Been just doing my best to no pursue her, not react to her, not have any expectations of her, just allowing her to spend sometime at home with the kids and with no pressure.
Wed I went to a 4th of July family picnic for church, only S13 wanted to come, spent an hour there and talked to a couple people I knew, looked like a great time and I'm looking forward to take the whole family to it next year and making a day of BBQin' socializing and enjoying the great people at church. Came home and BBQed for the kids, watched all the fireworks in the valley from the roof of the house, then lit off fireworks out front in the court.
Thursday I took my wife and kids golfing, then went to work (stopped and kissed my wife on the forehead on my way out the door), came home and read for a bit, then everyone went to the movies (License to Wed). Movie was funny, kind of hard to enjoy some of it when my wife who doesn't want to be married sitting next to me. There were certainly some educational pieces about marriage in the movie, maybe something will sink into her hard head one of these days.
Except for my kissing my wife on the forehead we've had zero physical contact this visit. No hugs, no hand holding, no R talk, just lots of small talk, talk about the kids and that is about it. She certainly has been complaining about meaningless stuff, and twice I've called her on it and reacted strongly instead of letting it roll off my back. Both times she has been the one to change her attitude so maybe I need to figure out how to continue to stick up for myself without getting carried away in the process.
One thing I've been thinking the last two days is that a few different "experts" on marriage have mentioned that when a wife is nagging her husband it is better than when she quits because the nagging is her trying to "fix" the relationship whereas when they stop nagging it is because they've given up. My wife has been to that "stop nagging" place and she has given up, maybe her showing up and complaining about stuff is because she is trying to figure out how to "fix" the relationship in her own dysfuntional way. Not sure, but the comments about her acting like a teenager certainly are true.
Feels like she is walking away at the moment, no longer running, no longer stopping to see what I'm doing, not coming towards me, but just slowly walking away. There is so much we could do to reconnect and rebuild our marriage, but she isn't willing or isn't able or isn't something that is stopping her. It is what it is, I'm doing fairly well overall, if I can keep the status quo while she has time to possibly heal and regain her mind then we have every opportunity to build a new marriage that is greater than either of us can imagine. I'm still praying daily, leaning on God and trying to prepare myself so I'm ready for her return, even if she refuses I know I've learned and grown in leaps and bounds.
