Friends vs. Family and The Tipping Point

She's been out somewhere most Saturday nights, returning home on Sunday morning, often drunk. I put our 5-year-old to bed with lame excuses as to why Mommy is not here again.

She tells me that she is out with friends. She says that after 13 years together, we must split up because we argue too much. She tells me that she doesn't want to analyze or fix it. She says that her friend Nannette is more important than her marriage.

Nannette and my wife go out a lot. Ever since I introduced them (because Nannette's husband was a friend of a friend). Since that time they go out together in skimpy outfits that are more suited for women (literally) half their age, who probably have jobs involving a floor-to-ceiling pole.

I tried to justify a coordinated attempt at reconciliation by pointing out that our daughter would be better off with a real family. But my wife doesn't agree.

It is ironic because for several years I tried to get my wife to be more sociable and even be a little more sexy when we went out at night. She resisted. Now she is the life of the party that I am not invited to.

It is a little tragic because for years she was possesive and controlling to ridiculous extremes, which created lots of arguments and resentment. For years I made brave attempts to be closer while she drifted away. For years I complained that she wasn't trying to be a couple, and she could only agree without any explanation.

Now she is not possesive or controlling or socially phobic. Now she is painting the town red, but the resentment from those earlier conflicts has damaged the relationship to the point of no return.

It is worrisome because there is a pattern here. Her mother was an alcoholic who stayed out all weekend getting drunk. This traumatized her, as she was often left in the parked car while her mother and step father were in the bar. Her father had to leave due to his wife's infidelity and was never around enough for his daughter. She remembers this and has trouble with it still.

Yet she does the same.

She is a good mother on most other accounts. You would think she would appreciate her own history and recognize the pattern.

It started a couple years ago with Nannette and John. They would go out with us to a restaurant or bar. The conversation and socializing was often exclusive with me on the outside. Then it progressed to them going out while I stayed home to watch the baby. Then it was regular drinking from which I was explicitly excluded. "No, you can't go with us."

That was irritating. We had problems anyway. I tried to negotiate deals where she could go out whenever she wanted but she had to go out with just me an equal number of times. That is, she had to go on a date with her Husband. The guy she married and vowed to love.

Nah. She would not even agree to it verbally. Can't do it.

Then things boiled over when I drove to the bar to see what she was doing one night. I had never done it before or since. When I got there, around midnight, I could see her through the window of the bar, dancing, hugging, and open-mouth kissing, and generally being mauled by Mark--a surfer dude from work.

My heart stopped. I went inside and watched with the rest of the crowd as my wife then put her tongue down her friend Molly's throat. And as if this wasn't enough of a display, she then stumbled over to Nannette and honked both her oversized breasts. My wife was not wearing her wedding ring.

She laughed and acknowledged the cheers from those nearby. I stood there, sweating, at the bar as she turned toward me.

She saw me standing there and turned white and tried not to look like she was having a stroke. I was too shocked to know what to do, except to tell her not to come home tonight.

I left, went to a friend's to calm down and then went home. She was already there with her partners, Nannette and John. They were huddled in the kitchen with no lights on. I went in, and started for the stairs and my guest bedroom.

John stopped me and in a drunken haze started getting in my face and warning me that he is going to call the police.

Excuse me?

Apparently John thought that I was going to kill my wife. A welcome fantasy, but there was more hurt than anger at the time. I really wanted to lock myself in my room and think of a happy place. But John persisted with rather ridiculous threats. They were going to leave, he told me, with my wife and my 3-year-old daughter.

OK. Here is where I have to draw the line. Three very drunk and excited people are not going to wake up my daughter, put her in a car, and drive away. I told him so and I suppose he thought better of it. When he finished being a dick, I locked myself in my room and tried to digest the new reality. In the morning, Nannette was in bed with my wife, for protection or maybe body heat, who knows.

Since that incident, we calmed down. She stopped going out for a little while, but she could not commit in word or deed to being a couple. No hugs, no kisses, no open conversations. She was polite but cold.

Then, 2 years later, this year, during an argument about why she doesn't try to be closer, she revealed that she was planning a divorce.

So now we have the divorce negotiation.