PLEASE!!! Need help quick! Calling all vets!

[AntoniaB]

I agree with everyone above, you're not really doing anything different, still trying to figure her out all the time.

But I wanted to say one thing in case I had forgotten to tell you this before.

My XH also painted a picture like it was years that he was not happy and he also spewed a lot in the beginning. Just after Christmas, when I saw him for the last time in person at my house, with the tree up and all that, his guilt triggered some honesty and he told me this:

"I exagerrated everything to try to get you to hate me. I was happy for almost the whole marriage. Things just shifted in the very end, probably the past two years."

Me: "What shifted?"

XH: "I just started to feel this panic, like I wasn't happy at all with anything, and then I felt like I didn't feel the same about you and I didn't know what to do. I felt horrible for it but I was so confused."

Me: "And then what?"

XH: "So then I tried to get you to hate me. I did everything I could to get you to hate me."

Me: "Why?"

XH: "Because I felt like I was drowning and I needed to get out and I didn't have the guts to walk away from you on my own. So I wanted to make you be the one to end it so I could get out."

Me: "And I didn't end it."

XH: "Right. You wouldn't end it. You wouldn't hate me. I didn't expect that."

(and then eventually this led to a separation, getting back together, and then his affair. He actually said to me at one point, "Do I HAVE to sleep with her to get you to let me go?"

I'm telling you this exchange because I think it was AS HONEST as an MLCer in the midst of it can be. NO. It doesn't make a lot of sense. It basically means that the MLCer admits he/she isn't happy and is "drowning" and doesn't know why, assumes that the marriage, the "biggest thing" in their lives, is the problem, and figures "let me get out of the marriage and it will all be fine."

Not everyone is the same, but my XH is an MLCer who ADMITTED to me---without my even asking--but just brought this up in a moment of clarity/guilt/sadness the reason behind his craziness.

Try to take something from this. It is highly possible, in fact probable, that your wife is doing the same thing to you.

And what is the message in my XH's revelation to me? LET ME GO. I'M DROWNING AND I FEEL LIKE YOU'RE PULLING ME UNDER AND I CAN'T SEE IT ANY OTHER WAY. I AM INCAPABLE."

So I let him go.

And he's gradually finding out, 9 months later, that he's being pulled back under again by his own head. And I'm not there to be blamed.

You must let this process play out and you're fighting it at every step. You are doubling the pain you feel because you're having to process the pain of what she's doing to you and the pain of what you're doing to yourself by staying on the merry-go-round.