nimh wrote:Sympathy to photoman. I hope counselling will help, I really do. Good for you to make the decision.
Otherwise - I'm sorry to break into the thread as rudely as this - but Lady J, you wrote,
Quote:I don't know what your wife's medical or mental situation is, but just to share a bit of my own fiance's wife's experiences, she was diagnosed a long time ago as bi-polar, schizophrenic, paranoid and delusional. She has twice attempted suicide, has never worked a day in her life....either outside the home or in the home. [..]
As you pointed out, children learn what they live and they learn about relationships from their parents primarily. Good or bad. I feel your concern about your children very much and with my fiance, that was finally a big motivating factor to finally leave the relationship. [..]
That must have been a tremendously difficult decision. What happened to her after that, do you know? Did they stay in contact? Did she find a way to take care of herself?
No need to answer if its too private/painful, of course.
Hey nimh....
Thank you for asking and thank you for waiting forever for me to reply. Also not wanting to break into Mikey's thread and detract from his situation... but aspects and recounts of others experiences do relate and I have no problem sharing.
"G", the ex wife is still around and still mad as hell. She was awarded custody of their son initially but for the past year and a half my fiance has been fighting to obtain sole custody with visitation allowed for her. Sadly, she has not been able to provide a stable, nurturing or supportive environment for their son (I'll call him "M") at all. There have been numerous continuances to the custody battle. Two attorney's have quit on her, citing that she is too unreasonable and irrational to work with. A third attorney had two brain aneurism's while working with her and had to quit for medical reasons. She now has a fourth attorney and we are all keeping our fingers crossed that this time the case will actually make it to trial on its scheduled date of mid July.
During all this time of continuances and delays, she has continued her pattern of drama after drama after drama, all attention seeking and all very emotional. Her perpetual physical "ailments" have her seeing no less than 18 doctors, 7 of which are psychiatrists, psychologists and counselors. She takes huge amounts of medications, including oxycontin for all of her pain....back pain mostly, but also migraine pain, knee pain, arm pain, hip pain, etc, etc, etc. Both her mother and her father have almost "died" at least three times each during the last 18 months. She read of someone dying of complications from asthma a few weeks back and spent 3 or 4 nights in a row dashing to the emergency room because she believed she was dying of asthma too although she has never had asthma in her life before.
She currently has their son, M on 9 different medications (he's only 11!) for allergies, asthma, ADHD, Acid Reflux Disease, eczema and god only knows what else.
During this past school year, he was either tardy or missed school altogether more than 40 times, because she either could not get herself out of bed in the morning to get him to the bus or she said he was too sick to go. One rare morning when M was actually getting breakfast at home, he was eating too fast and starting choking a bit (as we all have done from time to time, right?) and she kept him home from school because he might be sick.
She constantly fights with M, he tells his dad that he is always grounded when he's at his mom's house. One day M got tired of listening to her constantly yelling at him and he went into his bathroom and locked the door to get away from it. G kicked the door down, ripping it off its hinges in her anger. She bought M a cell phone (at 11) so she could keep in touch with him while he was visiting his dad. He lost the first phone so she bought him another and calls him sometimes up to a dozen times a day. She bad mouths his dad in front of and to M. M never looks forward to going back to his moms house after his visitations with dad and has asked his dad on numerous times if he could just stay with him. Luckily, he (M) will be able to speak to the judge one on one during the custody trial once it finally arrives.
God, I could go on an on and on, and I realize I haven't even answered your question directly at all. In a nutshell, no. She has not found a way to take care of herself. She is the consummate example of "Peter Pan" syndrome, she simply cannot grow up and face adulthood and needs someone to take care of her. That is being handled by her aging parents and her one sister who is very similar to her. Financially, she receives almost 2 grand a month in alimony and child support and is always asking for more. What she receives above and beyond that, I can only assume is provided by her folks.
We have no idea how she may react if she loses custody of M. We are preparing for the worst and hoping for the best. Her odds of retaining custody don't look very promising at this time. I'll keep you posted as this progress if you like. If nothing else, it should be an interesting and possibly very sad ride.
