Reading these recent posts of yours, here are a few of things I'm noticing.
1. You are grieving the downward trajectory of your marriage. Looks like it's over. You seem sure of it. You keep reminding yourself it's over.
2. You are hurt at being rejected by your wife.
3. You are outraged at her ability to detach so easily, connect with friends and take care of herself. She's doing what you should be doing in a situation like this. Her instinct for self-preservation and self-care is more developed than yours. You have defined yourself as the one who loves unconditionally, even at great cost to yourself. Frank IS self-sacrifice.
4. You believe you rescued/saved your wife two years ago at great cost to yourself. You also believe because you saved her, she should have been willing to save you when you fell down.
5. Your wife doesn't necessarily believe you saved her -- at least not to the extent you do. We all re-write history. She thinks you worked hard on saving the marriage and appreciates that you welcomed her back, but, in essence, she feels you haven't personally changed and that the same stresses that were in the marriage 2 yrs ago are still present. She thinks you applied a band-aid to a deep flesh wound.
4. You really want her love and you want it to work out.
5. You are simultaneously very angry with her, to the point of feeling hatred and contempt.
6. You are not controlling at all. But you are needy at this point in time.
7. The balance of power in your relationship is entirely in your wife's favor right now.
8. The state that you are in is not healthy for you, nor is it attractive to your wife.
9. That state that you are in is like a drowning man. You need to reach for a life preserver, for you own sake and for your kids. If you are still at all interested in working on the marriage, you need to reach for the life preserver, since no one is going to hitch their destiny to a drowning man.
Well, the golden question is what do you want? Here are some questions that might help you to clarify.
1. Do I want to be authentic about how I feel right now, regardless of the outcome in my marriage?
2. Do I want to stop living in fear and state exactly how I feel and, in turn, act in accordance with my feelings?
3. Do I want to save the marriage? Do I want to stay married to this woman?
4. Do I want to save myself and reach wholeness, joy and success independent of the outcome of my marriage?
5. Do I think the marriage must end before I really can work on myself?
6. Can I really take care of myself without doing it reference to it's affect on my wife and the possibilty of saving the marriage?
I think you can and should be authentic and raw at times, but I think if that's the main thing in your life and there's nothing else really good or healthful going on for you, then you will, most probably, accelerate the end of the marriage and have to do your healing AFTER The divorce. That's OK.
I think if you let some good things into your life, pursue strong friendships in your area and take care of yourself, while being authentic about your negative feelings, you will heal faster, regardless of the outcome in the marriage. However if you are still open tp repairing you marriage, have the best change of doing so. Why? Because you are being honest AND seeking healing/growth for yourself. Forget the fake happy face. You will have a happy face when good things are happening in your life. You will also have a sad face when reflecting on your marriage. At least that's honest, but forward moving and attractive.
What I'm saying is go ahead and grieve, be pissed off, be angry, be authentic, but ALSO take care of yourself. Taking care of yourself will help remove the neediness. In the end your wife might not be able to deal with your honesty. But, at least, she'll be leaving an honest, strong and vital Frank.
Now why do I even dare bring up the issue of saving the marriage? Because, I think, it's still a desire of yours. We all know the best thing to tell you it to detach and take care of yourself. But I wanted to re-introduce the topic, because I think you, like many of us, have difficulty shutting off the affection for our spouses and cannot easily detach. We're human -- go figure.
