I am at my wits end. As much as I try to follow the DB guidelines, I continue to fall off base. After chasing away the possible EA, I decided to engage my wife one last time before falling way back. I sat her down and calmly, collected my thoughts, and apologized for treating her the way I have for so long. I poured it out to her. I expressed that I have been negligent with her feelings and I lacked giving her the nurturing that she needed. I promised her with all of my heart that I had learned from my mistakes and wanted to be a better man for her. I wanted to hold her hand, go for walks and do all of those things that we stopped doing some time ago. I wanted to feel her touch and share our days together. I also want to do more things with each other and be apart less. These have been her biggest issues with our relationship, and the underlying cause of our actions and conflicts.
Of course, before going into this I knew her reaction would be to pull away even farther. She did test me on several things, but I feel that I responded to them from the heart. She expressed that she has nothing but the past to use as a comparison, so she felt I wasn't going to be able to make the changes I promised. She didn't believe me. I know I can, and I know I want to. I promised her that I could. I told her the only reason I was saying all of this was because I have had a change of heart and needed to get it off my chest. I honestly have had an awakening about my love for my wife during the last couple weeks. I couldn't bear the weight of carrying it, if we were to split indefinitely. I told her I needed to express it fully. Then, I asked her to consider it, really consider it. That was yesterday. At this point, I plan on pulling back. I asked everyone that has been taking my side in this issue, friends and family, to pull back as well in regards to pressuring her. It is time to just let her reflect and live. Hopefully she realizes she wants to give it another try, but of course that decision is only hers to make. I have said and done everything I can, with the exception of following the darn DB guidelines.....grrrr
Now it is time to settle in and really focus on my 180's. I know I was waaaay off base to DB thinking, but I felt this was something I had to do. Hopefully it didn't put me too far off track.
