Hey all, I'm looking for a bit of advice on next steps.
Some of you may know me from the "Separated, What Now" board. I've been there just about a year now. The current situation is that my wife wants to work on being friends again. We've been separated almost a year and are still trying to iron out a separation agreement. We aren't officially piecing but there are plenty of indications and roundabout comments that we both would like to head in that direction even with the sep agreement.
To continue, my wife has some deeper wants of which some she's not expressing directly but we've discussed. We've had some discussions around this and I have asked specifically and the bottom line is she wants, a) to feel less pressure to be the family provider(she's the primary breadwinner), b) wants to have more time with our girls, c) wants me to be the financial provider, d) wants us to be friends again, e) wants to feel appreciated and loved again.
We both recently read The 5 Love Languages and have shared the results of that with each other. Her primary language is Acts of Service. Honestly I love doing stuff for her. For me, I actually have two primaries, physical touch and quality time/conversation.
We do end up talking just about every night when we each call to talk with our girls. She seems to be making a greater effort to chit chat during these calls and when we do spend time together. She also has organized a weekly lunch together and also typically wants me to join her and the girls for dinner on Sunday evenings.
As for speaking my love language, the difficult thing for her is she's not a talker but I am. Her language of Service is somewhat difficult because she views things she can pay someone to do as not really counting. But being separated doing service acts like dealing with leaves or the broken A/C is about all I can do right now.
Interestingly its the "sweet nothing" acts of service that really meant the most to her. A good example would be I created a home spa event for her one night when she returned from a long business trip. I had laid out a towel, housecoat and pjs for her with a little note designed like stationary from a spa. Then set up the bath tub so she could take a relaxing bath with stuff I bought her. (This was done recently too.) So stuff like that she really loves. Another good example is I turned down the bed one night, left her a little note wishing her a good night and a chocolate on the pillow. (BTW, she keeps all these little notes too.)
Now here is my question and where I am struggling a bit. We've discussed what she wants and when I ask about being the family patriarch, providing for the family and me speaking her love language, she says "that would be nice" in this pleasant almost wishful asking tone.
So how do I go about doing that and not creating pressure on her, looking needy or just plain doing too much than is needed at this time? Using things like the LRT or basic DBing techniques seem very counter intuitive to what she's telling me but I still feel like maybe I need to follow DBing even more closely too.
She has taken to asking for assistance on bigger things and I have tried to catch things and take care of them before she asks. But yet I still feel like I need to do either more or something different too.
If we really want to love, we must learn how to forgive. - Mother Theresa
