She's in MLC, but I was weak. Now what?

[MHL]

CNS,

Let me first commend you for being here and wanting to save your marriage despite the pain you are suffering right now.

Men tend to be more action oriented and it feels right to be doing something to try to "fix" the situation. Also given what you have said about working with your hands, doing something is going to be a better feeling like you are doing something.

Lets get to work.

I am going to poke at you to get some more info out of you and also make you think about things, some of it may be uncomfortable but neccessary. These are not 2X4's, you know those when you get them.

As I see it you have 2 things to "work" on as you have kids. Obviously you have to work on YOU, which is really what DBing is all about, but you have to interact with your wife simultaneously while working on you. No kids in the picture you would probably detach, go dark and work on you until she was ready. Thats not the case so you need to make sure that your interactions with your wife don't further deteriorate the situation.

Okay lets take working on you, this is going to feel like your working on the Marriage but it is more about peeling the onion that is CNS. You have given some good background info on yourself, childhood, and relationship with your wife. This will be an easy one for you because I can tell you have already done some of the internal work.

While you may have identified some life issues above they may or may not have contributed to the downfall of the M. You want to work on the things that your wife preceives as marital complaints about you.

If I were to sit down with your wife and were to ask her what her marital complaints were/are about you, What would she say?

Be honest, don't defend yourself. After you write them down re-read what you wrote and rate them two different ways.

First rate them in the order that she would rate them #1 would be her greatest complaint about you, #2 would be her second greatest complaint and so on.

Second, rate them in the order that they "sting" you....#1 would be the complaint that you feel you are most guilty of , #2 the next one and so on. You get it right? Now add the 2 scores for the complaints.

The lowest scoring complaints need to be looked at first. Don't beat yourself up over this exercise, this is just to identify things that need to be looked at in YOU first.

I hate long posts so I will break this up.