Lost, confused and fighting for my marriage

[Hopeful728]

Hello. I'm new to the DB site and have been reading through some of the postings and finally have time to post my story. I apologize in advance, it will probably be long!

A little about us…
My husband and I met 5 years ago, online, when he was in the army and I was in college. He was stationed in Afghanistan at the time and we hit it off right away. We e-mailed for about a month before he came home for his dad's funeral, which was when we met in person. The first few months we were dating, it was long distance. He was in Hawaii for a few months then he was living at his mom's, about 2 hours from me. Every minute we were able to spend together was great. We looked forward to weekends spent together picnicking, watching movies, playing Scrabble, concerts, just having fun.

We dated a year before getting engaged and then spent 16 months planning our wedding. We bought a house and closed the day after our honeymoon. We spent a lot of time decorating and making it our home. We had a wonderful relationship. Of course it wasn’t perfect, but there is no such thing as perfect, right?

Everything was going well until September 2009. My H is in grad school and is surrounded by younger, single people constantly. He started to go out with his classmates more and would leave me home alone. I was hardly ever invited to go since I’m not into the whole party scene and would just be a “burden” on him. One night he got a text from a female classmate at 3 a.m.! I was not happy about it and the more we talked about it the more I discovered. He was talking to her quite a bit, in class or via text message. He was even talking to her about our “problems”…which I didn’t realize we even had! I was very upset by this “secret friendship.” If I had known about it from the start, it probably wouldn’t have been such a big deal.

After arguing about it for about a week we decided to go to counseling since neither of us could see eye to eye on the issue. I felt that it was an inappropriate friendship and he thought I was overreacting. We started counseling in Oct. 09 and things seemed to go from bad to worse. Since we still argued about the OW, my H finally broke ties with her in December. We had a great Christmas and New Year.

In Feb. ‘10 my H had the “I love you, but I’m not in love with you” talk. I felt completely blindsided! I knew we had some things we needed to work through, but I had no idea he felt that way. He left on 2/17/10 and went to a classmate’s for a few days and then returned for the weekend when I went to my parent’s house-at his request. I came home on Sunday thinking that we could work through this and make our marriage better. He had spent the weekend researching divorce.

Since the “ILYBNILWY” talk, we’ve also had the “I think I’d be happier alone,” and the “you’re what I was looking for 5 years ago, but not what I’m looking for now,” and the “you’re the person I can live with, but I want you to be the person I can’t live without,” and the “we don’t have enough common interests,” and the “you’re not going to change- you are who you are, and that’s fine. I just don’t want it anymore,” and the “I don’t think I’ve ever been happy,” talks.

I’m having a very hard time believing half of the things he is saying. I refuse to believe our whole life together has been one big sham. I have done many of the things that you are not supposed to do. I have begged, pleaded, cried, etc. I have pulled out our wedding and honeymoon albums and told him to quit school and go to Hollywood, if the happiness that is evident in the pictures was all faked.

We’ve officially been separated since 3/17/10, so 7 weeks now. It feels like 7 years. While I’ve been home alone (with the exception of the dog) crying over him and wondering what I did wrong, he’s been staying at his classmate’s (a male, not the OW) and getting back into the college life, full of parties and going to the bars all the time, and basically having no responsibilities.

While I’ve tried to take on new hobbies (my only real hobby before was reading) I still feel lost and confused. I’ve been reading a ton of self-help books (which are getting really old!), I started a garden, I started yoga, and I’m taking golf lessons. I’ve been working out a lot too and have lost about 15 pounds. All the while I wonder when he’s going to “snap out of it” and come back home.

Recently all of our interactions have been really positive and I was starting to feel better about the whole thing. We even started sleeping together again on some of his visits home. Then he decided that sex was just going to complicate things and he was still leaning towards getting a divorce. I don’t know what to do.

I really feel like he is going through a MLC, but don’t know what to do about it. His dad died when he was 48 and all my H says to people who tease him about his age is “I’m more than half the age my dad was when he died.” He’s also recently told me that “if we were to have a kid now, and I died at the age my dad died, then our kid would be the age I was when my dad died.” His parents were divorced and he’ll also say things like “I watched my dad be unhappy for so long and then they finally divorced and he found happiness with someone else-and then he died.”

I really wish he wasn’t surrounded by all of his college friends. He even asks them for advice. Not to say that young people (we’re young ourselves) don’t have a clue, but what do they honestly know about being married?!?! Most of them aren’t even dating anyone! I really thought that he’d get tired of the single, party life, but so far that hasn’t happened. He’s also living on this guy’s couch with 4 roommates. He’s never alone to even be able to think about things.

He just told me earlier this week that he called legal services on campus, but they aren’t taking new clients right now and he just hasn’t had time to find another lawyer. He is starting an internship next week, and said that now isn’t a convenient time to be going through a divorce anyway. Yet, he doesn’t feel motivated to work on our marriage. I feel so lost. This whole time he’s been sending me tons of mixed signals. He’ll talk about things in the future as if we’ll still be together…money, fixing my car, what I should plant in the garden, etc. And then he turns around and says he still thinks he wants a divorce, but he’s still not sure.

My question is: if you aren’t sure, then why aren’t you motivated to work on things? He doesn’t know. I’ve asked him to attend Retrouvaille with me, and he said he’d think about it, but again, he doesn’t feel motivated to go with me.

Am I crazy for fighting so hard to save our marriage, when he keeps saying the things he’s saying? I don’t think I am, but how long can this go on? Any advice anyone can give me would be greatly appreciated! Again, sorry this is so long. It’s hard to get everything out there so people understand the situation. Thanks for taking the time to read it!