Thanks for all your cander and thoughts and comments. I know as a LBS that my wife asking for "space" was a very vague request to me and completely counterproductive to "fixing our marriage." One of the most descriptive statements that she made at the time of the bomb tho' was "I need to work on the 'me' before I can work on the 'we'." Unfortunately the trama of the bomb was so great to me emotionally and mentally that I didn't understand what she was saying until after she was no longer willing to "work on the we."
I don't know what the best way to explain this concept of "space" to an LBS, but I do know that anything you CAN do to show effort and work on your marriage while you sort out your feels and yourself and have your "space" the better from an LBS perspective. Seeing my wife doing anything positive about our relationship or putting in any effort went a long ways to counterbalance the issues surrounding her need to withdrawl further to sort out her own issue. It is hard for me as an LBS to just watch my wife run further and further away in the pursuit of space or in reaction to my pursuing her, it just leaves a big vacuum where our marriage was/should be. Anything that can be done to keep some flames or smoke alive in your marriage while you sort things out or while he works on himself, etc. the better. Personally I've found that working on myself and my marriage are in many ways intergral to each other since in a long term marriage I've affected my marriage and my marriage has affected me, we're inter-related and I don't think the health thing to do is to have to completely break that marriage and inter-relationship in order to fix myself (or for my spouse to fix herself). Anything that can be possibly done within the context of your marriage and your relationship the better. My wife attended 2 MC sessions with my IC, even tho' my wife didn't seem to be at all looking for answers to sort out our marriage, it did help me in my IC work to have her there talking about me and my issues, my wife knows me better than myself. Even if we made little to no progress MC-wise it certainly helped me personally and I would think her personally.
Anyhow, not sure if I got my thoughts written out in an understandable manner, but the bottom line for me as an LBS, trying to understand my wife coming to me and saying "our marriage is broken" and then I try to do everything to rebuild it and reconnect while my wife is busy cutting all the connections and breaking what is left in the marriage in her quest for space and breathing room and self-discovery. There has to be a more cooperative manner to do what each of you needs without more destruction, but I'm not sure what all the answers are since I only have perspective from my LBS POV.
