This is a summary, but I will expand on it later today. The 6th anniversary of our reconnection was about a month and a half ago, and that makes this an appropriate time to reflect and to write about what happened and where we are now.

Short version: just over six years ago, I discovered my wife had a secret email account. Motivated by curiosity, I guessed the password and started reading. I was shocked to discover that my wife did not like me at all, and was talking about divorce with her brother and friends... including an ex-boyfriend who I knew she occasionally spoke with on the phone.

In retrospect, shouldn't have been all that shocking, as my wife had been fairly cold toward me for years... and as I thought about it, I realized I had really been a terrible husband. She had gone into some detail with her friends about all of my flaws, and I had to admit that she had a point.

I was very much in shock, and I left work for a break to take a walk around the building and think. I realized that I wasn't ready to walk away, and I decided to fight for my marriage - and to earn back my wife's affection and esteem. And I realized I had an advantage that most folks don't have - I'd seen her emails, and knew exactly, in her own words, where I missed the mark and what she couldn't stand about me. She'd unintentionally given me a roadmap back (I hoped) to her heart.

I started that night...

She's very lucky to have you.

I had a similar thing happen to me (husband discovering some communication of mine about divorce, etc.) and he got very, very angry, yelled at me for "spreading my dirty laundry around", said I needed to look in a mirror and then gave me the silent treatment for a few days.

Never did address the things I wrote about.

So yes, he had valid points re: airing the laundry and looking in the mirror. However, his reaction let's just say...was not conducive to inspiring a need to want to work on it.

So again, your wife is very lucky.

Looking forward to seeing the full version. I read a partial you wrote once elsewhere, but would love the whole big picture.

A little more than five and a half years ago, I made a discovery that rocked my world and changed my life.

I had been married for about nine and a half years at that point. Our children were in kindergarten. Our life was a rather humdrum routine where my wife worked until fairly late most days, I would pick the kids up after work from day care and give them dinner before we left to pick her up from the bus stop. There wasn't a lot of affection in our marriage, nor any of the things that come with that. At least my wife was no longer as prone to get angry with me, it seemed. We had some financial problems, but were just coming out of a long repayment plan, so things were looking up on that front. I had a hobby that I was very wrapped up in, and I tended to stay up very late at night with it.

Things started to change around the holidays - right before Christmas, my wife's estranged father passed away. He had been the poster-boy for the dead-beat dad - had abandoned my mother-in-law when my wife was a baby, called them about once a year, came to visit only once or twice while they were growing up, and never paid any child support. He had been slightly more involved in her life after she was an adult, and had come out to visit us once when the kids were born, but he was very distant, had very little to do with any of his family, and had never come thru for anyone.

When he passed away, my wife and her brother had to fly out to Las Vegas, where he lived, to take care of his affairs. This was the week before Christmas, and my wife had tickets for us all to see the Nutcracker that she now had to miss out on. While she was out there, I helped her with finding an attorney who dealt with out-of-state probate matters, and when she returned, I helped her somewhat with dealing with the paperwork they needed... as her father had died intestate (without a will), there was some work to be done to claim their inheritance. Both of them stood to inherit some money - not a fortune, but a respectable sum.

One day, my wife asked me to look something over that the attorney had sent her. She printed out the email and gave it to me to review, and I took it with me to work. When I had a chance to look it over, I recognized something right away - the email address she was using was one I'd never heard of! Up to this point, she and I had shared an email address - but apparently she had set up a secret email account that she'd never told me about.

I found this to be a very disconcerting development. I decided to try to open the email account, and I was able to very easily guess the password - it was the same as our joint account. I saw her emails and thought "well, I guess I'll find out what she really thinks about me"...

I did.

For a couple of years, my wife had been complaining about me to her friends and to her brother. And not only complaining about me - she was talking about divorce. According to her emails, the only thing that was holding her back was our money problems - but once she had money, she was intending to take the kids and move back to her home city.

What a shocker... with her set to inherit money, it appeared that my marriage had about 2 months left, unless I could take this information and use it to change her mind...

OurHouse, I'm sorry to hear how your husband reacted. Like you said, his reaction didn't help the situation at all...

Lil, thanks for the kind words!

I was shocked to the core when I read those emails that my wife had written, to discover she not only didn't love me, but that she didn't even like me.

As I read through the emails, I saw her reference many events that I recalled quite well. In many of them, I started to justify to my behavior to myself. "Well, it wasn't exactly like that. I wasn't that bad. What about what she did?" But as I read, I couldn't escape realizing that, well... she had a point. I hadn't been a model husband. According to her, I hadn't been much of a husband at all.

I remember taking a walk to clear my head, leaving my desk for a short break and walking outside in the snow along the road. I told myself to calm down... I had time. Her inheritance had to go through probate, I had a couple of months. I told myself "she fell in love with you before, she can fall in love with you again." But even as I said that to myself, I knew this was different. When she fell in love with me before, she didn't have nine years of disappointment to deal with, nine years of my indifference and neglect.

When I got back to my desk, I was able to think a little more clearly. I knew I had to do something. I knew I couldn't debate her into staying... that I couldn't out-argue her. I knew the only hope I had was to give her a reason to want to stay married.

I remember realizing that I was actually very lucky... I'd discovered this before she'd come and told me she wanted a divorce. I had some advance notice. Furthermore, I had read her emails that she never intended me to read, so I saw what she had really been thinking. And I saw what her real, honest complaints about me were. It dawned on me that what I had was, in effect, a road map back to her heart.

I decided to address each complaint she had. I would quit doing all the things she said drove her crazy... and I would start doing the things she said I never did.

I didn't know if this would be enough... but I was damned if I was going to go down without giving it my all.

Thanks for reposting your story Gladstone.

Ace

Still more to come...

Looking forward to hearing more.

Ace

Another thing I saw in my wife's emails... were emails to an ex-boyfriend. While she had been friends with him for some time, and was friends with his mother, they were apparently much closer than I'd ever realized.

(Quick note, for a couple of years prior to this, my wife had taken the kids on vacation each summer with her mother to the town where he lived. My MIL and this guy's mother were very close. The town they went to is a big tourist attraction, my wife's favorite place to visit - MIL's too.)

In her emails to him, she complained about me and assured him she was going to divorce me as soon as possible. One email to him in particular made my blood freeze... it was from the summertime, right after her trip, and she was angry with him for some reason, telling him "Did you expect to have sex that first night? I told you that wasn't going to happen. If all you want is sex, let me know right now and I'll be through with you. I don't want to be lied to either by you or by my darling husband." Another email sent after that apologized for being angry, and said "Maybe communication is our problem. I don't like talking to your wife when I call on the phone." Right before her father died, she sent him an email telling him about a formal party we were going to. She told him she was looking forward to the party, but "Unfortunately, Gladstone is going with me." That hurt, because I'd enjoyed the party and I'd assumed she had as well. She signed that one "I'll be thinking of you."

Nothing was clear... although it looked like she might have had feelings for him, it wasn't clear there was an A or not. But I knew that I had to deal with the complication of a third party in the picture...

...and...

I recognized that she was done with the marriage... and that I was not. I realized I really loved my wife, and I loved my kids and did not want to see my family torn apart.

With that recognition came the realization that I could not demand that my wife stay. I could not argue her into staying. I could not MAKE her stay, period. It was very clear to me... the only thing I could possibly do was to try to change things in the marriage, to make it better for her so that she would WANT to stay.

I thought to myself that it should be do-able. After all, I reasoned, she fell in love with me once, why couldn't she fall in love with me again? But I knew the reason why not might be because the first time she fell in love with me, she didn't have years and years of resentment built up against me. And I knew that things might be too far gone to turn around.

One thing that I thought of was the plot of my wife's favorite novel, "Pride and Prejudice". We'd watched the mini-series at least 5 times over the years, so I was familiar with the plot, and I thought about the plight of Mr. Darcy, who'd injured Elizabeth Bennett to the point where she hated him and spurned his offer of marriage... and his response was to do everything he could to show her that he was not the man she thought he was. It worked for him... and perhaps something like that could work for me.

I had a little time to play with, because it would be a few months before the probate was finalized on her father's estate. Once that went through, she stood to inherit some money, and that would be enough for her to leave me and move out of state with the kids. So, I had a couple of months to try to turn things around... but that really wasn't much time.

I decided to not confront my wife... not just yet, anyway. I wanted to start demonstrating changes to her first. The first thing I did was to rectify a problem she'd had with me that very day. She had called me at work with an issue about our son that she wanted to discuss. As usual, I'd brushed her off, not really listening or saying anything, and I'd told her we'd talk about it when I got home. I'd seen in her emails that she absolutely hated it when I did that... so I called her back and initiated a new conversation with her. I asked her again about the issue she'd tried to raise, I listened, I gave her some feedback, and I told her we could finish the discussion when I got home.

When I got home, I was trying my hardest to control my emotions. Fortunately for me, I am not very emotionally demonstrative in person, so it wasn't hard. My wife was giving the kids their baths. I went upstairs to tell everyone hello, then I saw a pile of things my wife had put at the top of the stairs that needed to go downstairs. (Laundry, etc). Instead of stepping around it like I'd always done before, I picked it up and took it downstairs. (My wife noticed that when she came out of the bathroom.)

After dinner and putting the kids to bed, my wife and I went downstairs to watch tv, as usual. I brought up our son again, gave her some feedback and ideas I'd had since our last conversation, and we decided on a course of action. I then told my wife that I'd been doing some thinking, and I realized I needed to get more sleep and take better care of things. So I told her that from now on, I'd be going to bed at the same time as her instead of staying up late. In fact, I told her, I was going to put the hobby aside for a couple of months and focus on other things, like the finances. Then, I told her that I was going to go and finish her mother's tax return from the previous year - something I'd been promising to do for months, but kept putting off. I went into the den and indeed started work on the tax return. My wife came into the den at one point, probably to see for herself that I was actually doing what I'd said I was going to do.

Your 180s probably shocked her Gladstone. Helplessness in marriage follows that feeling "they'll never change, they don't care about things that aren't working for me". Admirable that you were able to immediately identify the 180s that you needed to do. And cool that she didn't know that you knew...she didn't have the feeling that you were doing in reaction to where she was at. Thanks for sharing.

What really makes a difference is when the husband/wife start making an effort to meet needs and not lovebust and do it CONSISTENTLY. Based on what I know of Gladstone's story...I think he did this. He didn't just handle laundry and taxes for a few days until he saw his wife's reaction, and then slink back to business as usual. He made a concerted effort to change.

Admirable. Unfortunately, very rare.

I agree that Gladstone may be one-of-a-kind.

Appreciate your being here and sharing your journey, GS.

Thanks,
Ace

Keep it coming Gladstone Gander.

What a gift you received.

I appreciate all the kind words, but chrisner is right - my success wouldn't have been possible without the gift of forgiveness my wife gave me, the willingness on her part to give me a second chance.

I have a bit more to post on what happened, then I'll discuss a bit of the how and why, and what might be taken away from my experience by others.

It has been just over seven years since the crisis I've written about has happened. It's been almost a year since I last updated this thread...

Lets see, where was I...

OK, I was doing her mom's taxes, which I'd put off for a long time, and generally trying to be different, now that I knew she wanted a divorce.

It was a hard evening. I did not want to confront her about what I'd found out in her emails. Maybe partly because I don't like confrontations, but mainly because I knew that if I were to have any chance at all of earning back her love, it had to be by actions, not words. I knew I couldn't out-debate her into staying - although I considered myself good with words.

When it came time for bed, I did something that probably startled her. Normally, at bedtime, she would go upstairs to bed and I would stay up for a couple of hours later, with a hobby I was obsessed with, and which she hated. I'm an introvert, I have a need for some time alone to "recharge", but I was at that time really going overboard. And the hobby was a big waste of time.

Well, on this night, when she told me she was going to bed, I surprised her by saying I would too. She looked at me oddly, and I explained that I felt I needed to get more sleep, and that I thought I needed to cut out the late nights. And so we went up together and went to bed at the same time, which up to that point was a very rare thing.

I had known all evening that I would have to put aside my hobby until I got my marriage back on track. And that evening, I had no desire to spend any time with it. So this wasn't really a big stretch for me at this time.

Of course, sleep that night was fitful. I remember thinking over the events of the day and then telling myself it was a good start - but then I had to wonder if it was enough, if anything could possibly be enough. I remember thinking "she fell in love with me once, I should be able to win her heart again", but then I had the realization that when she'd fallen in love with me before, she did not have years and years of disappointment, neglect and unhappiness standing in the way. That was a splash of cold water in my face.

When morning came around, she woke up and sat up in bed. I sat up, too, and I wrapped my arms around her and gave her a huge hug. I was behind her, so she couldn't see my face, and I remember thinking "what if this is the last time I ever get to do this?" She did not see me tearing up, but she could sense something was up, because she asked me if anything was wrong. I told her "no".

We both got ready for work, took the kids to daycare, and I drove her to the bus stop. She had to commute to get to work, taking a bus and then the metro, and I would always drop her off, then drive to my office which wasn't that far from home. As she left, she handed me a spare umbrella and told me to use it if it started to rain. I saw that as a hopeful sign, because most mornings she was very indifferent towards me.

That day, I used my downtime at work to look up and read everything I could find about marriages. I did go back and snoop at her email again to re-read the messages to the ex-boyfriend, and worried about what those might mean, but I was feeling a lot more hopeful than I had overnight, ever since her small show of concern with the umbrella.

She called me once that day, and when she did, I dropped what I was doing in order to concentrate on our conversation. This was a change from our usual phone conversations, where I would be web browsing and saying "mh hmmm" through the conversation. The phone call was a bit odd, it seemed almost like she was testing me on the phone to see how I would respond...

To Be Continued...

I love that post. I don't know if you have ever read Nicholas Sparks' The Wedding, but it reminded me of that book. I love your response to your wife's despair. it warms my heart to read things like that.

Thanks, herf. I have not read that book, but I just read a synopsis and it looks good. Funny thing... Mrs. Gladstone's first name is the same as the wife in that book...

The initial crisis in my marriage seemed to be resolved pretty quickly. She responded to my changes fairly quickly, although she did harbor some doubts.

We tiptoed around the edges of discussing things. She let me know she liked the changes and was happy that I had finally decided to come around. And one morning, I asked her if there had ever been "anyone else". She said no, although I was worried about her reply because I asked her just as I dropped her off for her bus, and she did not have time to respond properly if the answer was yes...

A couple of days after I started these changes, I was still spending time talking to her, spending time with her, and going to bed at the same time as her. I hadn't spent any time at all on my hobby - which was probably a huge signal to her. If she talked to me, I gave her my undivided attention, and if she asked me to do something for her, I did it - and I did so with a heart that genuinely wanted to do it for her, instead of one filled with resentment over the interruption into my routine.

My wife chose about this time to try to figure out what was going on. She started off by telling me that she loved how open I had become. She told me it was like having the "Old Gladstone" back. And then she asked me why...

I had sort of been expecting this. I had just read the MB material, and I wanted very much to be able to be "radically honest" with someone. By nature, I've always been very reserved and very guarded, and over the course of our marriage I had allowed myself to be dishonest with my wife - about our money problems, mostly. This was partly to keep myself out of trouble, partly because I didn't want her looking down on me. I wasn't a very good liar, though, and she always found out... and each time her esteem for me took another huge hit.

So when she asked me directly why I had changed, I wanted to be honest. I wanted to start with a clean slate. But I also knew that I was taking a big risk with being completely honest. Should I tell her about snooping her email? I had no idea how she would react. Would she be furious at my invasion of her privacy? Things were going so well now, for the first time in so many years, and the immediate crisis of having her walk out on the marriage and on me seemed to be averted. Would telling her the truth push her out the door?

I'd been thinking these thoughts over the past few days, and hadn't come to any kind of conclusion about it. Now here she was, asking me up front, and I had to make a decision, now, when I wasnt even sure which way to go.

I decided that I wanted to be honest. I suppose I realized I wanted to be an open book for her, and I suppose I realized that I needed to give her credit, to show some faith in her, but I wasn't thinking about any of that. I was thinking about what might go wrong, and honestly, I was scared. But I took a deep breath and then I told her about how I snooped her email.

I told her how I'd read about how she was unhappy, and that I'd realized she was right. And I told her I'd seen the email to her ex-boyfriend and wasn't sure how to take it. But I told her I was more worried that she wanted to divorce me, and that I wasn't going to let her do that without trying my hardest to give her a reason to want to stay married.

I told her all that... and then I stopped talking... and I waited for her response. And I remember feeling very queasy.

And she surprised me. She was not at all concerned about the invasion of her privacy. She was surprised, yes, but she owned what she'd written, even though she never meant for me to see them. And she told me that if she'd really been all that concerned about privacy, she'd have come up with a more complicated password.

And then she told me why she was concerned about the "why" in the first place. She wanted to know why I had changed, because she was worried I was only doing it because she was about to inherit money.

I think the fact that I took this enormous chance and was honest and completely open with her gave her the confidence to think that maybe, just maybe, this was for real and not just for money.

I told her then that if she wanted me to, I would sign a post-nup agreement giving up any claim to her inheritance in the event we got divorced.

I don't think that offer was anywhere near as important to her peace of mind as my honesty was.

She told me that she believed me, but that she wasn't ready to fully trust me yet. She'd been hurt too often before. I told her that she should take as long as she needed. I remember saying "I'm not going anywhere". And I asked her that, if she ever did reach that point, would she let me know.

I was reminded last week for the first time in years of my request to her, when I read her Valentine's Day card - and reminded again right now as I look over on my desk where I have the card propped up. The very first line reads "To love a man like you is to know there will always be someone whose strength I can lean on, whose honesty I can trust."

You have made me cry....the good kind.

I don't want to thread jack at all, but......THAT is what I so wanted from my H. In 2004 when I read The Wedding, I cried then too. I had just rediscovered His Needs Her Needs and had been "Plan A"ing my H. I felt just like that wife.....and all I wanted was for him to love me enough to......step up.

When I made my very difficult decision this past early summer.....there was a part of me that still hoped, though I knew it was not going to happen. And sometimes I read about walkaway wives, and how they are selfish, and how the best thing to do is to make sure they feel the full sting of being alone, and let them know you are just fine without them so they will grow up.

I already knew he was fine. I wanted him to love me. I wanted him to win me back. He did not.

But if he had done what you did, in 2004, in 2006, in 2010......

Our story might have been very different.

Sometimes, I see a situation and think that the "tough" approach is the correct one... but when there has been neglect on the part of the husband, I cannot for the life of me see how what is, in effect, more neglect can win her back.

That's why I think the husband of a Walkaway Wife absolutely needs to look at the history of the marriage and honestly evaluate his own role in the situation. And if he has been neglectful, he needs to change that.

By the way, I have downloaded "The Wedding" to my kindle and am about halfway through it. It's good.

The following is taken from my MA blog, "Glad Tidings". It relates to why I think things turned out well for me, so I am copying it over to here.

************

In our "Bad Old Days", my wife was very unhappy with me - not in love with me at all. I was not happy with the situation, and often times very unhappy with her - but I still loved her. I did not put forth any effort in the marriage, though, because she didn't. She never showed me any affection, so why should I put forth any effort?

Either one of us could have changed our behavior. If she had started showing me some affection, I'm sure that things would have gotten better. However, I also believe that if she had made the first move, any recovery of our marriage would have been short-lived.

Why do I think that? Because my selfish behaviors were the root cause of our problems.

In fact, my wife HAD been very affectionate toward me when we first married. She HAD put forth a lot of effort to be a good wife. In return, I spent more and more time on my hobby, less and less time with her, and I got into a comfortable routine of lying to her to avoid accountability for my poor financial management skills.

If she had made the first move... I believe I would have responded. I would have paid more attention to her. But I would not have gone through the soul-searching that occurred when I discovered her unhappiness. And I would not have been motivated to make my changes stick.

And why should I have? If she had made the first move, I'd have been rewarded for slothfulness and indifference. There would have been no compelling need for me to change.

My wife is a very special person - a real treasure. I lost sight of that, and her hostile feelings toward me was her response to my own indifference and neglect. And it was out of character for her. When I realized how privileged I am to have her in my life, and changed my behavior accordingly, I was astonished at how quickly she returned to the person I fell in love with.

It was as though a crushing weight were lifted from her shoulders, and she immediately snapped back into the person she really is.

Thanks for making the effort to transfer this from your blog. The above statements really stood out for me.

For us, it was my H's E/PA and ensuing 6 months of withdrawal that made me do some introspection. After posting a few weeks, I sought and found the toughest poster on MB and asked for personal help. It was often hard to hear but when I truly listened and discovered that it was NOT all my H's fault, it was a gamechanger (for the better) for us.

Again, thanks!
Ace