Thanks for your reply. We separated in June. After reading books by Michele and a ton of other people, and reading these boards, and going to therapy, I realized a lot about myself, love, relationships, MLC, and life.
First, I see many of my own failures. I learned very early on not to ignore my own role in this problem. I was guilty of not articulating my emotional needs in ways that she could understand, of not understanding her emotional needs in ways that I should have, of taking the relationship for granted, not adjusting well to changes at work, and then blaming her for those problems. I have wondered if I was dealing with a type of depression. I was lethargic, constantly tired. We became roommates with little contact beyond talking about the logistical matters of the day. It was a slow drip of drifting apart. I have many failures that I didn't see before or tried to rationalize away in a need to be "right," as men often have. Believe me, I have learned that there is no objective reality, only emotional needs that we are in tune with or not.
I also see patterns of control, emotional manipulation (if you love, me, you will do as I wish) and criticism from her that destroy/inhibit connection and problems in the way I dealt with that criticism. I see ways in which she withdrew rather than try different approaches with me as I was dealing with some of my problems (as Michele writes so well about). She didn't clearly articulate some things I feel should have been made clearer, such as what she meant by love and what she needed from me to show love. (Here, too, it's two sides of the coin, as I could have been better in trying to draw her out).
I see issues from her childhood, and mine, that affected our relationship--her lack of self esteem, and my issues with abandonment. I also see how some of her anxieties and issues from childhood set off some of my issues from youth.
Then throw in the MLC angle. I had never known anyone to experience MLC, but after reading about it I am convinced this is also at work here. She spoke from the script in many ways during the past several months, and her actions before and after the separation (new car, sudden, intense interest in exercise, new clothes, new music, concern over wrinkles on her face, talk about running out of time in life, obsession with counting calories and a sudden change toward health food, boredom with job, etc.)
So, we separated at her suggestion. I left the house. I didn't fight it, perhaps deep inside at the time I knew something had to change for me as well. I gave her space for several months, just as she had asked, but every once in a while indicated a willingness to talk. We had a few brief conversations and email exchanges, but no long, sustained talks about the R. She is aware of my going to therapy, and some of the reading I've done, but I've only told her the tip of the iceberg about what I feel I've learned. I followed the advice of "no talks about R," and she never came to me with what she was working on in therapy or any reflection she had done about our R. Pretty much a wall of silence.
I don't feel she ever wanted to really try to work it through. In a fit of MLC rage, a side of her I hadn't seen while married but saw a few times after the separation, she asked for a D. I agreed, for at that point I had grown frustrated with not even getting a hint of willingness to talk or try anything. Now we are in limbo, with neither one of us pushing things forward. I'm not pushing the D; I'm just doing the GAL thing, and doing it pretty well I must say. I haven't seen anything from her yet. She could be working on it, however, and I just can't see it. As I said in my original post, I wonder if I am really at peace with this. We've been together more than 15 years. I wonder if she is as well. I don't know, of course, and so I am trying to resist the urge to guess what might be in her heart.
I know that I will be fine, and that I have used this crisis creatively to learn a great deal. Truthfully, it is one of the best things that has happened to me. I cannot control her, as we all say, but I can control my response to this. I am a better person for having gone through this and learned from it things I wish I had learned a long time ago. But I won't live in the past; better to learn them now than never at all. Life goes forward. We can't change where we've been, only where we go.
