I understand both your points. My dilemma is that I can sense that she really doesn't feel like she deserves me. I don't mean to talk down from my pedestal, but that's the feeling I get from talking to her ("sorry to bother you","thanks for picking up the phone").

Latest devleopment: This past Sat, I went to the movies with her sister and StepS13. W had a cable guy comeing to hook up internet and TV, and that was more important, so she did not go. Well, to summarize in a few sentences: as we sat down, SIL spilled water on herself, and StepS13 was making a joke, so SIL laughed with popcorn in her mouth and got a piece in her windpipe and started choking. (Ironic sidenote: I had gotten CPR and Heimlich maneuver training 2 months ago!) So I grabbed her and proceeded to do the Heimlich maneuver on her as the lights went out. She said later that she started to black out when the 4th or 5th maneuver finally cleared the piece of popcorn. After it was over, I think I was just as shaken up as her. Trying to recollect exactly what I did later in the day, it seems like I acted largely out of instinct, because I don't remember any detailed, specific actions between her starting to make hand signals that she's choking and the last couple of maneuvers. Anyways, so now SIL and parents in law are thanking me for my quick reactions and SIL apparently also told the whole thing to W. So on Sun, W calls me to tell me that she heard about everything. And again, her voice makes me feel like she's thinking "well, once agian, you are being viewed as the best guy in the world and I am the outcast that noone cares about..." And there's NOTHING I can do that will make her stop thinking that way. If I am happy and doing great, she takes it as: "see he's happier without me, I'm just holding him back" and if I am miserable (as I was during my depressed time, she takes it as: "he's holding me back and he doesn't support me". So my choice is: I'm taking care of me and I am making myself happy. I have tried to uplift her with encouragement for years prior to the "bomb" and after, but she will have to figure out for herself how to make herself happy and only then can we be happy together. Neither one of us is holding the other back right now, we both have to grow in that sense and I believe that I have gone a long way down that path already. She needs to do the same and I think she's starting to.