I took a week off from the boards, after starting a new user ID. So i'm just looking at your sitch. I must admit it sounds so eerily familiar to mine, and so many others this early in the game.
I think you've got some advice that your wife has checked out, but im not really sure you understand what that means. I know its hard to hear, trust me, but your wife DOES NOT care about the marriage right now, any mention of it, is just pushing her further away and making and chance of R at a later date harder.
If your goal is to really make your marriage work, then guess what, you have to detach from it completely in your mind right now. ANY talk of MC is probably a bad idea, the ONLY thing that will help the sitch is probably giving your wife time and space, and lots of it.
WAS tend to rewrite marital history the first few months, they don't care if it hurts you or not, they're done thinking about you, its about justifying their mindset to get out. The more you talk about it the more justified they become that their making the right decision. As far at the OM is concerned, it prob is PA, or at least you need to treat it that way. So the more you push the M, the more you push her right into his arms. For the time being, your the epitome of everything she's trying to get away from, and he's the freedom/lack of pressure/good time she's craving. She's running for the door each time, and you keep opening it up so she gets out faster. It hurts I know. We all thought our spouses were incapable of doing such things, but look at where we are now.
Keeping yourself busy, mentally and physically is hard to do, your emotions get the better of you in the early stages. Gal'n seems to help, but in reality only time is the cure. I know it feels impossible right now, but you need just take care of you right now. Detach Detach Detach. You cant fix your marriage right now, only do more damage.
You seem to be trying to control the situation for your benefit, to make yourself feel like your putting in an effort finally, that YOUR saving the marriage, that your doing all the work, and that she's not doing a thing. And your frustrated at that. Your right she's not, and you are, but its your turn to do the heavy lifting. It took years to get you both into this situation, it cant be fixed in months, or maybe even a year or two. So get that into your mind now if you really want to have a CHANCE as saving it. PATIENCE, positivity, being a great father, keeping yourself busy (try a cooking class btw, or pick a class at the local community college), don't mind read (its never what you think you think).
Don't be so darn hard on yourself, no matter what she is saying your only responsible for %50 of the problems, your guilt is making you feel like its all your fault. Stop asking her what/how her IC is doing or saying. Cause until you can address your own faults/issues, she's gonna say what she wants to say, and do what she wants to do. She needs to SEE changes, over and over and over again, not be told what your doing, and think you need to be rewarded for your efforts.
I think some reading is good, but what tends to happen is you start to over-analyze everything, then tend to think you've got the "answers" finally, and now it time to fix things. Unfortunetly it doesn't work that way. You want answers, want to ask questions, get to the bottom of it now. If your reading to better yourself, then great. It tends this early on thou that we do it to fix everything instead, which is just more pressure. Next time you want to pick up a book and read (unless its DR), go for a run instead, drop and do 100 pushups/sit ups. Burn your frustration off instead. Not make yourself feel guilty for not doing enough before. Or get angry or frustrated that your spouse ISNT willing to put in the work now.
As much as a WAS follows a predictable script, so do LBS. Its always lack of patience, panic, guilt, denial, and anger our spouses aren't willing right now. The hardest thing is to not take everything personal, almost like she's doing it on PURPOSE to make you hurt. This feels raw to us, blindsided, so fresh in our minds for these early months. For them, the issues they've been dealing with for months or years, they're already past the worst of it, maybe they didn't exactly tell us what was going on, maybe they did and we choose to ignore it, or hope it just went away. But, the signs were there, we missed them somehow/way.
Its important right now to just LISTEN, slow it all down in your mind. Interactions should never have me/us/we involved. When you need to respond to something always have in your mind before you answer "Is what im about to say going to make things worse". If even for 1/10 of a second that might be a yes, slow down and come up with an answer that is positive. Its almost impossible to really understand how much patience you need to have, how important it is to keep yourself busy, to find new outlets/friends, but a funny thing happens over time if your working on it the right way. You build some self confidence, the anxiety slowly fades, you don't put the same pressures on yourself, or on her. Its detachment. Give it time. Re-read your first posts from time to time, you'll start to understand, you'll get it, doesn't mean your not going to make more mistakes along the way, but give yourself credit when you do make progress. 2 steps forward and one back is still progress. Get into IC for yourself for now, cause when it comes down to it, that's all you can fix/work on anyways.
