Thank you all in advance for anything you can help me with.
My wife and I have been married for 4 1/2 years, been together 6 years. My wife got pregnant with our son after only six months of dating. I was 27, she was 21. So there was a pretty distinct age difference at first (although as you get older it seems to come together).
We got married 6 months after our son was born. When my son was about 1-year old, my wife was unhappy with her job. We talked about her staying home with him and maybe babysitting some friends kids because it would be much more practical than paying a fortune for daycare and for her to get out of a job she was unhappy with.
Fast forward a year after that and she get pregnant with our daughter. They are now 5 & 2. Now, my wife was very independent before we met. She really wasn't one to settle down and wasn't sure if she ever wanted kids. But when she got pregnant with our son, it made the decision for her. That being said, she's a very good mother and I'm a very good father.
It seemed after my wife had our daughter, she became very distant & cold. Generally not very happy. I don't know if it was postpartum, her lack of self since she was letting me take care of her and she had no career, or maybe something else. But things changed in 2012. We still had sex regularly (albiet not as often....maybe 1-2 times week).
Things started to get petty. By that, it seemed like we bickered a lot. Both of us constantly were annoyed with each other. We didn't fight much, but when we did it was a blowup.
In early January, she finally sat down and said she wasn't happy, has had one foot out the door, and if things didn't get better it would probably lead to divorce.
Well, for about the next four weeks, I did EVERYTHING wrong. I got suspicious. Thought maybe there was something else. I flat out checked our phone records, internet history, etc. There were a few contacts that bothered me and I called her out on it. Well, it was really nothing and I was wrong. But of course it made her mad and thought that I was invading her privacy. I had never done anything like that before in our marriage. But to her, it was a violation of our trust. She was already one foot out the door and with this she doesn't believe she can really trust me again. Obviously there were things that happened over the last couple of years I did wrong too that were violations of trust.
But there was no cheating. I did not hit her (although I did throw something at a wall during one of our fights). And we've never really had any "money" issues that were hidden from her. THREE THINGS IMO THAT ARE HARD TO OVERCOME.
But in January, we fought constantly. Mainly because of my insecurity and fear that she was going to leave the marriage. Finally, we both got tired of it and in late-January we decided we needed to separate to cool off and see how we felt.
She started going to an individual counselor about some of her issues (mainly her inability of not being about to get past things that I have said and done. She holds onto grudges forever. There are other personal things as well that I'm not comfortable sharing.). But she suggested we see a marriage counselor. That was on Friday of last week.
I felt like this was a very appropriate step because after a month of endless fighting, it really slowed down in the two weeks we were separated. The therapist asked me if I wanted to work on our marriage. With little hesitation I said yes. I absolutely wanted to. She asked the same thing to my wife. She was very slow at answering and kind of danced around it a little bit. Almost like she was afraid to say what she felt. She said she'd like to work on our marriage, but didn't think it would make any difference how she felt about me. She said she didn't realize how happy should we be without me being around her 24/7. It was sense of independence she hasn't felt since before we first met. Crushing to hear for sure.
And now here were are. A little over two weeks separated, I want our marriage to be mended badly, she wants out.
Now, I've been staying at my parents the last couple of weeks and she's been staying at home with the kids (since she's a stay-at-home-mom). Me going home right now would probably be bad. We talked after the marriage counselor about how we were going to do this going forward because I do not want to live with my parents for 6-12 months or however long we are separated.
She finally broke down and said maybe it would be easier if she got a job (which she absolutely needs to do to get her sense of self back). But she then said that she thinks she should just get her own place. That way we can do a true shared custody arrangement with the kids (2-2-3 or something like that) instead of me coming over every night to see them and then having to leave to sleep somewhere else.
I can't ask her to not get her own place if she feels like that's what she needs. But I will fully admit that I've been the pursuer over the last 6 weeks or so.
That's when I stumbled on this amazing site. So much of the information here is priceless. I HAVE to get out of the pattern I've been in over the last 6 weeks. I do want my marriage to work. I still love my wife (although I'm currently incredibly annoyed with her attitude toward me and our marriage). She hasn't filed for divorce. I'm not sure that's imminent. Maybe she's just waiting to get out from under me financially so she can file. I have no idea. If it weren't for the kids, I think she would have already said she wants a divorce. But I'm certain there's a large part of her that would like us to work it out for the kids. Obviously for the long-term we can't stay together just for the kids, but it's something we can build from.
