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Old Nov 06, 2022, 02:21 PM
*Beth* *Beth* is offline
catches the flowers
 
Member Since: Jul 2019
Location: Downtown Vibes, California
Posts: 15,701
It is great that each of you (other than your wife) are in therapy. I so wish you and the kids could be in family counseling so you could learn to handle the situation as a team.

I have stated many times on this forum that I will not suggest to someone that s/he leave a relationship based upon the little we know here, on the forum. Upon reading over your family life, specifically your relationship with your wife, if everything is as you present it (I am NOT intimating that I don't believe you, only that I have happened across some shockingly strange situations online), I firmly believe that you and your children are living in a genuinely traumatic situation and that there needs to be a separation.

I am not suggesting divorce, only that you and your wife live separately for enough time that you (and she) decide the next steps to take. It may be that you need to pick up the kids and move to an apartment. Not easy, but I've done it myself and it can be accomplished. It really can, and loads of people do it.

It may take a firm decision from you to awaken your wife to reality, and to subsequently get professional help for herself. It's pretty clear that while her alcoholism is a huge problem, there are other things going on with her. That she has connections with friends tells me she isn't isolating; she knows how to have relationships, and does so well enough that (I assume) her friendships maintain. So her focus, resentment, bitterness, is solely on you and on her marriage and immediate family. To me that may rule out mental illnesses that cause, for example, paranoia or delusions. It sounds like she has developed a "negative fixation" on you. Essentially, an obsessive fixation regarding, for example, the porn. She seems to be unable to let go of that fixation because it truly is an obsession.

Something else that comes to mind is that at her age she may be approaching (or in) a really rough menopause. IF she would speak with her gynecologist hormone therapy could change her overnight. Menopause is seldom discussed, but truthfully, it can pack a very, very severe wallop.
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Thanks for this!
seesaw