Think it is a mid life crisis - thoughts, advice?

[adinva]

You need to back off for yourself. This is confusing and painful for you. It's not to punish him, and if it makes him mad, you can be sorry that he feels that way.

He left you. Why is he concerned with whether you moved on or are dating? Just answer direct questions with direct answers, "no, I'm not dating." "yes, I'm moving on with my life. I wish things were different but I'm respecting your decision." "no, I find it confusing and painful to be affectionate with you while you are in the process of ending our marriage." You say a lot what he thinks, but you don't really know what he thinks or why he is leveling accusations at you. Perhaps he is trying to justify his anger at you, his reasons for leaving. Perhaps he is trying to get you to make him feel better about his decision. Regardless, answer what he specifically asks, with a specific answer, and don't get sucked into trying to get him to understand and agree with your point of view. That's a cheeseless tunnel. Just feel how you feel, act to protect and respect yourself, and don't overshare with him.

I'm going to mindread a little here. What H leaving his wife wouldn't LOVE to be able to "be good friends" "still be affectionate" basically get to be a good and decent guy and also leave his wife. When being affectionate and friendly toward him is painful and confusing for you, you need to back off. You aren't going to "win him back" by being such a nice wife about being left.

The reason you feel like you have no direction is because your goal is not within your control. Getting your family back together is not within your control. We all want our families back together, really we do, the way they used to be and even better and stronger than ever. And if it was humanly possible to make that happen with only one of you doing the work, we'd all be happily married again. Read and reread DB or DR. Reread the 37 rules for newcomers. Don't pursue.

Expect that he's not going to be happy with some of your answers. Own them and stop worrying about making him happy. He wants to leave you, and he wants you to be unhappy about that, and he also wants you to be affectionate and friendly. At some point in this process you've got to stop being whatever it is you think will win him back and start being you, a better you, a you he'd have to be a fool to leave.

If he were to be interested in coming back, he would have to believe that marriage to you would be different and better than it was before. What are you doing toward that end? How are you improving yourself? How are you turning around things that you might have contributed to the problems in your marriage? What are you doing that is different? Perhaps that is where your sense of direction can come from.

For me, I learned from the bomb that I had some internal work to do, I had developed resentment and anger and I didn't even know it because I was afraid to go too deep into my own emotions, I preferred to deny them. I thought I was a good communicator but I was really only a good speaker; I had no idea how to listen to my H when we disagreed, I had no tools for managing conflict and so avoided conflict - which is impossible. And on and on. My hidden resentment came out in behavior that interfered with my marriage, loss of interest in my H physically, lack of ability to keep up with housework to his standards, etc, many many things that eroded my marriage and brought me to a place where I felt like an innocent wronged victim but also not the competent strong person I thought of myself as. This is just skimming the surface, there's been so much to work on for me, and I've learned so much. I dug in and got to work and that gave me direction. It just so happened that the direction I took to make myself into a better person and spouse could have been the direction that would "save my marriage" and at the same time it was the direction I needed to go to repair myself as a person in general. Having something like that to work on gives you power that gets you through the hard times when your sitch seems unfair. At least you have something to DO. That's within your CONTROL.

The ones who never stop focusing on the goal of "saving their marriage" never get past it to the point of doing the things that really might save their marriage. They're not tactics or action items, they're whole life changes and they are hard and gradual and painful and so much more meaningful in the long run than "what do I say when he says x" and "how should I behave when he does y." I'm biased but I don't think you should discount the possibility that there are more important goals for you right now than saving your marriage. It's hard to see that at first.