This is not looking good! (Long post...)

[Accuray]

mab1,

Welcome to the Divorce Busting Forum -- take a deep breath! First some basics: you can turn this around, but it will not be easy, and it will not be fast, in fact, it will be the hardest thing you've ever done and it will take 10x longer than you're probably thinking it might. The first thing to do is decide if you're "in" for that level of effort and that amount of patience. If not, that's OK, only you can decide, it takes a "gut check" about what you really want.

Here are some facts -- although your W only "spent one week deciding" prior to dropping the bomb, I guarantee you she was unhappy and felt trapped for a LONG time. She was wrestling with a situation where her needs were not being met and she didn't know what to do about it. Leaving a relationship is scary -- stereotypically women value security, and leaving is giving up a lot of security. Therefore, to leave, things had to be REALLY bad for her, this was not a spur of the moment decision despite how it may seem.

Why am I telling you this? To set your expectations -- you and your W have "trained" each other over the course of your relationship about what to expect from each other. She feels she knows you better than you know yourself, and knows exactly how you think about things and what to expect from you, and those things weren't working for her.

You cannot change those impressions and learnings quickly, physiologically, it has actually created neural pathways in her brain. To change them requires retraining, and retraining requires time and repetition -- a lot of time and repetition.

So what do you do?

First, your W wants space right now. Despite how impossibly painful it feels, and how counterintuitive it seems, you must give her the space she wants. What does that mean? Do NOT pursue her in any way -- don't make overtures, don't discuss your relationship, don't send her letters, don't call, don't e-mail, don't text. For now, leave her alone. If she wants to talk to you, she knows where to find you. Ironically, the strongest thing you can do right now is to step back.

This is very hard for someone in your situation to do, so let me explain why it's important:

Your wife wants space -- pretend she wants to be separated from you by eight feet. When you pursue her, you threaten to reduce that distance, the only choice you give her is to move farther away -- to retreat more -- to protect the eight feet of space. The further you push her away, the farther she'll need to come back later, and every inch will be hard won.

Now, if instead of pursuing her, you move in the OPPOSITE direction, increasing the distance to TEN feet, you give her EXTRA room, or 2 feet that she can move back toward you while still remaining comfortable, and moving toward you is what you want.

Please read this carefully -- pursuing never, ever works -- NEVER. You will not read one case where someone "convinced" their spouse to come back by arguing, begging, pleading, buying gifts, or enlisting the help of their spouse's family. The ONLY thing that has a chance of working is giving your wife what she wants right now, which is space.

The second thing that you must do is work on yourself -- you must find a path to being a husband that only a fool would leave. What does that mean? As the book says, consider your W's complaints about you seriously and do a 180 on them. Whatever she predicts you'll do that bothers her, do the opposite. You have to make her WONDER if her preconceived notions about you are true, or if she has you wrong. To convince her, you cannot TELL her, you have to SHOW her, through action, and you need to repeat positive behavior again and again and again. She will be skeptical and slow to believe, so you must be consistent.

That's a lot for tonight, but I'll give you more more piece of advice -- your situation right now is fragile as I'm sure you can appreciate. Your W believes that your vision of marriage and hers are not aligned -- that you want things she does not want, and that your demands are putting her in a no-win situation. Don't make MORE demands!

Everything you do in the near future should be measured against a yardstick of "resentment" -- will this action, conversation, facial expression, etc create MORE resentment, or LESS? Your goal is not to make things worse! What will make your wife resent you?

-- NOT giving her space, by pursuing
-- Making her responsible for your feelings, by telling her how sad she's making you, or demonstrating that by being sad around her
-- Chastising or scolding her, telling her she's wrong
-- Enlisting the help of HER family or friends to argue on your behalf

You need to stay away from all that.

YOU can turn this around, but you need to start by taking a hard look at YOU, educating yourself, and making yourself a better person and a better marriage partner -- that will serve you well no matter what happens with your wife.

If you've read DR, I recommend the following;

"The Five Love Languages"
"How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It"

Read those two.

Deep breath mab1, things WILL get better

Accuray