Interesting couple of days. I went a checked a calendar to make sure my time line was right and it has been about eight weeks since my wife broached the subject of divorce and it has been 5 weeks since the ILYBIANILWY talk. About a month since I started DB.
The last week has been great. Spent a lot of time with my wife. We are renting and our lease is up in February and she started talking about buying a house. She got so excited when I told her to schedule a realtor for Friday she did not want to wait so she scheduled it for today. Last night she told me she was trying in regards to our relationship and still did not know what was going to happen. I felt I had no choice to tell her that until our marriage was solid it would be crazy to buy a house especially in the neighborhood we are in. It was the last thing I wanted to bring up but it would have been a financial disaster to buy an expensive house and then have to deal with it in a separation or divorce. We still spent the morning looking at houses and then we went to lunch.
At lunch we talked about how she is bored as a stay at home mom and she fills guilty about it. As the kids get older it is not fulfilling. This something we have talked a bit about over the last few weeks and it made sense and I understand her struggles there. Then she mentioned one of her best friends is going through some of the same things in her marriage (EA / unhappy) and I was shocked. Hate hearing it with this couple especially as it worries me that some of her friends are having the same issues.
The the bomb - and I think this is part of the healing process. I told her how much I have enjoyed spending time with her lately. She told me in regards to the house I was right and she can not make a decision right now about our relationship. She is really torn between staying and going. She acknowledged that I have changed but she does not understand how I could change so much so quickly. She wished she could change like that but she can not and she does not have feelings like she did before for me. That we have grown apart. She was worried that if we divorce the kids will hate her because it will be all her fault and she implied that she was upset because it seemed like I was now a "perfect husband" and yet she could still not be happy. When we talked about the house I told her we really had about 90 days to make a decision and she said that was to soon - she could not decide anything in 90 days and that really highlighted to me how far we have to go to make this marriage work. She also said that she did not feel that she could be intimate with me again physically. That the feelings were not there. She even broached the possibility of us staying together without being physically intimate. That was hard to hear and is not what I want and I hope that is just a manifestation of her current feelings and conflicts.
I am hoping that his is part of the process for her and us. It has only been about 4 weeks from my 180 so I think my hopes of just gotten up to much and that the healing process will take time. We really have so much fun together and enjoy each other so much I think I just got to excited. The good news for me is that for the old me this conversation would have sent me off the deep end in regards to negativity but I was able to stay positive which makes me believe that the 180 is really taking root.
The good news is that she still wants to spend time with me. She mentioned playing pool tonight at the end of lunch and we have plans for tomorrow already too. She has always wanted to paddle board and during lunch, after the other stuff was discussed, she joked that she can not wait to see me fall in the water and laugh. I think right now we are almost like best friends as we both really enjoy having fun together. Not want I want in the long term but all things considered not a bad place to be 8 weeks removed from a divorce talk. Just have to stay positive and stick to this. It is really hard to be objective though.
Sam,
Did your wife's refusal and rejection and complete shutdown of sex and intimacy have any effect on you?
