Am I piecing ? Just can't tell 3...

[sandi2]

First, about reading her the book, some people are better audio learners whereas others are visual. She may retain more information if she hears you reading. But the more important issue is her wanting to participate "with" you. Both of you are sharing at the same time and I think she is showing amazing cooperation by doing this.

Next, you vented out of frustation and depression....and that's okay to that here. The main thing about what you said that I wanted to focus on was when you wondered how she would react if you told her you weren't sure about the R or how you felt, etc. My take on that is she would probably be shaken up at the least....devastated at most. What type of emotions she might display right then is something we don't know. Panic, yes I'm sure she would, but I don't think she would try to prevent you from getting a D, IDK. It is certainly not worth the risk just to find out.

More importantly, SBH, that is not what you REALLY want from her. What you really want is for her to reassure you that she wants you above all else and that she's feeling those "in-love" feelings again.

I believe the reason she said it was her problem is b/c she feels that you are doing all that you know to do and the rest is up to her. She is putting pressure on herself (which only she can control that). Women are complicated people and all the ones I have ever known or read about are not able to fall in love "at will" or even stop loving "at will". However, (and I hope this doesn't seem contradicting), in a MR we can chose to love our S....and when we make that decision, the romantic/sexual/emotional "in-love" feelings will follow in time. Key words here are "in time".

Even in marriages that were arranged by the couple's families, they learned to love each other. From what I've read in these cases, they learned to respect one another and they became friends....then the love came. But it didn't happen in a few months. Since your W has been in love with you once...it only stands to reason that she will again. Right now, she's her own worst enemy.

I think the other thing I talked about was you trying to detach while piecing. Detaching is what one does in the LRT and the WAS will not agree to work on the MR. I don't think you need to detach while piecing, although, you may still need to give her space. Giving space and emotional detaching are two separate actions.

I know I've told this to somebody, but when I was a child, I would see the older women making quilts for a bed. They took pieces of materail and would hand stitch these pieces together and then carefully lay that piece on top of some sort of filler fabric....and then they had this large hoop looking contraption that would pull that quilt until it was good and tight. After that, they would sit around that big frame and each lady had a big, long quilting needle designed to go in and out...from under through to the top layer....making the more stiches to hold it all together. If you ever see a hand-made quilt, you'll know many, many hours were put into ever stitch. I hope you will look back over this analogy of piecing a quilt to piecing a MR and pick up on some of the words I purposely used. I've never read this from a book or anything, but it always made me think of the quilting process when I read about couples in "piecing".

You also said that you fear she is doing things b/c she knows that's what you want. Relax about that. That is what we do when we love the other person, don't we? SBH, she is cooperating, and the fact that she's even "trying" to do something b/c that's what you want her to do...is fantastic. I was not nearly as cooperative in my M. I wanted my H to stay on one end and me the other for several months, so I'd say progress is coming along very well in your piecing.

It's hard, and I know you keep hearing that...but some day the two of you will be able to relax and just enjoy each other.