I don't necessarily disagree with how YOU are perceiving your own motivations, but my point is this: I doubt that's how SHE is perceiving it.She probably perceived your caving on the issue as weakness, and it strengthened her even more. Fairly or unfairly.
Puppy
Amen brother, Amen!
Although we take this cruel & mean treatment to be something personal, if you look at it from another point of view, a scientific one if you look at the science in this area, she is actively seeking out a more suitable mate with more masculine traits because the current mate she has doesn't exhibit those behaviors. She has been able to challenge you and push past all your boundaries to the point where she can't respect you because she can't trust you to be strong and if she can't trust you to be strong, she can't be secure around you. Her constant cruel treatment of you is her continuously challenging you, testing you and validating her actions because her tests are all positive, this man is a push over, I need someone stronger.
We take it personally, I know I did, millions of other men I'm sure take it personally too. But if you look at it from another perspective instead of using your own built-in failure prone logic, and once you start learning more about this and why it happens so often, there is a pattern that emerges. Once you realize this and change your behaviors and responses to her actions towards you, you change the outcome, you change her beliefs, which makes her question what she is doing and that's when the balance of power shifts back to you whereas currently it resides with her.
It feels personal and on many levels it is, but it really isn't personal, it's a survival mechanism built into women that has been around for 10s of thousands of years or more and it's in full gear. Probably showed up when human being began to walk on 2 legs instead of crawling around on 4, something to do with women having children, holding them while traveling which meant they didn't have free arms to hold supplies or weapons to defend themselves, hence the need for pair bonding & monogamous relationships with strong males but the survival mechanism didn't just get phased out when we all became "civilized" (whatever that means), it's still there, it's still in place and it's still active regardless if people want to believe in this or not.
Enough of the science lesson because I could talk on that topic for ages. Sexual polarity and lost attraction is at the heart of almost every marital issue on this site.
What do you need to do? Push back, start challenging her, start making her work harder, start smiling more, start being incredibly confident, arrogant if you have to, cocky, start having a plan with your life. Start looking better, start enjoying life, be a great parent, be a better parent than she could ever be and I'll say it.... start dating. Instill a fear of loss in her. You were once a man who exhibited attractive behaviors & traits, enough of which to attract your wife. You stopped exhibiting those behaviors. Since you were able to do this once, you can do it again with other women. I'm not asking you to hump every women that you meet & date either but go out, date other women, enjoy it, experience the boost in confidence & self-esteem and realize how great a person you are without her. Don't advertise that you are doing this, your wife will find out on her own, advertising this would make you look foolish - we don't want that. Even though it's easy for her to let you go, there is a flipside to this situation, with the power struggle in her balance, you actually appear to be her "property" (in her perspective), so while she can let you go so that she can enjoy the single life, she won't tolerate you being with other women. While she is preparing for the great new single life, she needs you to be depressed, sad and unable to function - this validates the decision to leave you in her head. When you do the opposite and live a great exciting life, it throws the decision making process in her head for a huge tumble - she can't rationalize her decisions anymore because they aren't based on data that's congruent with her new actions.
When she challenges you, imagine yourself to be a strong brick wall and up to this point, she has been able to punch huge holes in you the brick wall and you have crumbled each time. Challenge her current ideas & assumptions of you: show her that the brick wall has been rebuilt and won't crumble under her pressure.
You don't have to be a prick or an a$$hole to her, but you don't need to be a supplicating wuss either.
You have given your power to her, time to take it back.
