Thanks all for the words of wisdom. This is a painful time that keeps my head spinning and heart aching for my wife. Gonna respond to everyone below. Thx again.
@Not From These Part - thanks for the ground war analogy. I have definitely done the air strike and it made me laugh to read that in your post. Patience is unfortunately not my virtue but I am trying to develop more of it. My fear is that I'll keep holding on to something that she is never coming back from and that I'm ignoring the writing on the wall even though she hasn't asked for a D (yet).
@FaithnAK - Thanks for the post. I think there may be someone else but to what degree I am not sure. At the very least she was emotionally cheating on me by flirting with a guy at work who is 8 years younger than her who was her "work husband". She has sent inappropriate suggestive emails / texts that I shouldn't know about but do. I had hoped that it was just a crush and didn't address properly except in the letter I sent her I called it out as inappropriate even if our M was frustrating and even if we weren't doing well together. I told her in the letter that I can not force her to love me, force her to forgive me, or force her to work on our relationship. I also said that she was always free to choose who she wants and so she's free to choose him. Obviously I hope that's not ultimately the case. Is there anything I can do directly to intervene without being clingy / desperate or is it all indirect work on myself stuff? The degree of her anger right now I think is to justify and suppress her guilt.
My shortcomings - From her it's that I'm thoughtless, selfish, and immature. That's I'm disengaged from her and life in general. That she parents me and I'm not a man / the man she thought I was in terms of taking care of things around the house and taking responsibility. Also that I didn't make her my top priority always and didn't stand by her side emphatically.
From me - I did act selfishly, thoughtlessly, and immaturely at times. She definitely did put more into maintaining our relationship than I did through my laziness and also through my frustration. She needs thoughtful deeds done to feel loved. I need words and affection and so both of us gave what we needed and not what the other person needed. So I was thoughtless except when she blew up every few month I would make an effort to do the things she wanted and needed but then she would not be happy because they were reactionary instead of by my nature. And so she ultimately stopped nagging, stopped communicating or diverting attention which increased my frustration and led to her seeing everything I did as selfish, immature, and thoughtless and me seeing her as negative and miserable which was a loss of respect on both sides. My other shortcomings are I tend to get defensive, I too avoid conflict but not to the same degree as her, I stopped nurturing our relationship like I did when we first started dating, I didn't do enough to ease her daily work stress / life stress.
@Hurtinhartford - I barely made it a week with no communication before I had to send an email. This sux. I do believe, not sure if it's right though, that you do have to do all the pursuing things at first so that your W knows where you stand before cutting off communication and doing the last resort technique. Hang in there!
@ PuppyDogTails - Thx for the links. The 14 page letter wasn't all about my screw ups. It was 5 main chunks. I had to be diplomatic and not pushy. Had to be loving but firm. Had to accept responsibility and also hold a mirror up. I wrote it over 3-4 weeks and reread it every few days to make sure it still held true and edited accordingly. Essentially there were 5 main chunks. I told her I loved her and why I loved her. I apologized and took responsibility. I addressed our breakdown. I reasserted my belief that we could fix it and grow together. And then lastly, I said that if she has no intention of ever doing so, then she needed to let me go and she needed to tell me. I let her go free but maintained my full love and commitment to her and to us. So I think unknowingly I did 2b on our post already. Will check it out.
