Another crumby day

Today started out well. But now I can't get my wife out of my mind. I can't get it out of my mind that she spent all evening with her boyfriend alone at her apartment. I am hurting again tonight. I can't shake the thoughts. My imagination is being a real douche. I close my eyes and see images of her with him in ways I don't want to describe. I cant turn it off tonight, I think its going to be a long night.

I wanted to have a good night with her tonight.
I made a plan to take her and all of the kids to Beauty and the Beast 3D if she would go.
The conversation got out of hand so fast, I really don't even know what happened.
 I really cannot effectively communicate with her at all, and I don't know any way that I can take the blame for that. I asked her a second time for her ssn and her new address for divorce papers tonight and she somehow interpreted it as me trying to screw her out of everything.
A couple months ago we went to lunch and we talked about what we wanted and reached a general consensus and agreement. I told her I would fill them out with her when she was ready, and even brought it up several times on bad days. She never wanted to take the time to fill out the papers. Finally the other night, I realized it was time and I was going to fill out the divorce papers and file them myself if she wasn't wanting to do it with me. She is self-admittedly in an intimate, sexually-active relationship with her boyfriend. She doesn't care about getting a divorce unless it happens to work as ammunition to throw a fit, act the victim, or get something at the particular moment she is in. I've decided to let her move on the right way. I filled out papers exactly how we discussed. Giving her the more reliable, valuable car, giving her the majority of our last joint tax return, giving her the agree'd upon time with Grayson. I actually went above what she asked for and said I would cash out my 401k and give her half of the cash. I'm trying to do this as fair and reasonably as I can, but because I'm the one filling out the papers she goes on defense and threatens me to make it as hard as possible on me. What the heck am I supposed to do?!? I thought I was doing everyone a favor by filling out and filing the papers. I still want her back, I still think if she would only let me I could make her happy. I'm doing this so that she isn't committing adultery anymore, because whether she cares or not right now, I think she will face a lot of pain about these decisions in the future and the sooner she can be committing fornication as opposed to adultery, the better. I'm doing this because I'm a failure at making her happy, and I want her to find that somewhere somehow, even if it isn't me.

It hurts to see our relationship in such ruins I can't even ask her to go see a movie with me.

I often ponder, if I had the knowledge and insight that I do now last April-ish, if I could have made things work. If I knew then what I know now, would things have turned out differently?

I'm starting to think that it wouldn't have helped anything. From the first moments of our problems, when she said she wanted a divorce, but she would move downstairs for a few weeks at first, she was seeking comfort from other men.
A couple days ago, my thoughts were that if I had only given her the space she asked for upfront, that it would have given her the opportunity to cope herself before trying to cope with the relationship. Now I don't think she would have used the time effectively if I had given it to her. I think we would have found ourselves in this exact situation a lot sooner.
In some ways the space of her moving out and only texting here and there has been nice. It has allowed me to attempt to emotionally distance myself from her. I don't know if I am just pretending, or if the pain is really getting more bearable seeing her boyfriend in my car while she drops off my son. Lately my blood hasn't gone to insta-boil. I've been able to shrug it off by making fun of him for having matching jewelry with my wife. I've been able to not dwell on it. Not tonight.

I don't know if my numbness is a good thing, or a bad thing. Sure, its nice to not feel my heart ripped to pieces every moment of every day, but the pain and suffering is what inspired my personal growth. Am I no longer finding reason in this? Am I no longer using it to progress into a better person? Am I feeling less pain because my life is slightly drifting to a lesser place? I don't know the answer to these questions. I pray that I can have the strength and ability to wake up every morning, and be a better person than I was the day before.

I'm going to start telling a story here and there from the last year of my life to share my story and get it off my chest.

I'm going to start with sometime in May 2011. The night I told her I was addicted to pornography.

It shattered her whole existence. I will NEVER forget her face that night, and the remorse I feel for causing it. It still causes tears to come to my eyes. This face was my entire motivation for turning my life around until a few months ago. She told me she wanted to be left alone, so I went into our bedroom and laid down. It must have been 30 minutes or so later I heard a "thud" and I went and saw that she had fallen off of a kitchen chair while getting a coloring book off the top of the fridge. She said she was fine, and told me to go away. A few minutes later I heard the cupboard open and quietly went back into our kitchen to find she had already consumed an obscene amount of alcohol. Nearly two large bottles of whine-cooler, at least a third of a fifth of Whiskey, and was in the process of drinking a mug full of Brandy. I didn't leave her side for the next 7 hours watching for any signs that she needed to go to the doctor. She was such a wreck.
Keeping her from falling down stairs all night, falling off chairs, laying on the floor bawling for 30+ minutes at a time because she couldn't move. She went into the backyard by rolling over the railing of our steps and falling a good 5 feet. Then she came inside and exhibited her most typical symptom of drinking, a desire for sexual intimacy, but I told her no. I kissed her, I held her, I told her how sorry I was and how I wish I could take everything I had done back, but I told her I wouldn't go there in her current state of inebriation and emotional distress. Her reaction was a textbook example of my life even to this day in regards to our relationship. She screamed at me, she told me she wasn't attractive enough for me. Eventually after what seems like hours of ripping into me, calling me a worthless piece of &*$, then coming down on herself because of her physical self-image, she drifted off to sleep and I watched her until the sun rose the next morning so I could ensure she kept breathing.

The next day, I thought she would appreciate my not taking advantage of her in such a vulnerable state, but no. I got yelled at again. The thing is, I KNOW that if I had given into her advances, I would have been wrong, I would have been taking advantage of her, and if she did remember, she would have hated me for it. The last year of my life, I genuinely can't think of a single situation where my decision actually mattered. She is prepared to take offense at either direction I go.

I wish more than anything I had never caused her this pain. I wish I had never caused her this inner turmoil and hurt. She isn't this person she is pretending to be now. She KNOWS the damage she is doing to herself and our children by being in this extramarital relationship. She felt that pain herself through my pornography and through her first husbands actions that landed him in prison.
I believe it was January 1st. The last night she slept here at home. I was going on a business trip and asked her to come over a couple nights before I left so we could spend some time together. She was tucking the girls into bed and stepped on a block, and her initial gut reaction was yelling the f word. Right there in the girls room, over stepping on a block. That is not the woman I know and love. She has such bitterness and hurt inside. I wish I could take it all away.

One sunday, she was very emotional. I had made a habit of attending church weekly at this point, on the weeks she would go she would refuse to sit as a family or associate with me, so her very limited attendance didn't influence mine. She had a huge problem with me going without her, but I knew I couldn't win and I knew what I needed most in life. If I went to church, I was being self-righteous and condescending. I decided to stay home and do my best to nurture her this particular week, I thought that was the most important thing I could do that day. I don't think I stopped getting criticized for missing church that week for two months. It "proved that I was just a fake." I can't win.

In hindsight I think the reason she wouldn't sit by me, and would never go with me was an act. She had "vented" to ladies in the ward; exaggerated, and straight up lied about things I had done. The ladies in the ward thought I was seeing other women during our marriage, they thought I was going to strip clubs, they thought I was abusive, they thought I used porn as a weapon to hurt my wife, they thought I had partook of prostitution, and worst of all, they thought I raped my wife.
I cheated on my wife while we were dating, and I had an addiction with pornography in our marriage. These are the two ways I was untrue. I was 100% in the wrong, but I think cheating in marriage and before marriage are two separate issues.
Was I a dirt bag? Yes.
Do I blame her for not wanting to be married to someone who would do that? No.
Am I an abusive, sex crazed, prostitute visiting, rapist? Absolutely not.
Looking these women in the eye at church every week was extremely hard. It took all my strength to smile and just wait for their beliefs of me to be proven wrong over time... and that was before I started seeing Facebook messages from them, and my extended family to my wife giving her advice on how to take my son away from me.
Overcoming that bitterness has been one of the biggest struggles of my life.
But I look back now, going on a year later, and I can't remember exactly how bad the pain hurt. I can't duplicate those feelings. People are starting to see what is really happening, and for that I am extremely grateful. My life has slowly been filled with true friends. People who know me, and trust me, and have my back. I remember not even being able to describe the pain of some of the most important people in my life thinking these things about me, I remember being reduced to sobs for hours on numerous occasions, and this being a part of that pain that brought about the deepest despair and hurt I've ever felt. I am eternally grateful for the memory of the pain and the lessons learned from it, but no can't begin to express my gratitude for longer having it as a daily struggle in my life.

Think what you want of me, it doesn't matter. I have true friends I can rely on, and ultimately the only people I have to answer to are my bishop, my wife, and the lord. All three of those people know, or can know through inspiration the realities of what they are told, and obviously know if they are spewing hateful lies.