“We Divorced, Remarried… Now She Wants to Date Again?”

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All right, folks, we have a new Dear DSO entry on the website. You can submit your own story or question to to deardso.com. That is deardso.com. Fill out the form, and if it's a good one, I will create a video out of it for the whole world to see, or for our podcast listeners to listen to on the Dad Starting Over podcast, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you may listen to your podcasts. And if you're watching this on YouTube, do me a big solid favor. If you could please click down below on subscribe, click on like, and then leave a comment. It will help me out a great deal. Thank you all so very much. Now on to today's submission. This one comes from— he gives his full name. Guys, don't give your full name. I don't know if this is a make-believe name. I assume it's not, uh, but, uh, I don't want to read the name in case you're giving away some really personal stuff here, which most of you do. So I'm just going to call him Ned. Uh, he says, hello Ralph, hope all is well. I want to start by saying thanks for the guidance and your latest book, Divorce Panic. Let me just stop you there. That is not my latest book. That's actually book number 2 out of 4 books. I wrote that one years ago. It used to be titled Now What? and then we redid it and retitled it, put a bunch of new material in it, reorganized things, and call it Divorce Panic. And you can learn more at divorcepanic.com, available on all the major retailers— Amazon, Apple Books, everything in between— where you can download a copy PDF format directly from our website. He says, I'm a 39-year-old active duty Army special ops, 19 years and going. Been married for 18 years. She and I divorced at year 6 and got remarried a year later and been together ever since. I'm chuckling because this is par for the course when it comes to military marriages. A lot of drama, if you guys don't know. That's just kind of— I don't know what it is. Somebody needs to write a book on the military life and how it lends itself to all kinds of drama, infidelity, all kinds of craziness. And I say that as a military brat. My father was career military, U.S. Air Force. Guy on our team, Jason, who's the head of our coaching on at Help for Men, he is a career military guy as well, recently retired from the US Army. So we have a special affinity for the military guys. So I'm not, you know, badmouthing military guys in any way, but any military dude will tell you, yeah, there's something going on. There's a whole lot of chaos in the marriage world in the military on both sides, the men and women. He says, we have two boys, ages 14 and 18, and the youngest is on the spectrum. Interesting. Just as a side note, spectrum means autism spectrum. It's one of several disorders that fall, falls under the category of neurodivergence or neurodiversity, you'll hear it called. ADHD also falls under that, obsessive-compulsive, dyslexia, autism spectrum disorder. And often when you suspect that there may be something wrong with your kid and you get the diagnosis of autism disorder or any of those others neurodivergence Um, the clinician practitioner will turn to mom and dad and say, okay, which one of you two has autism as well, or ADHD as well, or something like that? There's a strong genetic component to this. It just didn't come out of nowhere. It's often passed down generation to generation. But I digress. Um, he says, we, uh, sat down last week and man, let me say, I've seen some shit, but that was emotional as fuck, he says. Uh, We both meet while in the Army at 20 and married a year later at 21. They typically don't waste any time, but again, military thing. I deployed to Afghanistan, and while away in 2009, I found out that she cheated. Uh, I came home, we worked it out, but ultimately never healed. Uh, not uncommon. Uh, I've since to date used it as leverage in arguments. So either you get past it or not. You can't keep bringing it back up in future arguments. Well, yeah, well, you did this and this and this. Not good. I hear a lot of guys say that about when they were busted cheating, and then their spouse brings— still brings it up on an almost daily basis 30 years later. Um, I've grown into an anxious attachment style. You've grown into that. Typically it's something you always have. Uh, with— interesting— with NPD traits. He's talking about himself now. Narcissistic personality disorder. You're very anxious, but you also have NPD traits. Interesting. We all have narcissistic traits, but to call yourself a full-blown narcissist or have narcissistic personality disorder, it's, mm, I don't know, something's going on there. And he says he always feels like she's up to something, but she wasn't. So paranoia, is that a result of her past transgressions? You know, that's not unusual when somebody cheats on you. You're constantly like, who are you with? Who are you calling? What are you doing? It's not unheard of. She's always been the one to handle the domestic things due to me being gone a lot. Understandable. But then he says, I feel like I failed as a husband and as a father. I feel like I'm the abuser due to my NPD and only seeing things from my reality, as she puts it, he says. Let's hang on to that one. Put that on the back of our mind for now. I've been in therapy for these disorders and PTSD. Okay, so Have you been formally diagnosed? That's very important. Or is this something with the NPD? Or is this something that your spouse has said to you as a way to get you to back off? I think you're a narcissist. I think you're this. I think you're that. Pretty common. Um, somebody is gaslit is the term they use where, um, talking about gaslighting somebody where you deny their reality and say, oh no, no, you're seeing things wrong. It's actually this instead. No, no, no, I'm not the bad guy. You're the narcissist here, not me. It's like, oh well, shit, maybe I am bad. And they end up going to therapy and getting help, and the therapists all say to them, dude, you're not narcissistic, or you're not this and that, you're not bipolar, you're not, you're not a sex addict, you're fine. It's your spouse there is trying to pull a fast one on you. You know, it's not unusual. Is that what's going on here, or did— were you genuinely diagnosed with NPD? I'm just curious. This is where I wish there was more detail and we could actually talk back and forth. I thought we were good until one day I get a text saying if she doesn't act now, I'll manipulate her and she'll succumb to the cycle again. If she doesn't act now, are you away maybe from home? And she's like, texts you and says, I want a separation now because if I wait till you come home, then you're just going to manipulate me and convince me to stay with you. Maybe she's got a point. I don't know. Again, just taking your word for it. We don't know what's going on here. We don't know her side of the story. There's always two sides of the story. Um, but anyway, he says, a part of me wants to let her go due to guilt, but then I feel that they can work it out. Um, she told me that she wants to still date and do things as a family, still date each other, date others, do things as a family, and then she wants to reevaluate us at the 6-month, 6-month mark. It's hard to say. Um, I'm lost as to what I should do. She feels that I will fail before the 6-month mark. Any insight would be great. Okay, so many questions.

This—

she wants to date others, you, does she just want to date you? She had the past affair. Are you concerned that she's in the middle of doing that again, hence the separation? It's very common. I want to be separate from you. Why? So I can further explore this relationship with this new person over here without you being the distraction, to alleviate some of the guilt of doing that. We're formally separated. I can do whatever, you know. Um, has she gaslit you to the point where you think you're narcissistic? Number one, I will say this: if you in fact have NPD, I would say any therapist would say the same thing. And let me just say this before I get— go down that road: not a therapist, not a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. I have no formal training on this in any way, shape, or form, education otherwise. Well then, Ralph, what are you doing giving out advice here? Well, I started a blog, wrote books, which turn into videos, a private community for men doing coaching or mentoring, if you want to call it that, for guys. And for whatever reason, it's ended up being this Dear DSO thing. A lot of people are writing to me, and in turn I give my thoughts and advice back. And for whatever reason, people seem to like it. So, um, but I always give the caveat of, do I have depression, anxiety? Don't know, dude. That's above my pay grade, way above. Need to go get professional help with that. And there's nothing wrong with that. I work well in tandem with the professionals. In fact, I have therapists that refer people to me, their clients or patients, whatever you want to call them, to me saying, you need to go join this guy's community. It's a good secondary level of help in addition to therapy and working on these foundational issues. You need to go work with other men, work with this guy. He can mentor you through some of this post-divorce stuff or dead bedroom stuff. And my book, The Dead Bedroom Fix, is frequently recommended by a lot of therapists. Thank you so much, guys out there. If you're a therapist and I've admitted it. But anywho, with all that being said, you're starting to raise some flags here with her past infidelity. She's saying that you are seeing things only from your reality, and she wants the separation. She still wants to date. I assume that means others, I don't know, or does that mean you? She— but she still wants to do things as a family. That always throws men for a loop. Like, I thought she's dumping me. Why does she want to hang out with me and go do these things with the kids? And it's You know, think of it this way. Not saying that this is what she's doing, but this is relatively common. I hear it often. I've done videos on this where a guy will discover an affair. It's out in the open. Everybody knows about it. Mom's thinking about doing the divorce thing. He's trying to hang on like crazy and keep the family together. He's a very codependent guy and he wants to hang on to this person even though they flat out rejected him. And, um, uh, she will want to go through all the motions of this family stuff. Let's go to this Christmas thing together with my family. Let's go to this kid's sports thing and just makes the guy, you know, his head is spinning. Like, does this mean we're a couple or not? What's going on? And you don't realize that they want to keep whatever semblance they have of safety and security and normalcy. Yes, probably for the outside world to see and think that everything's good, and also for the kids, and also for their own safety and security. And to hell with the fact that they're continually hurting feelings of their now ex-spouse. You know, I've had guys talk about their— they discover the wife's affair and the wife's like, hey, you caught me, it is what it is, let's get a divorce. And then she'll proceed to have conversations with new boyfriends friend right in front of husband and kids. The kids are crying. They're like, what's going on? Mom's acting crazy. The guy has a panic attack. Had a guy talked about— I did talk about this in a video where a man said that they were on their way like to a big road trip for some big soccer thing, and in the middle of it, the soon-to-be ex-wife just takes out her phone or answers the phone and has a long like romantic homosexual conversation with her boyfriend in front of husband and kid who's right in the back seat. And kids start crying. The guy has a panic attack right there in the car. All hell broke loose. We don't get it because we can't get it because we're not nutty like them in that moment. There's nothing to understand. It's just, it's chaos in their brain. They don't get it and they never will get it. And it's not up to you to try to understand that. I don't know if that's in fact what's going on here. Wouldn't surprise me, but we don't know enough to form an opinion either way, to be honest with you. So my advice, Ned, is distance. If she says, I'm out of here, I need distance, Let her have her distance. Go ahead, go. What are you going to do, put her in a cage? No, no, you must stay. You can't do that. So, okay, I understand. Hate for that to happen. You don't want to go get help together, you and I. I understand, but go ahead. Yes, but that may result in the end of the relationship. True, probably more likely it will. Should this relationship be a thing, you know, from the start? You're painting the picture of a lot of chaos here. You together, you meet her, one year later you're already married. That's pretty quick. I know some people disagree with me, but sorry, that's pretty damn quick. Um, soon after that you get a divorce, and then soon after that you remarry, and then there's the adultery and all. Dude, this is just a freaking mess, man. What are you doing? Um, and now she wants a separation too. Ah, sweetheart, one of you at some point's got to raise your hand and say I'm the adult here. This is nuts. Can we just stop being nuts? Let's take care of this kid. Yes, go do your thing. I'll do my thing. I wish you all the best. I really do. I hope everything works out with you, but obviously us two together, this is just chaos. This is nuts. Or you both say, this is nuts. This is chaos. Let's work on this. Let's work together. But you can't when one of you says, I'm out of here. I want a separation. I want to go do my thing. Doesn't work that way, dude. Can't have your cake and eat it too. So let her go, see what happens. All you can do is continue being a great dad to that kiddo. Don't go being contentious and mean and go screwing everything in town to try to get back at her or whatever. Just— that just adds to the chaotic mess, right? Let's try to minimize chaos if at all possible. And, uh, but I do wish you all the best, and I thank you for reaching out. I appreciate it. And guys, thank you for watching, and we'll catch you on the next one.