Hello! 20 year marriage teetering on the brink...

[AnotherStander]

Thanks to all for the input! Sorry my reply is so slow, but the next few days I came back my post had not been "approved" yet.

I agree with Cadet that you MUST detach so you don't appear needy or constantly obsess about what she is feeling, thinking, planning or doing.

Well, the strange thing is my wife hasn't detached herself. So for example, one form of detaching is not to ask where she's been, but if she's not at work then she's at home or out somewhere with the family (which typically includes me). I am definitely not pressuring her or obesessing about her, but I'm not fully detached either simply because she's always around. She'll be moving soon and at that point it'll be easier to put the detaching and "last resort" techniques into use.

Yet There are many positives in your sitch, such as the fact that there probably isn't an OM, (and if there is, she's not ready to come out with him and declare she's "finally in real love.") Also she's pretty pleasant to you, comparatively speaking (around here she could be seen as saintly for a WAW).

In that regard she really doesn't fit the typical profile of a WAW, she's acting almost completely normal around the kids and me but she is 100% convinced she needs to move out.

While I don't like the term "Mid life crisis" much b/c it tends to make people think there is more hope than there might be, which I don't understand as there's no empirical data supporting that, that I know of,

AND

b/c a whole bunch of assumptions go with that term that are NOT that accurate.

Notwithstanding my comments,she fits the bill so far.

Indeed, I actually started out posting on an MLC forum when this first started. She does match some of the characteristics of MLC- she has expressed a desire to artistically express herself in some way and get out of the "rut" she's in. I actually took her to an art class (where you paint a painting in 3 hours) a couple of weeks ago and she went to a photography class last weekend, I invited her to a pottery throwing class but she thought it would be too "messy". Still, she's not even considering staying.

The big tip off to me is the unusual step she's willing to take, to leave the kids with you. That is very unusual for a WAW, b/c most women who leave, leave their h's, not their families.

I may not have been clear on that, but we've agreed to 50-50 visitation. So we'll have split custody during the separation.

That's a flag of someone in crisis if ever there was one. The other option in my opinion if she's not in crisis/depression

She actually had really bad depression over 10 years ago and has been on Zoloft ever since. The counselor told her that it seemed like she was in depression again and should see her physician, she did and said that the physician said her dosage was fine. I suspect she downplayed what was going on to the physician, but not much I can do about that.

In her eyes it sounds as if she sees you as basically acting like a single guy w/no bad habits but a lot of hobbies he did without family AND who worked full time, who popped in for his "daddy fix" and making love when you felt like it, and did little to nothing around the house or with the kids.

I can see how it might have sounded like that in my description, in retrospect I think I made it sound worse than it really was. Basically my hobbies are motorcycles, model cars and R/C planes. I haven't touched the models in many years. The motorcycles get ridden rarely, and when they do it's usually with the wife or kids. The planes are picked so they're small enough to fly in the backyard so I don't have to go anywhere, and that activity frequently involved the kids too. Plus I usually only flew a few times a week for an hour or so, and usually before the wife got home from work. There were many times that when I saw her come home I landed and went inside. My wife hasn't complained about any of these things, rather she complained that I yelled at her too much in arguments. And that is quite true, I know now from talking to a counselor that there's 3 levels of communication- parent, adult and child. Spouses should communicate adult-to-adult, but frequently the man speaks at the parent level and the wife reduces down to the child level. That happened a lot with us. She also complained that I griped about many of the activities we went to and she's right I did, I complained about going but once I was there I always enjoyed it. The bottom line is she's taking the kind of stuff that happens in your average relationship and making it sound like it's abnormal and grounds for separation/ divorce.

Meaning, she has been doing all that AND working full time all this time?.

Yeah, we both work full time. We hire a person to clean bi-weekly and we both did the picking up for that (now I do it every day). Wife and I split the kid transport duties. I do all the outside work on our huge landscaped acre lot and maintain the pool and koi pond. I also do all the house repairs/ upgrades. She used to do the laundry (I do now), food (mostly take-out) and grocery shopping. We both did the dishes (I do that all now too). Our oldest is in college now, our other two are quite independent although I handle my son most of the time as far as showers, brushing teeth and getting him to bed. All that to say I thought we had close to an equitable split of duties, but apparently she didn't. I do admit she handled more of the baby duties, but that was because she had a generous leave package (6 months) and I was only able to take a week off. But I did what I could and she never complained.

I dont' mean to bash you here, but do you see how SHE could perceive your level of effort as being awfully low and, forgive me, but, pretty self absorbed?

Hopefully I cleared the info up a little better. I could see how she would think that if I were totally buried in the hobbies, but it wasn't like that.

So, She may be exhausted and feeling completely worn out emotionally and physically and neglected in many ways

Honestly what's perplexing to me is it seems like she's been quite happy for as long as I can remember. No crying, no wierd moments of sitting in the corner pouting, nothing. When I saw she was "doing the laundry", sometimes I wouldn't see my clothes for weeks, LOL! It took her forever! Since I started doing it the whole thing gets done every Friday. She's throw a load in and take off to get her nails done with the girls and it would sit there for hours before going on the dryer. So I hope you're not getting the impression that she was slaving over a hot stove or iron all day while I was partying Speaking of ironing, she's never touched that, I do it all (it's mostly my clothes anyway).

Many women do not express anger in a direct way. And it can build in all sorts of converted ways and it can kill a lot of loving feelings.

I think this is the problem exactly. My wife has NEVER been good at communicating, even back when we were dating. I have to draw information out of her a piece at a time. If we get in the car and I don't say anything we travel in near silence, so I usually talk just to break up the silence. Her responses are usually pretty brief. It's always been this way. I have no doubt whatever resentment she is harboring is locked up in some vault in her and it's now boiling over, but still she won't talk about it, not to me and not to the counselor. It's very frustrating.

I do think she'll miss the heck out of her kids-and you-and you seem committed to being the best guy you can be,[u] a man only a fool would leave, and if she comes to believe in your changes, which she can with sufficient time + enough small consistent changes... then she may decide the CORE ISSUE -which is believing that Marriage to you can be better/different. IF she thinks it can be, she'll likely return.

Thank you, that's all I can hope for at this point because she's definitely moving. I fully understand it's only been 2 months and as Michele points out, my wife is probably thinking the changes are just a temporary ruse to lure her back. It's going to take a lot of time to demonstrate otherwise to her.

And when we challenge their choices, we force them to defend the choices, instead of really examining them. So back off the interrogatories or interviews...

I did some of that the first week before I started reading DB, but I've been holding course on that ever since. We've talked about the kids and what she's going to take when she moves, but other than that it's been small, happy talk.

Thanks for the advice, I am working on the other things you mentioned as well.

if you get a chance after reading the Div Busting books, try reading The Five Love Languages by Chapman.

I'm about 2/3 through it and have been implementing some of the techniques. One of the biggies I learned in it is my love language is gift-giving and receiving while my wife's is "words of affirmation". That was a big revelation, I never understood why she didn't make a big deal out of gifts I gave her that I spent so much time and money on (some of them handmade). Now I know! And yes, I was very weak on her love needs. I've always been polite with the please and thank you's and thanks for doing this or that, but after reading that chapter I understand how I should have been taking that to a totally different level and wasn't.

However, I do not control my anger well, and when I've had enough, out it comes in an attacking manner.

My wife is the opposite, she never, ever expressed anger. Just kept it all bottled up.

As 25 says, keep up the 180s, try a hobby with the kids. If you can show that you are truly committed to doing things with the kids, it may show her that you would be committed to doing things with her as well, and less of your hobbies that don't involved them.

I just took the eldest to college which was heart-breaking! We're very close. The middle daughter is almost never home, she's a total socialite. I do hang out with her and take her to lunch/ dinner when she's around though. The youngest is my buddy, we've been doing a lot more together lately- scouting activities, motorcycle rides, R/C planes and cars, etc.

Sounds like you have a classic "walkaway wife" on your hands then. While infidelity is usually involved in these situations (the whole "soft place to land" thing), it's certainly not always, and it doesn't sound like it is in your sitch. Michele's "walkaway wife" would be a good place for you to read.

I skipped straight to that chapter first, LOL! And this was probably a mistake, but because Michele spoke directly to the WAW in that chapter I actually found it online and copy/ pasted it and emailed it to my wife. This was before I had read DB, I wouldn't have had I read more. If it had any impact on her I didn't hear about it.

There was also a poster that used to be on here named Greek. She did not have an affair, and both she and her husband (Coach) posted openly about what was going thru Greek's mind, and what she responded to and what repelled her.

Thank you, I'll look for their posts! There's a woman going through MLC that posts on the "LifeTwo" forums, it's been really interesting reading her perspective too. She has wanted to leave her husband for some time, but miraculously has been able to realize the problem was with her perceptions and not her husband. She has posted a lot about what she thinks/ feels on a weekly basis, basically it can be described as extreme mental turmoil. I suspect my wife is going through the same although she seems cool and collected on the surface.

Thanks again all!