I've been hanging around here since 2006. Can't ever remember a single person posting, particularly here in MLC, saying how glad they were to be dealing with a spouse who has wigged out.
But if you hang around here long enough, you will come to discover something. The people who sound the most grounded, the most satisfied, the most at peace with themselves and their lives...those people are not necessarily those who were successful in restoring their marriages (though ALL of them tried faithfully).
They are instead the people who eventually managed to pry themselves away from the constant up and down of a life hanging on the words and actions of a mixed up spouse who was doing sometimes despicable things, and somehow managed to invest their newfound alone time in looking deeply inside themselves and making positive, life long changes.
I'm not telling you to stop hoping to save your marriage. I'm telling you that I think to be successful you actually have to stop TRYING to save your marriage with your every breath and thought. You have to learn how to roll with the punches, how to respond (when you need to respond) and how to keep quiet when that is the proper response. You have to learn how to look longterm instead of disecting each and every interaction and tidbit of information as though its the deciding fact.
Start even now fixing YOUR life, the part that does not directly involve your wife right now. You are a doctor. You are a son. Perhaps a brother. You are a father. You are a friend. How can you take advantage of this time apart from your wife to become a better one of each of these? Because I'm telling you my friend, if you can find a way to do that, you will also find the way to successfully navigate this chaos you're going through now.
You cannot control your wife. And if other's experiences tell us anything, you cannot reason her to your side either. If, and I repeat IF, she is MLC, then I would tell you that I think she's on a nasty trip right now of trying to accumulate things and get rid of things all in an effort to quell the unrest and confusion inside. You, and how she is dealing with your relationship, is just another of the things she is trying to change to ease that unrest.
In her mind you MAY be the problem. In her might she might even be pretty convinced you ARE the problem. And as long as you're filling that role, anything that you do that tries to change her or infulence her is just more evidence that she has perhaps judged you correctly.
What she needs to see in you is consistency, strenght, and decisions that are made with integrity. YOU have to be the solid, dependable one - even in the face of her rejection. Becoming her adversary, or outright rejecting her only reinforces the possibly faulty thinking she has done.
It's an incredibly difficult tightrope, particularly if you intend to deal with this directly, day after day, always responding to her words and actions, rather than taking your own personal bull by the horns and moving forward with YOUR life.
Blessings,
Bill
"Don't tell me the sky is the limit when there are footprints on the moon."
