[imcarthur]

Staying in a loveless marriage - yeah, like many I was there. I had hunkered down for the long term. 2 kids (6 & 9), on our 3rd house climbing the lower middle class, pool, pets, necrophiliac sex once a week. I worked for the family cash & I cooked when I wasn't on the road. She kept the house stocked & the kids organized. Perfect on the outside, horribly wrecked internally. She knew it but I couldn't admit it. I was two people for years. Me – the one my kids, co-workers & friends enjoyed & the zombie that was just for her. Then one day in May, I confronted her with questions about her social network & she informed me that she was going on a date. Yeah, that went over well. I stayed for another 3 seething months & then we did 6 months of trial separation swapping a house/cruddy rental with only one of us in the house with the kids at a time. That was a bad move btw. An evil time. The kids saw it but we both kept them shielded from the worst. I made the decision to totally pull the plug – she was too weak to do it – in January, standing in a bordering lounge in Las Vegas after a show. Over the next year, I descended to depths . . . it wasn't pretty.

My kids survived it all reasonably well but they did have some minor scars that surfaced later. We were able to identify them early & deal with them since we had both moved on to better relationships. My new wife’s son was a different matter & he took more than a decade to normalize due to deep scars over their break up. Principals, social workers, Psychologists, psychiatrists, lock-down schools, cops, judges + 13 years. I can honestly say that my participation in his normalization is one of my life’s biggest accomplishments.

Financially, I lost everything & had to start completely over at 38.

Counsel your friend to move on if he asks. Life is too short.

Ian