it sounds like it, I'd just break it off now and not prolong the inevitable.

You said exactly what my family keeps telling me over and over. It just doesn't pay to be a nice person in this world anymore.

Although through all of this, I will always be able to say I got the best thing I could have ever asked for in having an awesome daughter.

[MikeInJc aka M.I.A.]

Check out this site: www.marriagebuilders.com

Don't let the title mislead you, there are sections in there for people going through seperation and divorce. It has a network of people a forums to post questions about your problems and all the people have been through it or are going through it.

I would also advise seeking a counselor just for your own sake. I went to a marriage counselor by myself before me and the ex split and it helped me through it. Like my counselor said to me "The advice I'm going to give you will also help you in future relationships if you decide to seperate with your wife".

[BigMike619]

The 1 in-law has been rough for me so far. After I found out and was angered over all this, she came over and started raising her voice at me, and saying her daughter isn't a bad mother, and bringing up my family members past mistakes to try to make her daughter's not sound as bad.

She also sent a cop to my house when I got home with my daughter in our very first trade off of my daughter. So not only was it hard enough letting my girl go, I had to pull up to it with a cop on my front porch asking me if there was going to be any trouble.

GET REPRESENTATION NOW!!!!

She obviously is not going to show you any respect and she is going to act and do things that are not good for you or your daughter. Get a lawyer and get all of this written down and rules that will be followed.

my ex *****-in-law used to try and talk that trash to me too. she used to threaten me and get all in my face. One call from my lawyer to my ex-wife's and that was over. she isnt even allowed anywhere near when we exchange my son.