Some more background...I'm 43, wife almost 41, 5 kids ranging from 17 down to 4 (one is mine with OW from before marriage). Dated for 3 years in high school, saw each other regularly over the next 4-5 years for lunches and such, mostly on a friend basis, but the spark was always there. After college I got my first job and moved to TX....came back to town for Thanksgiving and thought I'd invite her to my mother's. To my surprise, she said yes, and that night changed everything. About a year later we married and have been for 15 years this year.
During the time we were apart in my college years, in some ways, I was pursuing, but felt she always had someone else at the time and I resigned myself to the role of friend. In hindsight, this actually made we feel like I was never good enough and when we did finally get together and marry, I never completely put myself into it as I was worried she would leave me.
In the last year, I feel like I have opened up completely, but at the same time, I feel like I've been getting the crap beat out of me. I've gone thru detaching and reattaching a number of times.
I've been reading and reading (currently 5LL), and I feel like we fight completely different these days, mostly (more listening, more insightful discussion, etc). I think we've started to get underneath a lot of the things she's dealing with, but she would generally prefer to avoid a problem than actually tackle it straight on. And if we do manage to tackle it, somehow it turns into a blame game of how I didn't give her what she needed for 10 years or how I had a child with someone else 15 years ago.
