@mr_rouge Ok here's an update.
Back in the summer I was suspicious that Sarah was maybe having an affair with a friend. (I call him Steve. Not his real name.) There were a lot of red flags but no solid evidence. She was going out running a lot. She would schedule a time for a run and then change it, and change it again, or even cancel it. Some days she got kitted up in running gear, first thing in the morning, and wore it all day like she was waiting to find out the time of her run. Once or twice she wore it all day and then never went. She was constantly messaging on her phone.
Towards the end of July her father fell ill and she had to spend a week away caring for him. When she returned things seemed to have changed. All of the red flags disappeared. She didn’t go running at all through August. Instead of gushing on about how my friend is ‘hilarious, chilled out, cool, super fit, etc’ (as she previously had) the only times that she mentioned him were to point out that he’s ‘unreliable’ or ‘doesn’t even know what day it is.’
I figured that maybe something had happened between them but, if it did, now it is over. Our sex life, which had gone so cold that I wondered why she even bothered, ramped up again. Everything was great. We were as emotionally close and affectionate as we have ever been. Lots of hugging and kissing and laughing in the day time. Holding each other all night in bed. Hence the long wait for an update.
But then, two weeks ago....
Another friend of mine, (who is very paranoid,) got the idea in his head that the girl that he’s been seeing recently might have the hots for Steve. He managed to convince himself that something had happened between them on a Friday night. (This girl actually lodges in Steve’s house since about a month ago.)
So on the Saturday I happened to tell Sarah this, just as a funny story, because the guy is so ridiculously paranoid, and it was all a bit far fetched. He'd put a lot of two and two together and made anything but four out of any of it. Sarah agreed that it was delusional and otherwise shrugged it off.
The next day (Sunday) an odd thing happened. Sarah insisted on going for a walk in the afternoon. She walked off in the direction of Steve’s house. There is nothing suspicious about that you might think. But...
There was a bitterly wild storm raging that day. The wind was howling. The rain was driving. It was thouroghly unpleasant to go out in. She insisted on going alone and got all pissy at me when I suggested that I go with her. Most unusually, in preparing for her walk, she put on make up and changed her glasses for contact lenses. (She only ever usually does that for an evening out.) When she came back she immediately had a shower and she made sure to put her panties straight into the washing machine. But not the other clothes that she was wearing, all of which she put back on, after her shower. That night in bed she wouldn't let me touch her pussy saying 'Things are not good down there' despite being about 8 days post last period.
Obviously there are a lot of twos there which I could make add up to anything but four. And, given my suspicions from earlier in the summer, I was concerned that she had been to visit Steve, but I put it down to paranoia and let it go.
Since then, all of a sudden, our relationship seems to have radically changed. Throughout the next week (week before last) she was cold and she berated me remorselessly about various perceived flaws in my personality or behavior.
She went to great lengths to prepare me for the fact that she was going to have to work at the next weekend, leaving me with the kids, although she couldn’t say when. When the weekend came it transpired (over the course of the weekend with much phone checking) that she apparently didn’t need to go to work and she didn’t go anywhere.
Then over the last week she’s been insufferable. She flies into a rage at the slightest thing. She demands my full attention at all times, To the extent that she’s been angry and jealous if I play a card game with a seven year old. She keeps complaining that I don’t want to spend time with her. That I’m not interested in her. That she doesn’t matter to me. She is last on my list. Etc Etc. Nothing I do changes this. And I don't understand where it is coming from.
Whenever I dedicate time to her she seems to engineer an argument based around the same ‘you don’t want me’ vibe. Then she storms off. We don’t hug or kiss in the day time. She doesn’t want to be held at night. I’ve been racking my brain to try to work out what I’m doing wrong. But thinking back to that walk in the storm, and the subsequent weekend that she spent waiting for a call to work that never came, I’m wondering if maybe it’s not about me at all.
To give an impression of the depths that we are now plumbing:
Last night I put the kids to bed. After I had done that I found her sat on the sofa. She looked at her watch. She said she was timing me. To see how long I took to come straight to her after I put the kids down. She said it was three minutes. I was like… ‘well I put the dishwasher on as I went past the kitchen’.
Then she asked me to make her a cup of tea and did I have any chocolate? So I make her a cup of tea and bring it to her. She complains that I took too long, I go to leave the room. She has a fit at me ‘… Where are you going now?’
I say ‘To get the chocolate that you asked for, it’s upstairs’.
She’s not happy. I come back with the chocolate and she starts fitting at me because the kids went to bed and I’ve, since then, spent no time with her.
I’m like… ‘well I just been making you a cup of tea, that you asked me to make, and then been off upstairs to fetch you this chocolate that you asked for.’
She carries on ranting and I try to defend myself (maybe a mistake). Then she accuses me of ‘always having an excuse’ and storms off to sulk in the bedroom. Leaving me gazing into the fire wondering what the fuck??
I go up twice, to try to talk her down, but it just results in similar arguments that basically consist of her accusing me of not wanting to spend time with her, me contesting that accusation, and her then telling me that she’s ‘over it’ (whatever it is) and that she’s going to ‘do her own thing’ from now on.
I feels like our marriage has started to come apart in the last fortnight.