Treading water - time and patience

[NYCPeter]

Well the visit went reasonably well. I may have slipped a couple of times, but I tried my best not to.

I fed my D9 and spent time reading with my D6.
I put my D9 to bed before leaving as she usually cries for my W if my W leaves her bedroom before she falls asleep.

W and I went for a long walk with the dog (MIL was with the girls).
I keep going between her having an OM and a WAS and I feel everything she said leans towards the latter.

I apologized for walking out on Sat, but felt it was a big surprise after the way things had been for the last few weeks. She apologized for doing it on our anniversary, but things may have been good for me over the last few weeks but not her. I asked her if any of my recent behavior had caused her to ask for a seperation and she mentioned two incidents

1. My D6 was acting up one day while we were all waiting to go a country fair - she kept saying her hair wasn't right and she kept going back to the bathroom to fix it - I raised my voice a little and told her that she needed to get moving (good parenting IMO - my wife tends to let her act up).

2. My W was in my daughter's bedroom with the door shut and when I walked in she quickly put the phone down and acted a little jumpy. I asked her who she was on the phone with and she said a friend, I gave a sarcastic reply along the lines of "yeah, always on the phone to friends behind closed doors". Both incidents were the weekend before she asked for a seperation so I'm not sure how they are related.

She said the two incidents showed her I haven't really changed.

She said the problem is that she no longer loves me and she's been trying to get that feeling back but it's not coming back and she's tired of trying - she wants to move on (all of this of course frightens me). She keeps thinking of incidents in the past that have happened (my lack of being there for her and the girls) and she can't get over it.

She said she recognized I had changed and that if I behaved this way in the past we probably wouldn't be in this situation.

I asked her if there was anything else I could do - she said no, it's not me it's her. She said that when I am not around she's less stressful and more calm - when I'm there she feels stressed. I pointed out that I can't help that unless she tells me what I do that causes the stress - she says she doesn't know, just me being there.

She did mention that she "just wants to give up and move on", I told her that's her decision but said that M is a work in progress and if it's going to be successful we need to keep working at it. I told her I would not give up trying. That I feel it's important for us and the girls to have a happy stable environment for us to be in.

I told her I was coming home on Friday and that I was not going to move out again - she asked why if seperation would help. I said that I wanted to be with the girls and that financially it wasn't an option. I also told her that I didn't think seperating was going to help our M and would only drive us apart - I asked her if she seriously thought that seperating would help us get together long term, she admitted that she didn't think it would, but would be less streeful for her.

I said - so your fine with me moving back on Friday, she said yes, lets not do anything rash that we may regret.

One thing that made my day - W said D6 kept asking where I was and when I was coming home, W said she never did that in the past when I was on business trips and it shows things are different.

I got big hugs and kisses from the girls and a smile and a bye from the W - overall considering where I thought we would be going not bad, still concerned about tired of trying and wanting to stop.