DR,
I can relate to your wife in that famiy is also very important to me and I may have allowed it to interfere in my M too much. I definitely allowed my mother to interfere too much...which is something I am also working on as an adult...and H KNOWS this is a big issue for me that I have been working through.
On the other hand, this is why I am so devastated by the demise of my M for D10 too. While I came from a family of 6, I loooooooooved my little family unit of 3 so much...I was brought up to believe family is number 1. My H came from a small family of him and his mom (divorced from his dad). He has a brother, but apparently, he wasn't around much when they were kids. Needless to say, my family gatherings and such were much different and overwhelming for H.

Quote:
Even with all her negatives, we could still have a good marriage together, if she chose to make me her exclusive interest.

To be honest, this doesn't sound very fair to either of you. Even while we vent the negatives about WAS here, I hope you're not focusing on these regarding your WAW. I had many issues with H before he asked me to marry him. Since D10 was a surprise, H was not the most stable person, but when he asked me to marry him, I thought that this meant he wanted the stable lifestyle for good now. In our first year of marriage, the fears of his instability came rushing back and I wasn't a very happy person. It got to a point when I had to tell myself that if this marriage was going to work, I had to STOP looking at all of the negatives and focus on the positives. That's what I did. If your WAW wants to ever work on things, just be prepared to also work on seeing the positives instead of all of the negatives. It's ironic how things work out because I see that while I was working on this in my marriage, it was probably not so fun for H because I was so unhappy. Now, I believe H is doing the same thing to me and only seeing me in a negative light and I feel angry that I stayed in the M while I worked on it and he is leaving me and avoiding it.

Still, we have to try and focus on the positives, even in the WAS...even if it is just for the sake of not allowing ourselves to become bitter old bags.
UB