GH31, Many months ago Coach wrote something to me here that I repeat over and over - and it can be summed up in to simple words: wasted energy. With those words Coach was calling me out on just how much of my energy I wasted trying to figure out what my wife needed to do to change - or what I wished would be true for her - and what I wished could be different...and it was his gentle, firm, honest way of telling me that I was wasting my time on something that was - and would forever be - utterly out of my control.
Now...saying that STBX's actions are out of my control is different from addressing the needs of my children or facing my reality head on - it's just that, at one point, I had to accept the fact that my STBX was no longer sharing in the same kind of reality that I seemed to inhabit. Suddenly there she was making up events in our past - literally just inventing moments - to claim that I was an abusive husband...and whenever I disagreed with her on anything regarding our son, she would threaten to call the police. She had also had an affair just five months after we were married - and was entering another EA when she dropped the bomb...but here's the thing...as much as her actions were vile and her words reprehensible and false...it was also true that she was suffering deeply inside.
Despite what it seems, your wife does not love herself - I don't think she's happy with herself at all - why else would she be so desperately seeking validation outside of herself - she is, instead, in a crisis that only she can get herself out of - and only she can decide whether or not to accept that.
Perhaps there is some part of her that realizes she is unstable - and that she needs help - or, perhaps like my STBX, she thinks that everything that is wrong in her life is outside of her - and not at all inside of her...either way - it does not matter at all in terms of you - and what you have to do to take care of yourself - and possibly your child.
You cannot help your wife - nothing you can say, do, suggest, imply, etc, can do anything for her. Such was/is the case with my STBX as well...and in my case, I know that she was sexually abused in some way as a child, there are just too many bizarre stories and coincidences from her childhood that her mother and sister gloss over - and when I once tried to bring it up with her - that maybe she needed to address those issues - she turned it around as proof that I was an abuser because I was trying to put the blame for our failed marriage on her past - instead of, according to her, admitting that I was abusing her...it was mind boggling to endure - and it twisted my heart and my mind into knots - until I let her go completely - until I went through the most agonizing pain of my life and accepted the fact that loving her meant letting her go - and not holding onto her at all...and the only way for me to do that was through confronting the fears that kept me from letting her go as I had to...
That's also what I've been wondering about...I've been reading your threads and thinking more and more about you - and who you are - what your fears are - your needs - your obstacles - and how/why you might have found someone - as I did - that could treat you so terribly...and love her for/despite it...I know you say your wife changed a lot - I said the same about my wife...but if I'm honest, and consider the history of our relationship from ten years ago on through the present, the evidence was always there...I just didn't accept it - or just couldn't until now...
