Not a very happy story, I'm afraid..

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So, I have been in this situation for the past few months. I discovered this site, and the Divorce Remedy and Divorce Busting, a few weeks ago, and have been soaking up everyone's stories and situations like mad. Thank you all for sharing your stories.

So, in June, I had to do a lot of travel for work. At one point I was gone one week, back for the weekend, then gone again for the next week. The first week was fairly normal, but I noticed things. I would text my wife and get no response. I would call her and she would be heading out the door with her friend. Moreover, I felt very alone, and normally we are able to talk and/or skype or whatever. I'd say over the past few months our frequency of talking had been declining, but I figured it was just because my wife was busy with school and work and she was getting wrapped up in all of her responsibilities. But on this trip, I felt something different.

When I got home, I made an effort to try to bridge the gap a little better. But I still felt her putting a wall up. She would get home late from work. I would ask her to lunch (she doesn't work days) and she would fail to respond, or worse, wait until after I'd said, "OK I have to go, I guess you don't want to come" to respond.

Then one day, I got home early from work, and found her in the kitchen in her (revealing) swimming suit with two guys I haven't met. I was dumbfounded and I really did not take it well. Our house has a pool, but it was VERY weird that she would have people over without even giving me a heads up. She's had friends over before, but I would always get a text or phone call. The guys were nice enough. They introduced themselves and left. Interestingly, they left around the time I'd normally be getting home from work.

Over the next few days, things got increasingly more tense. The next Thursday, she came to my work and we went out to lunch. While at lunch we discussed what we'd do that evening. She doesn't work Thursday nights and therefore it's a sort of de facto date night. I got home a little early from work again and she wasn't there. I texted her and said what are we doing? She said she was going to go out with friends and that I was not invited.

Well, I freaked out. This is not the wife that I knew. Anyway after a long fight I finally gave in and said fine, go out with your friends, we need to talk tomorrow though. And I wrote her a letter. In short, I told her that I was sorry that we'd seemed to grow apart, and it seemed like she was afraid to tell me she wasn't in love with me anymore. Because her actions told me that, even if she said she loved me to my face. I had noticed that I had been very stressed out throughout the spring and early summer due to my commitments through work. And I promised that I would change, be more adventurous and outgoing, like I used to be.

I left the letter on the door and went to bed at 11:00. She came home and went to bed later than that. The next day at work, we texted back and forth and she said we'd talk when she got home from work that night.

Well talk we did, and she unloaded with all of the stuff she thought was wrong with our marriage. And furthermore, she didn't want to try, did not want to do things differently, did not think we were ever really in love. However, she did agree to go to counseling with me. This was probably July 6th?

We had our first counseling appointment the following Tuesday. In hindsight it was very apparent that she was just going through the motions. The counselor asked her, "are you going to try to work on this?" and she just said, "well, I'm here." I think the counselor is good. She had good ideas about how we got to where we were and, more importantly, small things we could do immediately to try to fix things.

Unfortunately, one of the things she suggested was for me to touch wife.. Hold hands, touch her hair, etc. Well, that just seemed to drive her further away. I don't think the counselor understood how "done" my wife actually was. And really, I didn't either, because my wife really said and did contradictory things -- she was very hard for me to read.

We've had three couples sessions now, and we've each had an individual session. There's a lot more details of the intervening weeks that I will detail in future posts if necessary. It's been 6 weeks since she dropped the bomb. At the last counseling session (Tuesday), she decided she wants to move out. The counselor suggested a controlled separation, but we were out of time, she had another couple come in. Wife seemed to think that might be an OK idea.. Couldn't really read her.

We talked a little while after the session, and agreed that she would just move into another bedroom of the house, and I would give her as much distance as I could. I had suggested that perhaps we make a day to talk, how about Saturday morning? She said that was fine.

Well, yesterday I told her I'd rather just go out to breakfast than talk about our relationship. I figured I'd rather have a good time than burden her with our feelings, etc. So we went out to breakfast and I did my best to not start conversations, to let her lead, etc. Last Resort Technique. And I noticed she wasn't wearing the necklace that she's worn since our honeymoon. And then I noticed she wasn't showing me her left hand at all.

She'd taken her rings off.

I didn't let on that I'd seen. I really didn't know what to say. Over the past few weeks I've become more and more convinced that she's basically walking away from this marriage and me.. despite her words, her actions prove otherwise.

She swears she has not had an affair. Swears I'm making things up and grasping at straws.

I've talked with friends and family and gotten pretty good support. We just moved to this state last October, and quite frankly the wife has a much better support network than I do. I work in an office, and I really only have one friend at work. I have some friends outside of work but because of my travel schedule I haven't become very good friends with them... That is changing.

The wife works at a restaurant at night, teaches part time during the day and will be resuming graduate classes at night starting next week. Her restaurant friends are the ones I've never met.

At this point, I don't have a lot of hope. She's running away and if I try and stop her, that will just build up more resentment, so I'm not going to try. I even told her I certainly don't want to be with someone who doesn't want me. But it really isn't easy. Mornings are the worst.

There are many more details but at this point I can't quite figure out what's important and what's not. I will definitely be back to post more.

Thanks everyone.