My xH was also a workaholic. Still is. He also had very deep-seated insecurities, despite his successes. He had little to no empathy for women, for he did not respect them (there are understandable reasons for that, but it doesn't make it easy to be in such a person's life), and he would continually take on more and more and more responsibility. He would alway promise, "Just one more year, and then I'll slow down, I promise."
Though I would never fault him as a father, he does father on his timetable. Men probably do that more... women tend to drop whatever they are doing for their kids, and I'm no so sure that either approach is the best way. Anyway...
You are right, Balt. After years of broken promises, me watching him use up his health to gain his wealth... being stuck in a compartment of his paranoid life (you are MY wife, MY sex partner, MY cook, MY cleaner)... I wasn't my own person. There wasn't anything there to have a relationship WITH, for anything that was unique about me, as a person, fell to the vision he had of what I should have been.
Any admiration and attraction I had for him, died. I was always rebelling against what he thought I SHOULD be. It felt very parental, very controlling, and very hurtful, for when we were dating, the person I was, the things that were unique about ME, were the very things that attracted him to me in the first place.
At the end, all that was left was his anger and his piousness. Well, for a good many years, all I got was his anger and his piousness. It was an old, skipping record.
Now he would say that everything he did, he did for me and the kids. He would say he always gave into my needs, he would say that I had it made, that all he ever wanted to do was make me happy. Puke. Please. I lost empathy for that sales pitch a long time ago. It was the easy route... because he was so flippin' tired from working all the time... he had no energy, no drive, and no confidence to put toward our R. That was MY job anyway. If the R failed, then it was my fault, not his.
So we got to the point that we WERE going to stay together for the kids... and then other things happened and the whole thing finally exploded. But you are right, Balt. Unless your wife regains her respect and attraction for the man that you are, not the man your job description defines... that great something from your R will always stay lost. IMHO.
