Sometimes, life goes off the rails and something happens that is really awful. Then the person who has gone through this awful thing has to go on with the rest of their life. When I was young, I could understand how people are often permanently damaged by what happened to them that was extremely painful. What I couldn't understand was how come some people (perhaps only a minority) can manage to survive terrible emotional pain and, yet, not be permanently crippled by it. Years and years of living (I'm no longer young) have given me an answer. First there's what happens to us. Then there is the way we think about what happened to us. I believe that what destroys a person in his our her soul is not usually the bad thing that happened, but the way that the person thinks about what happened. Those people who come through that dark valley and end up okay seem to have a mindset that either refuses to go in certain directions, or at least refuses to remain stuck going in a direction that is without hope. For one thing, they don't bog down in endlessly lamenting that something bad happened.

I watched a documentary about a woman who had a horrible childhood. When she was 4 years old her mother, who was a drug addict, started selling her to pedophiles. She was sold to man after man after man to be abused. At the time the film was made she was living a good life and going around helping counsel young women who are being helped to recover from living on the streets using drugs and selling themselves, or being captive and sold. Most people with her past end up destroyed. How is it possible for anyone not to be? How can anyone come out of that horror and not be a total wreck for the rest of their life? She refused to believe that she was ruined and that her life was ruined. That seemed to make all the difference. She was very uneducated and seemed not to have learned all the modern theories about how a bad childhood can permanently damage a person. I think that worked in her favor.

What happened to that young woman when she was a child should never, never, ever, ever have happened to her. Anyone could have forgiven her, if she had spent the rest of her life weeping and lamenting how what her mother did to her should never have been done or allowed to have happened. But she chose a different direction to go in.

I'm sorry, if I sounded unsympathetic to your pain, DadFNF. I'm not. All we know is what you have told us. I think, all of us on this thread, respect your honesty and feel you are in a tough situation where it doesn't seem to us that you are being dealt with fairly. It is sad, and it involves the welfare of two children. No one wants to toss out advice that isn't thoughtful and sensitive. We haven't said, "Oh just go get a divorce and move on." as you have accused us of saying because you're not really listening. We're not trying to just see some "easy" way of dealing with things, as you have accused us of doing.

What you're doing is dangerous. What you're doing to yourself is potentially more damaging to you than your wife leaving you. It's awful to experience the collapse of a marriage, especially if you're someone who has taken the marital commitment seriously, as you seem to be. It's normal to have a hard time coming to grips with what you do next. But you can come through this and be okay, whether you and your wife reconcile or not. Be cautious about what kind of thoughts you let hang around in your mind. You can become your own worst torturer.

When a tornado hits a town and levels all the houses, I feel sorry for the residents of that town. Over here is, maybe, an 80 year old woman who can't rebuild her home and may find her next stop is a nursing facility where she will live out her remaining days. What happened to her is awful and she may not realistically have the resources and time to recover from what happened. It's sad. Down the road, maybe, is her neighbor who is 35 years old. His house being demolished is sad too. But his tragedy is not on the same level. He should be able to recover and rebuild. He is strong and has lots of time to put things back in order. Maybe he lost a family member who got hit in the head with a flying piece of debris. He mourns. Then he gathers the family that is left and begins anew. His life still has purpose. Your life still has purpose. Your life is a story that, right now, is sad. But the rest of the story has yet to be written. You will be the author of that story.

If anything you read here us not helpful to you, then ignore it. It's just opinion.