I read your post and thought, "Is she talking about my wife?" This midlife crisis, hormonal turmoil, rite of passage, or in my mind rocket ship to Planet La La, seems to be a cross-gender problem. There are amazing men and women fighting here to save their marriages, and their spouses appear to behave in almost identical ways:
- Step 1 Make sure you are happily married for 10ish years and have lovely young kids. Make sure your spouse has no clue what's about to happen. - Step 2 Just when your spouse is totally relaxed, and feels he has the most secure marriage, drop the "bomb" - Step 3 Make sure you use the "Infamous Quotes Book" to shred the marriage, and spouse to pieces. They need to know how miserable you have always been, and how you need to start living again. - Step 4 Goto the WAS Store and immediately order the kit that turns you into the most selfish person on this planet - Step 5 Ignore all common sense, morals and values, and start mixing with people from the underbelly of society. Ideally you should have an affair. - Step 6 The madness continues for an undefined amount of time possibly stretching into years. Then you wake up. - Step 7 Either you are lucky and your spouse is still there for you, or you spend the rest of your days wondering what you threw away
I believe the above is not the "Stairway to Heaven" but the "Descent into Hell" that applies to most WASs (man or woman). The key question for us LBSs is where we will be at Step 7. Do we love our WASs enough to stick around? Or more appropriately, have we GALled enough to be oblivious to our WASs, and maybe are around when they wake up? This question can only be answered by each individual. For me, I'll always love my wife (she's already betrayed our marriage vows by having an affair), and will always be here for her. I believe she's in a difficult and confused place, and she did not plan to be there and I need to fulfill my marriage vows by being there in her time of need. Sounds great in theory, but is almost impossible in practice.
The only gender difference I can think of is the fact that men aren't really talkers. If we have a problem, then we'll probably withdraw into ourselves (maybe go hang out in the shed or den), and try to come up with a solution. If we need the help of our wives then we'll ask, though it might be too much for the male ego to seek female input. Therefore don't interpret your husband's behaviour as purposefully evasive, he's just being a guy.
In respect of your other points regarding detaching and responding to his "flip-flopping", I'd recommend you focus on yourself. You've told hime you love him, you are still there for him, and I'm sure he knows this in moments of clarity. The minute you start to drift away, is probably the precise moment that he'll wake up.
