a) recognizing your contribution to a deteriorating marriage by shutting out your spouse and turning to self pleasure instead of staying true to your commitment to your wife (over HOW MANY years of your marriage?)
and
b) being offended by your wife's attempts to seek out another person and her desire for time to work out her issues...
It's funny on here sometimes. We regularly counsel people to not believe the words that come out of the wandering spouse's mouth and only half of what they do...
Unless they say something strange like, "I think it will take me two years to figure out my mess," in which case we lock on to that as though somehow it is a concrete truth.
So which is it? Does your wife speak the truth and know somehow what the future holds? Or is she a jumbled up mess inside who is occassionally spouting off some poor attempt at communicating her confusion?
You do get to decide Mike, that's the thing.
You can choose to take the tougher, firmer approach and put an end to your marriage now. After all, she is hurting you and it's been going on for several months now.
On the other hand, you hurt her regularly for how long again? And she endured it and made it until just recently, when she finally decided to try to find what she was looking for elsewhere. LONG after you had shown her that you were either unwilling or unable to give it to her.
See, it would be nice if this was all cut and dried and easy to analyze and make decisions on. But I"m inclined to think it's a bit more complicated than that.
Don't get me wrong. Infidelity is wrong. Your failures do not make her wanderings ok. But I think you would agree that your wife's actions here of late are NOT exactly unprovoked.
The question is, how much do you love this woman and how set are you on doing your best to save this marriage?
There is certainly room for firmness and establishing boundaies here. You can "be a man" and all that, not giving in to her every whim, because quite frankly, many of her whims right now are goofy and make little sense. But I don't think you have to show your manliness by pushing for a divorce and pushing her out the door.
There is some space between where you are right now and a divorce, is all I'm saying.
And did you not say recently that she ended the online deal?
Lot's to think about Mike.
Blessings,
Bill
Bill your advice is too generalized, can you be more specific?
What she says isn't the concrete truth, you're right about that. But you fail to recognize that she disrespects him because he allows her too and asks us what to make of that. If she doesn't respect him, she can't love him - women who don't respect the men they're with can't love them and often more times than not will hurt them and treat cruelly. That's what's happening now.
Instead of wandering these forums for years asking the same questions over & over again and doing things that don't work, I suggest he take a different approach, one where he observes reality instead of continuing to pursue his wife and getting depressed by his emotions and feelings on a daily basis.
