My wife and I have been separated for nearly 3 months. I have been out of the house for that time. We have had a few phone conversations, some of which have focused on the changes I'm trying to make. She has long thought that though our marriage had many good things, I needed to make some changes through intense self-examination. I was a zero on the romance/passion front for a lot of reasons I don't have space to go into here. I have started seeing a therapist and doing a lot of deep soul searching. I see now that she has some issues to work on too, but I don't have the feeling that she is yet willing to confront that. Last week she told me on the phone that she thought the task was for me to figure out who I am and for her to figure out why she put up with my crap. Well, I feel that she has a lot more self-reflection to do than that, but that's for another post. I have been able to communicate only a bit of what I have been working on this summer,however, as my spouse has asked for space. I have resisted the mistakes that people often make in these situations--no begging, pleading, or manipulation. No pressure. I have told her I respect her need for space. I think my efforts have surprised her--even though she knows only the tip of the iceberg because she doesn't really want to talk about deep issues yet. Earlier this summer she told me she expected me to just walk away when she asked for the separation. I'm not doing that at all, and I feel good about the changes I've made in myself and the insights I've gained. They will help me no matter where my wife and I end up. I'm reading things, going to therapy, and going to a relationship "seminar" on my own in September. She knows this. She also knows I'm engaging in several new activities to renew my life--new hobbies, a new church, etc. I am not sitting around helpless.
Now, my main question. In the last three weeks she has initiated several phone calls to me, always about relatively "small" matters. For most of the summer she has preferred to communicate via email, and then usually about arrangements about who would care for our dogs on what days. Nothing about our relationship aside from about four phone calls earlier this summer. In the last three weeks she has initiated the calls about relatively small things, such as whether I had used the dryer when I was home to pay some bills. I told her in an email briefly one day that I had been troubled by some issues I was working on in therapy. She emailed offering to let me call her if I wanted. Well, that offer has been infrequent, so I took her up on it! She listened for a while, then abruptly accused me of being self-absorbed by always wanting to talk about the issues I was working on. I replied that I was happy to hear about what she was working on if she wanted to share, but she didn't. Then, this last Sunday when I was dropping off the dogs at the house (she always is sure to be gone when I've done that all summer), she came in! She immediately yelled "Why are you here? You're being selfish!" I was 15 minutes later than when I said I would drop off the dogs!!! Hardly an offense in my book. (She did apologize for the accusation of selfishness). The real issue is how should I interpret these calls and her coming into the house????? She knew I was there--my car was there for her to see. Seems to me that if she didn't want to see me she could have driven right off when she saw I was there.
What might be going on here? She's so tight with any mention of emotion or what she wants for us. I'm trying to look at her actions, not her words (which have been few ). I don't want to over-analyze, however, and I don't want to move too far in a negative or positive direction if evidence doesn't warrant. I've been guilty of being too negative in what I tell myself for most of the summer (my own issues going back to childhood).
Thanks for reading such a long post and offering insights. It's maddening trying to get a read on situation where there is little to go on, but I don't want to lose hope if hope is warranted. Nor do I want to be too optimistic. I'm looking for a sane, reasonable way to make sense of what is going on. Maybe she doesn't know what she wants???
