What do I do next?

[Accuray]

LH49,

Welcome, sorry you are here. There are some good things in your post above:

1) You W has a pattern of leaving *and returning*
2) There is no OM
3) Your W is telling you explicitly what's wrong

So far, you've been doing all the typical intuitive things that just don't work (begging, pleading, arguing, trying to convince her she's making a mistake, and pursuing). Here's the thing, all those behaviors are the natural way to respond to this situation, and none of them will work, it's counter-intuitive.

Your W is telling you that you always have to be right, that you don't respect her, that you manipulate her, etc. She feels that she's living in your shadow and you are controlling her (or trying to). She wants freedom! Then, when she leaves you and explains why, you "tried to refute her arguments by stating that things have changed". When you did that, you *demonstrated* that things have not changed. You tried to dismiss her position and assert your own. HER perception is your reality, not yours.

So here are some suggestions, your W feels controlled and is pulling away to get some freedom. Each step that you take to pursue her, will lead her to take another step away from you, because your pursuit threatens to erase her freedom. The farther you drive her away emotionally with your pursuit, the more ground you will need to recover, inch by painful inch. Your primary goal right now is to stabilize the situation and not chase her farther away. The way you do that is by pulling back yourself! (Give space) If she takes a step right, and you take a step right, she will take another step right to get away.

If she takes a step right, and you take a step LEFT, she will stay where she is. If you take another step left, she MAY start taking small steps back toward you.

You must immediately read "Divorce Busting" and "The Divorce Remedy". You must stop discussing your relationship with your wife at all. You must do nothing to pursue her. You need to back away, give her the space she wants, and work on addressing the issues that bother her. You must PROVE your changes are real in action, not with words, and you must be CONSISTENT. Each time you backslide, it will erase your prior gains.

LH49, your W has come to resent you. If you make her feel badly in any way, she will resent you more. You make her feel badly if you dismiss what she says, if you argue with her, etc. You also make her feel badly if you are sad around her, and make her believe she has power over your happiness, she doesn't want that responsibility right now. You need to be OK with you, and act as if you don't *need* her. You can want her, and it can be nice if she comes around, but if she doesn't that's OK too. Each thing you do right now needs to be calculated against the yardstick of "will this make my W resent me". If the answer is yes, don't do it! That even includes looking sad when she's around.

All of this is extremely hard to do. Giving space in a time of crisis goes against ever fiber of our being, but you MUST do it, it's the only thing that has a track record of working.

Good luck LH49!

Accuray