Needing some guidance...

[jks]

My husband and I have been married for 8 years... been together 9 (we went to High School together so we knew each other for several years before we got together). We have three children together. Over the years I have struggled with depression and have had major anxiety in getting things done... i.e. cleaning the house, running my business... I was basically living in chaos ALL the time and feeling overwhelmed. Continually felt like I was drowning and just trying to keep my head above water, especially when baby #3 came along. My husband has been my rock. He would ALWAYS pick up the slack for me... cleaning, taking care of the kids when he could, organizing, cooking... everything. Call him amazing... he is!! However, his downfall is that he never had a serious talk with me about how all of this was affecting him. In fact, he was still showing me in little ways that he loved me and so when it all came crashing down, it was very, very confusing. He stated that he had been falling out of love for a long time and was just trying to keep things together but now he has nothing left to give so therefore he wanted to get divorced. Obviously, going through this has forced me to look at myself and really evaluate what I need to be doing in order to get my life back in order. I fell into a huge "funk" that I didn't know how to get out of and felt trapped. And to add on top of all of that I had awful spending habits which resulted in us filing for bk last year. We both now live with each of our parents (not living with each other) and are renting our house out so we don't have a mortgage payment so we can try to get back on our feet again. And what he's telling me now is that he really wants to see me be more independent. He wants me to be emotionally and financially stable. To which he then added, "I'm not saying this so that I can leave you, it just helps me see you be independent." I am struggling with knowing what to do because I am running my own business but it has become so slow because I've been such an emotional wreck that it is almost non-existent. I'm struggling to know if I should continue to work on my business and build it up more or if I should go and get a 40 hr job and put my kids in daycare. We split the kids half and half each week so they would only be going one to two days a week. My business allows me to make my own hours so I can be home with them. They are still little and only go to school half day. To add on top of all of this, he has had an emotional "friendship" affair with another woman at work. And when I asked him to stop the text messaging, at first he said he didn't think that was fair because she's his friend, but then after I explained to him what a huge red flag that is, he told me he would stop. However, this only stopped for maybe three days and then started back up again. I kept watching the bill and bringing it up to him and so eventually he split our cell phone bills so I couldn't see it. Then a couple weeks ago when we were moving out of our house, I had left for a couple days on a trip to "get away," he brought this girl over to our house to help him move our things. I've confronted her and she basically sees nothing wrong with their relationship (I've known her ever since my husband started his job about 5.5 yrs ago and have always liked her but I think she has taken this a bit too far). In the months of June and July of last year my H had 5,500 text messages in each of those months and the majority of those messages were to and from her. It was everyday, all day long. It still makes me sick to even think about it. How does a person think that that is ok? I mean, he would have had to have been glued to his cell phone 24/7. This woman is married but is also having marriage issues and when I talked to him about having her over to help him move while I was gone, he admitted to me that he's attracted to her. He did also state that he hasn't let himself go there with thinking about doing anything more with her, i.e. kissing or anything on that level. But he just really enjoys her company and they have a lot in common. He left me in August 2011 and since then we have been up and down. He's come back wanting to work things out only to leave again not knowing if he can ever feel the same again. I've done the normal pressuring, trying to get him to see things from my point of view, and constantly showing him old things like pictures and old letters that he wrote to me when we were happier and more "in love." Obviously, none of that helped and then I read DR. It has helped me so much it is almost like my Bible right now. However, I just read on another thread that you should not have your spouse read the book and I have already given him a copy. Is that awful? I felt like it had so many good things to consider that I couldn't imagine him not reading it. I'd love to know thoughts on that. I have been doing really well at not talking about our relationship and just this week (I hadn't seen my H for a week) when he dropped off the kids, he seemed in really good spirits, as was I. And he asked me if I wanted to go to breakfast with him the next morning. I, of course, accepted but then plans were cancelled due to my daughter's Dr. appt. We then ended up going out to lunch but with all of our kids which made it very hard to talk... so it was pretty uneventful. Not that I wanted to talk about the relationship. I more just wanted to see why he wanted to go out in the first place. He says that the time apart does help him realize what's important and helps him see what needs to happen in order for our relationship to work. But I am stuck knowing which direction I should go as far as my career goes because I know its important for him to see me be successful and, of course, its important to me as well. And I need advice on keeping myself cool, calm and collected when he is around. He emotionally sets something off inside me so its hard for me to hide what I'm feeling no matter how hard I try... meaning, he always makes me really nervous. I've never felt this way around him before. Like I'm walking on egg shells and my every move is being monitored and judged. Help!