WAW - Very confused and devestated - pt 5

[confusedinpa]

Had a very good conversation with my coach. It's the last session of the 3 I paid for. I see there are going to be at least one more tough moment ahead, that's her moving out so I may sign up for another session later. I did ask her what to do if she did move out and she said just focus my attention/energy the kids and go dark with my wife. Little concilation, but oh well, whatever.

I did spend time getting her caught up over the last 2 weeks. I'm going to continue working/tweaking my 180 but generally most of the discussion was around getting me ready for the counseling session tonite.

She did offer that if my wife brings up leaving again, I should liken it to suicide. It is a very permanant solution to a temporary problem. The time that we are going through is a temporary problem. That's why it's called working on a marriage (or something like that, I'm going to have to mull that one over some more)

Another thing that she threw out there was the next time my wife says that she needs to be true to her feelings and she doesn't feel that she can love me like a wife should. I should throw up the notion that feelings can't drive decisions as feelings come and go. Intelect is what needs to drive the decision. All a divorce/seperations will do is trade a new set of problems for the old ones, but you will still have the feelings. Again, I'm going to have to mull over this one.

Anyway, the approach/theme I'm going to take for the counseling session tonite is:

I feel like we've made some progress in our relationship as we are beginning to feel more comfortable with talking/sharing our feelings/thoughts. One of the things that we had talked about is how I had thought it was my wife that made me happy. Now I understand that I am the only one that makes me happy. She made me feel loved.

Something else that I understand now is that marriage doesn't make you happy either. All marriage does is make you married. It is up to each of us to figure out how to be happy in a marriage. Neither my wife and I have ever seen it work in our families (both of our parents are divorced). I had read 87% of marriages where both sets of parents are divorced, fail. If it's only one set, it is 79%. It seems that a divorce really shatters children's confidence in relationships.

We've had a very comfortable/good marriage, but I've been spending a lot of time trying to think about what would make the marriage more loving and to make it feel more happy. Can you (the counselor) help with that? (The risk her is my wife may jump in to say that's not what she wants, but it is suppose to be marriage counseling, not divorce counseling).

If it gets down a path that doesn't seem to help, I was going to use the following:

My wife had told me that she had needed space to think a few weeks ago. She had brought it up again a couple of weeks ago. That was why I had set up my weekend trip to CT. I had told her that I would lover for her to come. Afterwards, I found out she felt unloved as she didn't feel like I wanted to invite her. What did she want me to do so she felt loved? I just want to understand so I can give her what she wants.

I'll fine tune this a few more times before the session, but I think this is how I'm going to go. It talks about some positive, but starts working more towards actions to improve.