Okay, so my wife's been cycling through a low period of depression for the last 2-3 days. She's been criticizing, snapping, etc... and I've been pretty successful at detaching and/or not reacting at all to her tirades. This evening was rough. Long story short, we ended up having a relatively long phone conversation and, at one point, my wife uttered those dreaded words that she has only mentioned twice since this whole EA/crisis started a year ago - divorce. A few things are twirling in my mind about this conversation.

First is the simple fact that she's literally only uttered the word "divorce" twice in the last year. Both times, she has been somewhat hesitant in the way she's said it to me as well. Tonight, on the phone, she was very agitated about many things. I was really confused as to why she was going through the whole 'revisionist marriage history' with me AGAIN, since this was literally the first 'relationship' type conversation we have had since she moved out of our home 5 months ago. I can't quite pinpoint yet what triggered her to get stuck on repeat tonight with all the 'bad' memories again. Anyhow, she kept making comments about all my perceived mistakes over the course of our marriage and repeated a few times on how she "wants to get away from YOU". I asked her to try and not use the past to judge a potentially good future for us, and also to not let her past fears control how she viewed who I am today, and then asked her what she wanted. Her response was, "I uhhh...think I want a divorce." As I alluded to above, I guess the question here is, what could possible have triggered my wife to cycle through those bad memories, in the context of this being the first relationship talk between us in 5 months? Is this something 'normal' that happens as part of MLC? Is DJ filling her mind with crap still? What could I have possibly done to trigger her tirade? The second is, what do you all make of the hesitancy of her divorce statement, in the context of her only mentioning it twice in one year, in the context of her still wearing her wedding ring every day? (Well, maybe not after tonight...Who knows...)

Second, at one point about 7-8 months ago, when my wife still lived at home, I was snooping and saw some e-mail exchanges between her and DJ (her EA partner), one in particular where she mentioned that she had been unhappy [in our marriage?] since our daughter was born in late 2007. Could this suggest that her MLC has been going on since 2007, and the EA with DJ (which started July, 2009) was just a trigger for a different stage in the crisis (I think some call it "Replay" if I'm not mistaken.) Is it possible her MLC has been going on for 3 years or more already? What does all this suggest about the length, where's she's at, and when she might reach the end of the MLC and the crisis end?

Third, at certain points in our phone conversation, I remember very clearly hearing her voice tone shift from an adult like voice to that of a younger child - i.e., the tone, voice inflection, just the "way" she talked in general sounded very child like at times. Am I hearing things? Or, if I was accurate in what I was hearing, could this be an indication of something specific to MLC? I remember reading a post by someone calling themselves Hearts Blessing saying how MLC has something to do with a 'crisis child', and having to merge past, child personalities that got stuck in time, with current adult personalities. So, tell me again, was I hearing things? Or, in the context of her obvious depression cycling over last few days, could her 'crisis child' have come out to play the last few days, and that's who spoke to me tonight? Could it be her 'crisis child' asking for a divorce, and not my "real" wife?

All thoughts are welcome. Thank you for your feeback.