I feel like I am struggling between having unconditional love and being quixotic/foolish. Although my wife is a WAS, she had every right to walk out of the relationship. As a kid my wife witnessed her dad kill her mom, was mentally abused by her family, had to endure me walking out of her life when she had our daughter only to have me come back into her life to mentally abuse her after we remarried. She ran to OM out of desperation, hurt and for the overall need to feel love and safe – something I did not provide to her. So here I am wanted to save our marriage when in reality my wife is hurting and needs healing more than the marriage needs saving. I have been so caught up on my own needs and feelings that I’ve neglected to see how damage my wife is emotionally. My wife continues to confine in OM and she tells me that he is the one person she feels she can trust since I’ve destroyed most of the trust we had. Looking back, when we got remarried frustration kicked in due to me feeling my needs were not being meant. She had a bad attitude on certain things and would be controlling at times. I think a huge part of all this is that we never really dealt with the issues of the past and harbored a lot of hurt and resentment towards each other. I in turn did not control my emotions well and eventually erupted with verbal abuse and anger. As a husband and man of the house, my wife needed me to be strong, to protect her and to love her despite of the hurt feelings. I failed miserably and it is no wonder that she does not want to let go of OM.
Right now I am struggling with the need/want to feel loved and save our marriage (needs focused on me) vs putting those needs aside to figure out what my wife needs to get the healing she needs. I want her to be happy, to feel secure, safe and to have love. I get frustrated because I realize that I cannot give her those things no matter how hard I try. She is getting those needs meant by OM and by going to counseling for herself. So in the meantime I feel like I am just on the sidelines. There is a part of me that wants to just wait, support wife however I can, give her space, and give her the time to find the healing she needs. If she wants to see OM, I need to just let her without showing disapproval or making a big deal about this. If OM is what she needs to get healing, then maybe that is best for her if it saves her (even if it kills the marriage in the process). I know God has given me time to work on myself and to fix all the issues that have led to this point. I still have a lot of work to do on me and have been going to counseling to try to figure things out. In the meantime, I am still not detached from wife. I am trying to but it is so hard at times. The last two nights my daughter has slept in the master bedroom with my wife. I normally would have picked her up and taken her to her room so I can sleep next to my wife but I haven’t. I feel like I need to have space from my wife. While I have enjoyed holding and sleeping next to my wife recently, I feel like it is making things worse inside me as expectations and desires start to merge. I know that my wife does not feel the same about me so I am trying to drift away. It just seems like whenever I try to do it my wife comes to me. This morning I woke up at 5 am (my wife and I normally get up around 5 am to water the grass or just talk in bed for a few minutes) and this time I stayed in bed even though I could hear that my wife was up. I felt like I needed to just stay away from her. She made a comment to me this morning as she was leaving for work that I didn’t’ get up in the morning with her. While it did make me happy that she notice, I feel like all the mix messages I have been getting from her lately has really thrown me into an emotional mess. I am still in a state where I miss her texting and calling me throughout the day, where we can spend time together at night and really act like a marriage couple. But no matter how bad I want that, she is not there and I doubt she ever real be. Her heart really has been given to someone else and I have to accept that it is out of my control. For that reason, a part of me wants to just end this now so I can start the healing for myself and can move on. But then I think that is just being selfish since she is suffering inside too, most because of my action.
I really do want to save this marriage. I am lost as far as what to do though. It is so hard to detach while we are in the same house. I can see that she has opened up to me lately and is making more of an effect. Those positive signs give me hope while also making it difficult to act as if I am moving own/detach. At this point, if she wants to be with OM – I wish she would just do it and be done with it. It is so true when they say that the battle takes place in the mind. Right now my mind is so confusing with so many conflicting choices. I have a counseling session this afternoon so I can’t wait to vent but more importantly I am hoping to really understand the causes for me being a jerk so I can work on becoming the spouse only a fool would leave. With or without my wife, I need to become a better person. I hope my wife gets there too. At is almost as if we both need saving.