Now more than ever!

[TrentC]

I, like all of us here, find myself in the position of wanting to save my marriage despite the fact my wife does not want to work on the marriage at this time. She has said "I am not in love with you", "There is no romantic connection for me", "I am not interested in romantic relationships now", "This marriage was a mistake". As I read here, I see alot of the same types of statements. The bomb was dropped about two months ago but we have been struggling all year. We still live togather, but in seperate rooms. Of course, there is no sex. Of course, there is an OM and an EA. (I am chosing to ignore this as it does not impact my intentions of rejuvinating, resurrecting, revitalizing, recreating myself and my marriage.)

I hate to break it to you: you can work on yourself all you want, but you won't make any headway in rebuilding your marriage if your wife believes she's in love with someone else. That needs to be nipped in the bud sooner rather than later -- as in, right now.

Right now, she is writting a relationship history for us that puts all my actions/intentions in a bad light. This morning, as I was getting ready to pull out of the driveway to take our 2 year old to day care, I stopped and when in the house and said, "Do you want to say good bye to the baby because you won't see her all day." She works a long day on tuesday and I know this is difficult for her. She immediately latched onto the "because you won't see her all day" as me plying her with guilt. I was not. repeat, not laying on a guilt trip. She was visibly angry. I did not react. I later called to tell her that in retrospect, I should have chosen my words more carefully. She was dismissive of the appology, but I felt it was necessary to thwart her and perhaps get her to focus on my good intention behind nothing more than a thoughtful gesture.

I hate to break it to you again, but she doesn't see it that way. She doesn't want to see anything positive about you or the relationship right now -- you've even said that she's literally rewriting the history of your marriage!

Was this a good play.

No.

Other than this, I have followed a rule of not initiating contact, rather waiting for her to call first, but more on this later.

Just FYI, that's kinda like saying that you don't drink anymore except for the occasional shot of whiskey...

Anyway, I would appreciate some insight into how to break this script she is following. I would especially appreciate hearing from women.

Read The Divorce Remedy; that encompasses quite nicely pretty much all of the advice that we're going to give you.

1) No relationship talk from you. When she wants to discuss it for real, she'll let you know.
2) If she wants to bash you over the head about the R, validate her feelings without necessarily agreeing with anything. In your example above, a good response would have been "I can see how you would feel that way, but it was not my intention to make you feel guilty." Anything that you cannot easily validate or agree with should be replied to with "I'll have to think about that and get back to you." Never make any kind of decision on the spur of the moment.
3) Stop focusing on your relationship at all; work on improving your attitude and behavior. She's not interested in staying with someone who is unhappy, or clingy; you need to be a happy, confident person who she will want to be with.