Still together but trying to save this

[Denver_2010]

Yes. That is what you need to decide.

And yeah, get rid of the little loving nicknames for now. Let her initiate contact, keep your responses short and to the point.

Denver, thank you so much for the advice. I told myself from the beginning that I believed in marriage, for better or worse. So for now I have the resolve to see this through.

I do have a curiosity about your story. As I said I read most of your posts. Am I correct in understanding that you and your W do not have a child together? I only ask because in a lot of the success stories on the forums that I read, reconciliation happens or is at least affected by the children in the equation. I wonder sometimes if it does hurt my chances that we do not have any children together. Maybe that makes it easier for her to cut ties. I know that is complete speculation and we aren't supposed to be trying to be mind readers. It was just something that I was thinking about. It is tough to get all of these thoughts out of my head no matter how hard I detach and GAL, which is going well by the way. I have supportive friends and family that I am reconnnecting with in the way I should have been for the last 3 years. Ironic that it took my wife leaving me to see the value in building and nurturing ALL of my relationships. next trip to the IC tomorrow to work on my anxiety some more. I think I am doing well so far. Still a lot of work to be done. I will update when I can.

If you are going to make the decision to stand for your M, do it for you. I don't believe that you will be sorry that you did it even if you don't save your M. I don't know how much of my story you have read. In May and half of June of this year, I believed that I was done. That I was moving on. I told my W that I wanted a D, I completed the paperwork, and gave it to my W. At first she agreed and said that she was ready for the big D as well.

At that point, I had been doing this for 16 months, give or take. I remember asking myself if I had wasted all of that time working towards something that looked to be a failure. My answer was that I had not wasted that time. I took stock of everything that I had learned. I knew that I could look myself in the mirror and say that I had done everything that I could to save my M. I looked at the pain that I had endured, everything that had happened in those 16 months... and I was still standing. It had not destroyed me.

It had made me stronger.

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My W and I do not have a child together. I have a daughter who lives with her mom in Alabama and my W has a son who lives with us.

I would put us in the middle of what you are talking about here. My SS missed me and wanted to still have me in his life. I have basically been his dad since he was 4, albeit not always a good one. So my W and I had that tie. But it wasn't the same as having a kid with her. For example, she really didn't encourage contact between SS and myself for the first 4-6 weeks of our separation. So I didn't see him, and sometimes didn't talk to him for days at a time. I'd be lying though if I told you that the tie with my SS did not eventually help me maintain a connection with my W.

I think not having kids together will make it more difficult. That is the truth. It will be easier for her to distance herself. That's not to say that it can't be done though. Either your W still has love for you in her heart or she doesn't. If she does have that flicker of flame still there, she will have to deal with it at some point. The question is whether or not you want to be there if that happens.