WAW - Very confused and devastated - pt 6

[confusedinpa]

She wound up sending me an email on something that she had worked on that wound up on a press release.

I replied to her with the following with the Time Together article attached:

"Wow, that’s very impressive! I am very proud of you, and always have been.

I’m sorry if I said anything last nite that was hurtful. This is a very difficult and painful situation that we have gotten ourselves to.

The mistakes that we have made in the past and are valuable lessons for us to learn from.

Choosing “Happily ever after” will take us down a different path than the one we were following. This will take time. Our time is the greatest gift that we can share with one another.

You are a very important to me. Not as the mother to our children, but as a woman. I do want to share my life with you as an equal partner and my closest, dearest friend. This includes all of my hopes, dreams, thoughts and feelings. I am sorry that I didn’t fully understand what that meant before. I understand better now and am learning everyday."

It was probably too much and didn't help matters at all. I debated sending second paragraph. The rest was a continuation of our conversation from last nite. I don't really expect a response. If I do get one, I don't expect it to be anything beyond thanks or ok or oh or thanks for sharing.

During the relationship discussion, I had talked about how this is her choice and what she wants. That's when she said for the first time that what she had really wanted was "Happily ever after" so this was not really her choice. That is what led up to our discussion on how she needs to decide if she wants to have a relationship with me.

One of her frustrations she vented last nite was how she couldn't get through to me until what she had to do on Jan 9th. She said even now there are little things that she says that I don't get. I acknowledged and validated and said that we are at least at the point where if I don't get it, we are comfortable enough to let each other know. She said that's not normal and it shouldn't be that way.

She said that she's still angry and hurt by the way I made her feel unimportant and disrespected. She didn't feel like a wife, but just a mom. One of her friends that I talked to last nite, she is the wife of one of my close friends, said the same thing to me. I validated and acknowledged and reiterated that was the past and I've learned from those mistakes.

I did say that I agreed with our counselor that I wished that she had said something to me, even if it was at a point where she would lock us in a room and say that we weren't leaving until I understood what she was trying to say. She said that she would try to say things but would stop when I said she was nagging. Then she would bottle it up until it got bad and when she would bring it out, she said I would say I would just treat it as a cycle that would blow over.

I told her that if she felt that I wished that she would have taken a baseball bat and beat it into me until I had gotten it. She said she couldn't do that as she would have gotten into trouble. I tried to explain it was an analogy as I told her that I feel that we are able to talk about things that are bothering us now and we are learning from that.

She then brought up how she didn't even know my hopes and dreams and was hurt that I didn't feel comfortable enough to share. I validated and acknowledged.

I really feel like this is the end and I keep making it worse. I am at a loss of what to do.

Everyone says let her go and go dark/dim. Every my therapist/our counselor said that. I think it's because she's worried more about my mental health/well being. Is this really best for our relationship? I won her over in the beginning as I made her feel like the most important person. I understand the strategy to dark/dim is to make her realize that she misses me.

Thing is my wife is very strong willed and once her mind is made up there is no turning back. She will "force" herself to be happy and move on. I'm not sure how going dark/dim works with WAW's like that. Anyone have any experience with that?