Tostada: I can relate so well to your feelings of shame and failure - that's what hit me right away when my W started talking about divorce. Don't know if you noticed from my signature - but this is my second marriage - and I was determined to make this one work - and it just doesn't seem to be going that way right now. My first marriage ended in such a civil, simple way - it was sad, we cried, but there wasn't all this anger and all these attacks - and my first wife and I have remained good friends...which has done wonders for my S11...
But that's beside the point...what I wanted to say is that the shame of having a marriage fail often has more to do with where we come from than just ourselves. For instance, I finally had to realize that I was bearing the burden of making up for a lot of my father's mistakes - my parents divorced when we were young, and my father almost divorced from his second wife after their daughter was born. They were separated for four years - during which time I lived alone with him (and suffered through his abuse while I was in high school).
My father loves my Wife - he thinks she's a remarkable person - and when my marriage crumbled he first talked with me about how much I had to do to win her back - to let her know that I loved her...eventually, I realized that his advice was based on the idea that I was at fault for the failure of our marriage - and once I realized that's where he was coming from - I also realized more about how I had been raised to think about marriage...and I had to let go of those assumptions - and those notions of marriage if I had any chance at recovering and getting stronger - or - the real long-shot - of reconciling with my W.
Your W sounds like a tough person to love - and I agree that it sucks to have someone give up and not even try - my W hasn't filed yet - but she gave up and just kept us in limbo for five months until I finally urged her to act on her talk of moving out - or else work on us...and she opted to move out.
But...here's the thing - if she hadn't moved out I never - and I really mean never - would have noticed so many of the things I've come to see about myself - and the extent to which I had allowed my own expectations of her to morph into resentment and finally anger - that's how I contributed to the damager of our Marriage - I wasn't a bad husband, I never strayed, I'm not abusive (though she now lives in a reality in which she is convinced I am) - but I did let myself become and angry, withdrawn man - and started to inhabit the skin of the type of abusive man she believed I was simply because I loved her...in other words - based on her dictionary of love - love is defined by pain - and so, if I loved her, it meant I wanted to hurt her...and there is/was nothing I could do to change that for her unless she was/is willing to look into herself and heal her deepest wounds. Sadly, for us, that could not happen while still living together...and so I've learned to love her and let her go - I've learned to love her enough not to become the person she tries to lure me into becoming (I don't take the bait when she starts to pick fights) - and I remind myself every time I see her - no matter how she's behaving or what she's saying - be kind, Carlos. Be kind...and it's brought a lot of peace to me and the life of my kids.
Sorry to ramble - it just felt like something I should share here with you.
