See, this is where I get all confused \:\) W tell me she still loves me and cares about me and wants to believe that things could be different, but that she's just thrown her heart out there so many times only to have me stomp on it and she doesn't know if she can get over it. She basically feels like if we continue to live together we're just going to resent each other more and more and then it will really be over. In her own words she wants the separation as a 180, she said that what we're doing isn't working and we have to try something different.

So, it does give me some hope, that she really wants this as a means to try and get to a place where she could work on our M. When I asked her if she'd be willing to do MC while we are separated she said that she just found a C of her own and would like to work on herself before we do that. I do consider this some progress as we have gone from 1.5 months ago with her saying she was done, to now where she seems to have some hope we can work things out.

It puts me in an odd place though as most of the other folks here are in situations where their W's say that they don't love them anymore or they want a D. Here I am with my W saying she loves me and does want to believe it can work out but doesn't know if I can ever change. So I can't figure out how much of the usual advice applies. It would seem really simple, all I have to do is show her that I can change and things can be different. But as I've told her, I can't do that if she's not willing to let me. In other words, how can I show her she's important to me and I really do care about her if she barely wants to talk to me or be around me? When this all started I pursued her and that pushed her away. Then I stopped pursuing and that just had us drifting apart. I need to work on the middle ground of not being needy and showing her that I will love her and talk to her and support her no matter what she does. Perhaps in time that will sink in.

It really sucks because here I am, for the first time really ready to be what she needs. I want to talk to her for hours, not because I'm needy but because this has woken me up and made me see what an amazing woman she is. And now of course we have had times where we've had those really good talks and all I get out of it is that it's because she said the M is done that we're just friends now and it proves we're better as friends than spouses. ARGH. I did make it clear in our talk the other day that I want that in our M, not as friends and she did seem somewhat reassured by that. I'm kind of wondering if she was just thinking I just wanted to be her friend and that's why I was talking to her more. Like I said I feel like on some level she doesn't want me to give up, she wants me to prove my love and that I'm a changed man, I just can't figure out how to prove that. I guess I'll have to get creative and shake things up a bit and watch her reactions...