I have followed this site for about one year since the start of my marrige nightmare.
I have had a one on one with Michele about 7 months ago and it was a very informative and helpful session. I am seriously considering a one to two day session at this time for obvious reasons to you all.
As most of you, I have read almost everything I could get my hands on to save my marrige. Shattered Dreams by Larry Cobb , a religious volume that discusses the maturational processes of our lives. I have read most of Michele's books and they have been most helpful in allowing me to change my life. I have read several of John Elridge books ie. The Journey of Desire. Escape from the box ,the human potential by edward hubbard. Sue Shellenbarger's book on breaking out the Midlife crises ( just starting this one) and I understand an author named Conway has a good book on MLC. You probably get the picture that we are all trying very hard and possibly a little too hard.
My W has no OM based on all our counceling sessions and others that know her well. I believe she sees the type of man she believes she wishes that she would have married in a cowboy out west. My W loves horses and she is obsessed with all activities associated with them. She especially likes to go out west and ride with her friends and has taken 11 trips in the last 15 months to colorado and north Dakota. Three of these trips were with my D's 11 an 7 years of age. My W enjoys taking them but her motive is for herself to go.
My wife is definately in a MLC based on the 6 stages that many of you are familiar with. Like when someone dies, she has been through the denial, anger, wich she still has from time to time, Replay she is still in....she says that she is finally doing something for herself in life and my head spins when I hear this based on all we have done to help her dreams grow on the homefront i.e. horses, horse barn, 20 acres of horse property, big house etc....like she is spoiled... Depression, she experienced this to the greater extent in the months of October through March. She still has bouts of crying when she is stressed but the depression waxes and waynes but is nothing like it was back in the winter months ( Could have been some SAD...Seasonal affective disorder.) Now she seems to be in the acknowledgement phase but there is still no real improvement in her working on the marrige. I believe she recognises all the negative things she has told her friends . It is perhaps hard hard to undo all she has said and this may make it more impossible for her to return?? She insists, especially when I stress her out and don't give her enough space, that she is not in love with me and doesn't like me and that we are not a good match. However, she will call me 3-4 times a day about things she does not need to call me about...almost like she wants to talk with me but doesn't know how. Like she has a lot of guilt and anxiety over what she is doing and has done.She talks about living in our other house and I would live in the one were in now and that the kids could visit whenever they want and come and go. Sounds good if this is the way it has to be but is it realistic????
As with your sig. others, they are on rollercoasters, space trains, forgetful, only remember the negative things and forget all the good even when you know differently there is no reasoning with them for they have become illogical!!!
Many of our W and H seem to function normally at times and it makes us wonder what the H is going on! But most of the time they make us feel like strangers and ignore us or say disrespectful things to us.
I have been hanging in here for 12 months this fathers day and dont' plan on loosing this game. Right now it looks as impossible as it did many months ago but there have been some positive small changes but like the rest of you these hardly touch your appetite.
We have booth been in counceling with a lady of good experience but she has admitted that she lacks some of the training in the MLC area. She was the first to expose me to Micheles work from a seminar she attended put on by Michelle. We have been to our C alone and together and a few times with the kids. We have probably consuled about 35 times.
We have seemed to have made some slight progress over the last year but there is still a lot of work ahead. My C has said to me that I have done everything that any man could possibly do to change and that 9 of 10 women she has worked with out of the thousands of patients she has seen would have forgiven me and would have given me a second chance.
Your probably thinking what did thi M do..The reality is very little in my mind and a lot in hers. I never hit my wife, drank and was told that I was a very good father and good provider. We lacked intamacy as many of you have and did not connect perhaps with the proper love language that many of you have studied. I do have ED wich didn't help the situation but my wife said in C that that was not a problem which I do not totally believe. In a c session with my wife meeting the C one on one she told the C that 50% of the reason she wants out is my family. She thought she was marrying into a good family but was disappointed. We were married in 1991.
I know this is the most frustrating thing that most of us will ever go through. We just want to be forgiven for whatever we have done. We have sincerely said we are sorry and love them and would only wish that we could feel their presense in our hearts and arms.Not having sex or even an initiated hug from them for one year,shorter or longer, is unimaginable but we carry on in hope that one day they will recognize that we have really changed and that we really do love them and want them to be happy at all costs..
Somebody said God made no mountain that we cannot climb. Keep climbing.
