How to convince resistant LD wife?

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

I am starting to resent this, because HE is making all the decisions about us. I live in limbo, and he hasn't figured out that I'm not what is making him unhappy. He is unhappy and needs to work on himself.

I have never depended on him for happiness, and I always kept myself content, busy, and was never clingy.

Since his testosterone has dropped, he all of a sudden wants what I have wanted for years! Connectedness. Someone to do things with. Before it was always his guy friends.

Rather than explore things together it is the running away that is just so crappy.

I am feeling angry today. I have just gone through Thanksgiving with him in attendance. And then he leaves...

It is so painful, and I don't know if I will ever ever trust again. Trust anyone with my heart and soul. Trust anyone with my feelings or intimacy.

This is the second most painful abandonment I've experienced. My father was the first.

So all those voices in our heads come back again. I am tired of being strong, changing, working on me. I've been doing that my whole life.

I am so ripe right now for someone to walk into my life. I love my girls, and my husband, but I don't know how much more rejection I can take.

If I could walk away and never contact him again I believe I'd do it right now.

Problem is , I'm dependent and I'm in my own prison. The lovely antique home I enjoyed has become laborious, and a reminder of what I no longer have.

I just don't understand how an individual can walk out and not make a decision. If you feel so bad that you leave, why do you hold on ? How can someone be this cruel to someone they shared 33 years of their life?

There are and always will be days like this. At one level it just wears you down...just the constant monologue that you can't really shut off. At another level there is all the investment: time, household, children, people who know you as a couple. "Is it all worth throwing away?" is a question that each of you is going to have to address even though it only takes one to say "yes" to upend the marriage.

MLCs can be about the fear of aging, of mortality. They can also be about this: "is this all there is? Is this all I am?" In the context of dissatisfaction with "all there is" and "all I am," the escapism of a MLC definitely has it's draw. The "grass does look greener" even if it is an illusion.

While giving space and allowing for forgiveness may both be hard to do around a MLC (because of the various 'unacceptable' behaviors), they are also almost mandatory when the moment for reconciliation presents itself. Know that it may never come, but be ready for it when it does.

The Captain