I want you to know that there are people out there that care for you and want to encourage you in trying to save your marriage. That is pretty much what MWD and this website is all about. MWD's books & website are incredible in their commitment to marriages and trying to make them work.
Your finding another forum to get advice from is good. If they are brutal, just remember that you really are doing impressively well in figuring things out. You just (as you recognize) need a little mentoring in the form of an after action review. Keep telling yourself that you deserve a good loving relationship and visualize a successful marriage and the happiness that it will bring you.
Ultimately, whether your marriage fails or succeeds will be up to your wife and her willingess to change. That is nothing you can force to happen. It will happen or not because of your wife. What you can do is change you and show her that change is possible and you can reinforce through positive actions changes she makes.....you can not and should not try to change her by force.
My next to last bit of advice is to get the book the Five Languages of Love by Chapman. Read it and then reread it and then reread it. Figure out your langagues of love and those of your wife. Provide you wife with unconditional love (it took my wife about 5 months of unconditional love on my part before she reciprocated). Unconditional love is not a Nice Guy bargining for love. It is there, constant and about giving (not getting).
Understand that your wife will challenge you. Understand that your wife will test boundaries. Understand that you wife will pick fights and that you will need to take a deep breath and avoid taking her bait. You and she will backslide on some the improvements you make. Understand that it will take longer than you expect to heal your relationship. Seek help from others and be open to their help and love.
Finally, I want to share something I learned from MWD. The HD partner in an SSM needs to understand that their LD spouse really doesn't want sex as much as they do. The HD partner needs to understand that sometimes the LD partner wants to have sex as a gift of love to the HD partner. That means that there will be times when your wife wants to ML with you to "make" love and give you the gift of her love, even though she isn't horny. At those times you need to understand that your wife is expressing her love for you and you need to accept her love joyfully even if you know she isn't sexually excited. The LD partner is often as ashamed of the lack of sex as the HD partner. Be supportive of your wife, but don't be a "Nice Guy."
Good luck to you. I wish you the best.
I will sign off as a former "Nice Guy," who now has a strong marriage to the woman he loves.
>43 years of marriage--My wife and I are now closer than we have been in decades. I believe that my SSM is over.
