WAW, not sure how to proceed...

[dearme]

Had a very interesting conversation with my wife last night, initiated by her. She said she was very confused, and wasn't sure what the next step for her or us should be, but seemed to be backing off of divorce as the next immediate course of action.

She said all of the changes she was seeing in me had inspired her to acknowledge to herself that she had some major changes of her own she needed to make; namely, be honest with herself and with me (and the other people in her life) about how she feels about things...honoring her own opinions and values, and being strong enough to state her wants and needs.

She also told me that for the past 3 years she's been much more unhappy than she's been willing to admit, and that as a result she feels drained and part of her just doesn't want to be married anymore because of what marriage has represented for her...a thing that had some beauty and goodness to it, but that was constantly tainted by frustration and unhappiness and unfulfillment. She said her primary feeling right now is that she can't get over those bad feelings, and feelings of having fallen out of love and just not being attracted to the person I had become, but that because we are still such good friends and there are things she really values about our relationship, she's willing to see what will happen when we both enact the changes that we need to make. We're kind of limited by time, because in November we had been planning on buying the house we're currently renting... so that gives us two months to see how things develop and decide if we'll stick to that plan, find some other place together, or find places to live separately.

In the course of our discussion, she made pretty clear the type of man she was attracted to...and it's the man I used to be but, unfortunately, had drifted away from over the course of our marriage. She wants someone strong, independent, who has a life of his own, who is willing to take charge; someone who can fend for himself in social situations, and who people take notice of when he walks into a room. Funny thing is...before we got married, that's the person I was. People used to actually tell me things like that about myself...that I was charismatic, that I was the type of person people wanted to be friends with. But somewhere along the line in our marriage I just became this other person...I don't really know how or why, but that's definitely something to explore in my independent counseling.

So, I've been given a pretty good road map... might not change anything between us, but I know the person that I want to be...the person that I used to be...the person that I want to return to be being. It might not turn things around for "us", but it will certainly turn things around for me, and if there is anything that will save our marriage, it will be both of us enacting the necessary changes, growth, and development.