It may be hard to accept this, but it sounds like the restraining order and divorce are what your wife wants. While the threat you actually pose may not be real, it sounds as if her fear is. Her absolute refusal to meet you must reflect her own wishes. If she wanted to see you, she's a grown woman and she would. I know this isn't what you want to hear but there's really very little you can do to change your wife's mind or behaviour. You need to focus on yourself. As I said before, some counselling to help you deal with your anger and grief may help. Also, ignore others and if you want to contact your children do so. You rightly point out that others getting involved in people's lives is unhelpful if it's unwated, so don't let them. Make your own decisions. Take care.

2/2 and whether there are ways in which you could have helped her do that more. For example, you sound quite dismissive about the idea of ‘triggers’, and the same with 'confidentiality rules'. I'm sure this is unintended, but it makes me wonder whether you haven't really accepted how real her fears and how justified confidentiality rules are, even in this case, because her fear is real, even if its cause is not. I understand that this has been an awful experience for you, but the way in which you write about how she 'easily got a restraining order' and 'blindsided you' sounds quite angry with her, and so I wonder if you've been able to step back from your own pain, and think about hers. Forgive me for what must be a painful thought, but from her position, a man she has loved for many years has betrayed her trust in the most appalling way, and the fear that she has lived with for so long has finally caught up with her. She has lost her husband and her home, is in fear for her life, and no longer feels safe in the world. The man who she believes has done this won't respect her wishes to leave her alone and she hears he has been asking people to break confidentiality rules to find out where she is. If you are able to open the lines of communication with her, then perhaps you need to do more to help her deal with these fears by being more respecting of her wishes, even if they seem irrational to you, by accepting that her fears are very real and that she lives with this fear on a daily basis, so that things that may seem normal to the rest of the world can feel threatening to her. People think that once the violence is over then so is the fear, but this is not the case. We live with it for the rest of our lives. I feel for you and genuinely hope that you are able to make some sense of it all, but I think that the only way you are going to be able to do that is to start by respecting your wife's wishes right now. Show her you can be trusted. It's not enough to simply say it. It may take a long time to regain that trust, and I know how unfair that must seem, but you have to deal with the reality of your situation. Remember, her fear is real, even if the danger is not, and she isn't choosing to feel that way. Her past trauma, and the fact that she hasn't been able to deal with that properly, means her mind anticipates danger as a survival mechanism. Sadly there is no magic wand that can take that fear away. Finally, have you taken the time to deal with your own trauma right now?. This must have come as a terrible shock to you, and your whole life has been turned upside down. Do you have supportive friends/family who you can talk to, and have you thought about counselling or therapy yourself to help you work through your anger and grief? Being more at peace with what has happened could help you relate better to your wife too. I truly hope that you can find some way through this dark time

1/2 Firstly, this sounds like an awful situation for both you and your wife. I'm so very sorry to hear about your troubles. However, the issue of confidentiality is, and has to be, a strict line for good reason and as a domestic counsellor you must be aware of that. The courts and support workers can't rely on knowing the truth of the situation (obviously abusers often deny any abuse). In your case, given that you pled guilty, the only information they can go on is that she claims to be in fear for her life from you, and you have pled guilty to that, suggesting that it is true. I have to say that, while I perhaps don't have enough information on the legal system, I believe your lawyers gave you bad advice. If there is no evidence that you have ever abused your wife, and this is simply a case of a malicious accusation made worse by your wife's past trauma, then I would have thought that this would have been worth contesting in court. Nonetheless, as the deed is done, then clearly those with information as to her whereabouts cannot give it to you and her confidentiality is more important than your wishes, because as far as they are concerned her life could be at risk from you. It is so sad that this has happened to you, but when domestic violence HAS taken place, abusers will say almost anything to get access to their victims, and so those in charge of the safety of victims of domestic violence have to maintain that confidentiality and cannot bend the rules for 'special cases' because all abusers will claim that their is a special case. Your case is tragic, but you must see why they have to maintain this rule. You have said that you daren't contact her for fear of frightening her, and I would suggest that this is a wise approach. As she believes you to be a danger to her then attempting to contact her without her consent would only cause her more trauma. Have you considered writing to her? This would be a way for you to communicate that would be much less likely to trigger her fears, and may help to open the lines of communication. It may be that, at first, you don't put any pressure on her at all to meet, to help her feel safer. If she responds well to this, you could perhaps, in time, suggest meeting in a public place with companions of her choice. If you are able to open the lines of communication then, again, in time, it sounds like marriage counselling of some kind would be helpful to both of you. For example, if your long marriage has given your wife no cause at all to fear you, then it sounds like you both need to do some work on why she so easily believed you to be capable of killing her. I don't mean to suggest that you have caused this fear or treated your wife badly. What I mean is that the violence she experienced prior to your marriage must have been tremendously traumatic for her to still have such strong triggers, and so I wonder if she has ever dealt properly with that trauma,

Not a big surprise but .... I now have kidney stones. Well, at least that's what they told me at the hospital when I went. After I left the hospital I haven't had any pain but I haven't passed any Stones yet either. The medicine they gave me, except for the pain, is all gone and nothing's really happened yet.
If there's anyone that has any advice or experience in this area I would appreciate it cuz I'm afraid I'll be away from home somewhere when I have another Stone trying to pass. I've read a few recipes for dissolving the stones or making them easier to pass, but I'm looking for someone with personal experience as to what works or doesn't!
Thanks in advance!

Believe me I understand all about confidentiality in counseling. But there's way too many people getting involved in family and marriage issues and taking it upon themselves to decide whether a couple should stay together or even be able to talk to each other in a supervised environment. My dispute is not with my wife, it's with the people who are advising her and have decided that separation and divorce is easier than fighting for or even discussing and talking about our marriage.
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