WAW - Very confused and devestated - pt 5

[confusedinpa]

Just some more tweaking of my counseling "intro"

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. I understand now that my wife doesn't make me happy.

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 us to figure out how each of us will 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 are children of divorced, fail. If only one is a child of divorce, it is 79%. It seems that a divorce really shatters a child's confidence in relationships.

Now 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. How can we do 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:

Here's an example where I was trying to do something loving for my wife. She 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 love for her to come. Afterwards, I found out she felt unloved as she didn't feel like I invited 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.