I want to be with my kids and provide them with love, a home, and a sense of stability that they deserve and that I had as a child. I want them to know love and be able to guide them through life in a meaningful way.
I want someone who loves me, repects me, and appreciates me for who am vs. what I provide. I want respect. I want to be able to trust again. I want to fall asleep next to someone. I want someone to talk to, share with, and support my emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical being. I want to love ...again.
Is that too much?
Are you all those things for her? Do you love & respect her, do you appreciate her for who she is, do you trust her? Do you talk to her, share with her, support her emotional, mental, spiritual and physical well being.
No none of that is too much but do you do any of it.
You mentioned 5 years of this limbo, I will tell you that it has to stop, you are showing your kids that this a normal relationship, how else would they know otherwise? And even if they know otherwise, because they live with you, they will learn from you, not what you say but what you do. Do you want this type of relationship with them?
I'm going to give you some advice and it doesn't end the way you think it will, there is no guarantee that you will get your wife back but I think you need to do this to give yourself piece of mind and to give her piece of mind also.
Maybe you've been spending alot of time telling her how things should be between you, how the things she does bothers you, maybe you remind her of what she did and how much it hurt you and maybe she's dealing with alot of guilt and maybe she doesn't want a life where she is constantly reminded of her faults and how she isn't good enough.
Maybe you need to forgive her of these things if you haven't already.
On top of that, you need to sit down with her and tell her you're sorry. Yes, you are sorry for the things you've done. Not only say sorry but say sorry and mean it, and if you get a response like "it's ok", she hasn't felt your apology. If you have to say sorry in a way that communicates that you feel her pain, how what you've done may have hurt her, and to tell her that you really are sorry, to feel her, to understand her and ask her for forgiveness.
Sorry for not being a good husband and believing being a good provider was the only job you were responsible for. Being a good husband means making her feel like a good wife, appreciating her, keeping your expectations in check, loving her, making her feel good, focus on what she did do right instead of focusing on her failures. Telling her about the times you were proud of her, being sorry for not showing her how much value she had with you, maybe she feels like it was impossible to prove her value to you because nothing she could do would ever be good enough. Maybe you didn't tell her she's a good mother enough, sorry you weren't a good friend to her, maybe you didn't use the mentality "help us be right instead of wrong", maybe you can list with accuracy all the things you do right with her but you don't make her feel safe & secure around you, maybe she feels inadequate and maybe she feels like she has had to continuously prove herself to you and a person gets tired of doing that forever, maybe she wants to be accepted as is and you aren't doing that, maybe she feels like she isn't good enough for you and that is great for her self-esteem and she probably feels lonely when she is around you.
There are lots of things you could be sorry for but maybe she hasn't heard that in a while.
Whatever things you are sorry for, you have to make sure that when you say you're sorry (take some time, write a list out and really try to feel like your wife might feel when she feels the pain of these things that bother her so much).
And after that, if you've gone through the exercise properly and really felt her pain, ask her for forgiveness.
And then ask her what she wants, if she wants her freedom from you, love her enough to let her go and love yourself enough to give yourself freedom from the pain you are feeling, saying sorry to her is part of that freedom, apologize sincerely, more sincerely than you have ever done in your life and then let go of your mistakes and the guilt attached to them, forgive yourself and then let her go.
Tell her you don't want her to be unhappy anymore and neither do you, you want the things that you mentioned above and know now that she can't give you those things, she is hurt too much by things she has done to you and the things you have to her.
That's it, kinda sucks but sometimes not every marriage will be saved but that doesn't mean you can't live with honor, integrity and respect - it's requirement regardless of marital status.
