WAW - Very confused and devestated - pt 2

[confusedinpa]

No, the more you pressure and pursue her, the more you confirm and justify for her the bad feelings she has right now. If you leave her alone, the bad feelings will subside and chances are the good memories will come back.

The S is not ideal, because more often than not it leads to D. But if you cannot stop pursuing her, if you cannot GAL with her around you, if you cannot develop a PMA living in the same house with her, it may be the best for you right now. You need to save yourself first, and maybe as a by-product you save your M as well.

You come across very anxious, and I am sure your W feels that, too. And it pushes her away. You will fix nothing fast. It is a marathon, not a sprint. You will have 2 years to fix yourself. The faster you get there, the more time it leaves for your W to recognize these changes and for both of you to get back together.

To be very blunt, I think your MC sessions together may be counterproductive, unless you have a really good counselor like MWD describes them. I did not believe it either at first, but I feel very lucky that my W backed out of our first session last minute and we both have been going to IC. In fact, we have not had a single MC session together, but I think we have come a long way since then. We are now ready to go to Retrouvaille together, and there might be a real chance of putting our M back together.

AN

I'm sure she feels my anxiety/pain. That is one thing, even in the past 5 weeks, she can really read me.

I'm working on getting a life and maintaining a positive mental attitude when she's around me. I've been working on not being as in her face and not following her around (which I did the first 2 weeks).

I'm also very torn on the counseling sessions. I just don't know how to go with it. I like the idea of Retrouvaille you had suggested to me before, but one of the things that she got irked about during my 2 weeks of panic/anxiety, I kept suggesting different things. Read this book or that book. See this counselor. Do the phone counseling. I even suggested flying to Colorado for a 2 day intensive with Michelle. She told me to stop and slow down. She was feeling overwhelmed. She said see how it goes with the therapist/counselor that we're seeing now.

I liked to think I'm not forcing her to go, as she had said that she knows that she doesn't need to go (legally as we had seen a counselor most of last year), but would go if I wanted her to go. I told her that I would want her to go if she thinks it would help us save the marriage. We went to the first session together. At the end of it, we scheduled the second one and I had left it to her to decide if she wanted to go again. That's how we scheduled the third as well. I told her if she didn't go, I would still go by myself. I'm sure she feels "pressured" to go even though I don't talk about it in between the sessions. She knows I want her to go.

She says she sees the changes and is very proud of me (her exact words) that I'm able to make the changes. She's says she's struggling with seeing past the person who hurt her so badly and wanting me as a husband. It makes me so sad. I know all I can do is keep working on me and hope she changes her mind.

Thanks for your input