Your wife told you what she felt about being emotionally abandoned by you when you were falling. So it is what it is. Now you have to deal with the guilt and regret you have over that and that's just going to take some time. That perceived failure on your part is feeding enormously into your lack of self esteem. Please, please, please make this the focus of your counseling! It's the root of most everything that troubles you, I think.
Yeah, I know. When I countered with the fact that she abandoned me when my self esteem was crap she used that as a reason why we shouldn't be together.
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She never once mentioned love. Only respect. Specifically, having lost respect for you. This is very telling of how she needs to be propped up & carried by a man. NO ONE needs this kind of person sucking the life out of them Frank, which is what she has basically done to you. SHE is warped and YOU can't fix her. You can and should pray for her. But you absolutely can NOT fix her. And you didn't do this to her, either. This was in her LONG before she met you. It's just NOT your cross to bear.
I know I didn't 'do' anything to her. I just failed at being a man of strength and honor and this is the result. I get that, if it had been a different woman in my life, one who had strength, that things would have turned out differently. Instead we both got hurt, went through cycles of up and down.
Yes, this is the time for Frank to find himself. Nothing is going to change her mind and we all have to pay for it. I didn't hold this together but I can build a new life.
