It's Not Like on T.V.

[confusedinpa]

Confused,

I'm not familiar enough with your situation to give you a fair reply. My advice for Hemlock, however, is based directly on his wife's infidelity, and that (plus maybe physical abuse) would be just about the only situation I could think of where I would advocate that one spouse tell the other "I think you should leave."

Now, if one spouse is saying "I'm just not happy anymore; I think we should separate," and it's not what the other spouse wants, and if this complaint comes totally out of the blue, then yes, I do think the LBS should say "Well, I'm not leaving my own home; if you feel you need more 'space,' then you should be the one to leave."

It's been my experience that about 90% of the time, there is at LEAST an EA going on in these situations if the marital objections are coming up out of the blue.

Puppy

In my case, she had been unhappy for years, but I just didn't understand the extent (perhaps I was blocking it as part of my depression). We had spent a year in counseling last year when she dropped the bomb on Jan 9 of this year. It was unexpected to me, but now I could see she has been trying to tell me over the past 2-3 years (she said it was 8 years - ack!)

If you get a chance to pop over to my thread, I would appreciate it - I don't want to hijack DrH's thread any more than I have.

I'm really confused on whether to give up and tell her to leave or what...