How to win my wife back? HELP!!

[EnergyAZ]

Hello smileysmile1966,

I am a new user and your post prompted me to register on this site.

You had described my wife who told me on New Years Eve that she wants a divorce.

For the past couple years she has been desperately requesting certain changes in my personality that were not conductive to a positive relationship. She would reiterate her love for me, and a desire to have a happy life together - but would be impossible if I allowed certain negative personality traits to go unaddressed.

And its not like I never heard her requests, and its not like I did not feel her requests were valid - because they certainly were. It was because I took her dedication, love and commitment for granted and fell into complacency.

I now hear her loud and clear, and my desire to improve and change is not only in attempt to win her heart back - but to genuinely improve myself in attempts to realize my full potential as a human being

But now it has also gotten to the point she wonders out loud if she ever really loved me enough to get married in the 1st place. Says she 'loves me, but no longer IN love with me' That hurts because I know that at one time, she loved me as much as any human could love another and we had a love affair as strong and beautiful as any. I still feel that way about her, but she apparently no longer feels the same. My 'Dr.Jeckyl/Mr.Hyde' personality had finally alienated & hurt her so much that she feels she has no option left but to leave.

Now I am on the cusp of loosing it all. We have a beautiful child together and had been seriously discussing expanding our family in 2008 - and now I am looking at loosing it all in 2008 instead.

I am sorry if I have no helpful advice as to how to win your wife back - other than to say I can completely relate to your situation. There was no infidelity on my behalf. There was no chronic partying until the wee hours. It was simply a matter of my wife wanting me to CHANGE and I never did.

We have been together for almost 7 years, and they clearly were the best, most productive years of either one of our lives. Our relationship truly was/is something very special and I have ruined it with my complacency and arrogance to take her and her love for granted.

We have not separated yet, and I have no desire to do so.

I do desire to CHANGE. She believes me, but also feels it may be a day late/dollar short. But I still have passionate love for her, and hope springs eternal that love will prevail.

I imagine this experience has been as soul searching and eye opening for you as it is for myself. I hope you can find this all as a learning experience as what you need to do for yourself to enhance your life by recapturing the heart of the woman you love. (change - be that person she always felt was inside you, realize the potential she had hoped would unfold within you - how you do this, the path and efforts one must take - as unique as you are yourself. But 'know thyself and thou shalt know the universe and the gods' - you will be a better person for it, with or without her. Hopefully she will want to be a part of that!)

Fortunately for me, my wife has agreed to marital counseling which we will begin immediately. Unfortunately for me, she has told me she has made her decision and it is in her hopes the counseling sessions will help me learn how to let go of her.

But thats not what I have in mind...not at all. I feel a divine inspiration to save our marriage and our family. Its the most important quest I will ever take, and if it still doesnt work out in the end. At least I can look into the mirror or my son's face and honestly say that I did everything in my power to save it.

Good luck - I wish you all the success in the world and am pulling for you - a total stranger - with a compassion typically reserved for people I know well care deeply about.

Love can and will prevail! (I hope?)