Remind me again...does your wife want you to back off or feel that you're smothering her? If so, then make sure your even more subtle. I'll give you some I try to do, and some she does for me. They are just little, but start small.
When things weren't good, I usally was the one making coffee in the morning, so I'd fix two cups (hers with sugar substitute) and drop hers off next to her, or on the bathroom counter when she was showering and then just walk away. Now, it's whoever goes to pour themselves a cup.
If I was out, I'd pick her up a cup of coffee (we happen to like coffee throughout the day...so works for me) when I got myself one. Or grab her something else I knew she liked.
Back together, when I'm actually doing a good job (and it comes in cycles...being giver and being taker), I'll just stop a minute and rub her shoulders and neck, or offer a massage (which I need to do tonight because I've been kind of moody lately). Things like this might not fly with your wife. When I separated from my wife, some little massaging was still not off limits, but for many it is.
Put a new frame around a favorite picture of hers. Fix something around the house that bothered her. Touch her back or her arm when you walk by. Pick up a chick flick. If she won't watch it with you, watch it by yourself....but give her the opportunity to want to join you. When you are playing cards, get up to get yourself something and ask if she needs anything. It's not big things, but sometimes when the whole relationship is in a bad way, you forget to even do things that are polite.
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. Abraham Lincoln
It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. Theodore Roosevelt
