WAW staying, I'm leaving to give her space..

[jab]

Today's situation:

Managed to get her to go to 'counseling' a few times. I thought it would help but the focus was more on my past drinking, how it affected her, and why I needed to accept the divorce and move out. The counselor has been somewhat helpful in some aspects but not what I was expecting at all. I also found out that current counselor divorced an abusive alcoholic many years ago. Talk about biased! I'm looking for a new counselor that practices SBT.

My 'house arrest' starts Dec 11th. I will be moving out into an apt across the street from my job, probably first week of Dec. I thought about telling her if she wanted to leave then she should move out not me and I would stay in the house but without a car or license it wouldn't be a good choice for me. We also have a S6 and a D3. She makes more money than I do for the first time in our R as well so she can handle the mortgage payment better and frankly I do not need all that space. She also gave me the 'if you leave we may have a chance but if you force me to go it's over' speech. So I'm going for now. The hard part is that I will not be able to do much of anything over the next two months. I will be totally reliant on her for visitation. I'll miss X-mas, New Years, my S6 BDay and her BDay. She is going to NC with the kids for Xmas without me, her whole family will be there. She will truly have her space, her freedom, the kids and our house. On top of that, I get to be her babysitter while she works because that was part of my plea bargain to keep out of jail and keep my job. Ironically, I thought I would be spending that time in my home with her too. I didn't care too much because I thought at the time that at least I had her and everything else to be thankful for to get me through it.

Unfortunately the first few weeks I did everything wrong. I begged, pleaded, ILU, give me a chance, you're not trying, all that stuff. It made things much worse. I started to give her space and things started to improve a little but last week was my bday and tgiving and I was a mess, very down and needy. Things got terrible again but last 2 days I started laying off her again.

On the bright side, she hasn't ruled anything out yet. She just needs space and time to see what I do and whether she can love me again. She acknowledges that I have quit drinking and really am improving some but has NO TRUST that it's long term. She is doubting there is anything I can do but willing to wait and see for awhile. I also want to say that in the past she has had some real self esteem issues but lately her self esteem has been improving. I was extremely happy for that but it's probably one reason why she decided to become a WAW, kind of ironic.

I don't think that she is having a PA but possibly an EA that she is not telling me about with someone at her job. She has admitted that she is 'looking' (probably for just sex) but not really wanting any R with anyone right now. When I tried to nicely question whether there was someone else she started accusing me of accusing her, etc. She was very overreactive in my opinion. I didn't say 'I know you are cheating on me'. I just asked her if there was "something she wasn't telling me, is someone else involved?". The only reason I asked her this was because I was noticing that she stopped wearing her wedding ring (she does have a legitamite excuse for that at work and I believe her) and because I noticed that she was spending alot of time in front of the mirror before work, she seemed very concerned about her appearance lately. In the past she rarely wore makeup when going to school or work but now everytime she is going to leave the house it's like she is about to go on a date. Her answer was that she felt good about the weight loss and the way she looked so she wanted to 'flaunt' it for a change. She also stated that she was approached by an old schoolmate about 3 weeks before D-day and that she wanted to have a PA but didn't want to "make herself look like a slut" or give the impression that it was her fault that we had to divorce. Hell, she also said she wished that I would f*** someone so it would make it easier for both of us to move on! What would anyone think? There are other small signs but I know now that I can't do much of anything different if there is or there isn't.

Her major complaints that caused this (as I interperet them today) are:

1) My drinking of the past - inheritently, it caused alot of relationship problems.
2) DUI - having a hard time dealing with the consequences and the fact it ruined her graduation and continues to cause her problems.
3) I don't make her feel loved, don't pay attention to her, don't compliment her, don't appreciate her, didn't do what she wanted sexually, etc.

Number 1 is nearly resolved, I just have to prove that it is long term and continue the AA and therapy on my own.
Number 2 is being worked on, I have to do the 'house arrest' and wait until next summer to get my driving priveleges back.
Number 3 I need to work on but right now most of it is being received as 'hollow' to her so I cannot do much there until I give her some space, etc.

Am I doing the right thing by moving out for now to give her space? She says although I'm trying to give her space, she feels living with me is very uncomfortable and she is very tense and cannot relax with me around right now. I am getting the DB book but I don't have it yet. I started applying some of the advice I have found on DB as of yesterday. I'm agreeing with her that our current relationship/marriage is over and for now I need to give her space, I need to work on me, she needs to work on figuring out why she is so unhappy, maybe after house arrest is over we can start working on a better R but neither of us are ready yet. Told her I will stop discussing R until she is ready to discuss it. I want us to do it the right way this time. She still says that it's ok to continue counseling while I am gone. She agrees that our current counselor is a little hard on me. Ironically, she also said it would have been much easier if I just continued drinking or was an ass about everything but I haven't been so it makes her feel 'guilty'. Any initial advice for the next week?