Last December I had sort of an epiphany that I wasnt the husband that I should have been and decided that I would do a complete makeover of myself to change that situation. After a couple of months, she was telling me that this change was very strange and she was feeling smothered and pulling away from me.
Something similar happened with my W, I went from being pretty distant to being overly affectionate. She said it was "too much". Most women don't want either extreme, it's better to be somewhere in the middle.
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along with "I dont want to be married any more", "we have nothing in common any more", "maybe we were never really in love", "I'm a different person than the on you married", "I cant remember a single good moment in our marrige", etc.
Don't read too much into this, those are all typical WAS script lines. She's rewritten history, she remembers all the bad moments and none of the good. DO NOT try to convince her she's wrong, it'll just drive her farther away. She does feel that way for now, but she probably won't always feel that way. You have to give her space and time to sort this out.
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Her brother, hearing how unhappy she was suggested that maybe she needed time away from me so she moved out 5 weeks ago.
He's probably right. She's got to sort through this on her own, the best thing you can do for her right now is leave her alone. Try not to call or text her. If she contacts you it's fine to respond, but resist contacting her (she'll perceive it as pressure).
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After all of this time away from her and no communication, I have felt my love for her slowly melt away to almost nothing and for the most part am only still in the game because I still respect the vows I took and the institution of marriage.
We all cycle through different emotions including this one (feeling like we've fallen out of love). I suspect that if you give it more time you'll continue cycling through anger, love, ambivalence, etc. Accept the emotions as part of the process, but try not to let them affect your decisions.
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I tend to alternate between thoughts of "maybe this thing can still work itself out" and telling her to "just file the papers and get this thing over with".
Yeah, that's part of the cycling I mentioned. Totally normal.
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So now after 5 months of a living hell, I am just wondering how to proceed or if I should proceed.
I can relate. I ask myself that same question all the time. I think it's Cadet that says the easy thing to do is to drop the rope. It's MUCH harder to stand. So that's a choice we all have to make, drop the rope and get on with our lives or stand and hope against the odds that we can heal our M's.
