my wife left, but still lives with me #3/continued

[tough spot]

Well we had an R talk. Not sure who brought it up. But it was a good 20 minutes or so of clearing the air. Things have changed a little between us since my stay in the hospital. I had requested earlier of her a list of things she may see in me that she saw as character defects. This list I explained to her would be shared with my counselor.

I don' know about you folks but I have had conversations before with people and then later remembered a detail that was monstrously important that I forgot to bring up. This list from her, as she is the one who knows me best, I thought would be a useful tool. Eg. perhaps she saw things that would never occur to me to bring up in counseling.

At first she refused. Stated that that wasn't how counseling was supposed to work. I told her it was my counseling and it came down to me asking her for help. She refused. However, after my stay in the hospital, she did come up with a small list, some things i knew, some things hadn't occured to me.

I don't know how much I have detached, how much I have GAL, how much I have worked on me/changed in me. I do know I have made efforts, done 180's, things that haven't appeared to have an affect. It seems like while I believe in the basics of DB'ing, the wall around my wife is so tall and strong that they just aren't working.

I continue to work on me but I get absolutely no input, no feedback, no notice from my wife. I think I could continue to do db'ing to the letter and it wouldn't make a difference. For good or for bad, I am modifying my behavior to stray from the db path. It is possible that many have felt this way before and because they stray, they fail.

But on the other hand, I am sure that there have been a lot of db'ers that followed the book to the letter and the situation didn't work out. I surrended a couple of weeks ago to the fact that this marriage cannot be saved. My wife is too closed minded to the idea of R.

So it boils down to, 'what do i have to lose'. Against, 'continue to do db'ing, all through the process of divorce, and maybe it will work, maybe it wont'. My actions got my marriage into this situation, so one could argue that my own advice shouldn't be followed if I want the M to succeed. However, my advice to myself now is modified by several self help books, individual counseling, going back to AA meetings, the DB book, and all the wonderful stuff I read on these forums.

Maybe it is a control issue, me not being able to just let stuff be, to see how it will work out by itself. Maybe it is just too important of an issue to me to just let go and see what happens.

I know I agree with a lot of the tenants of the DB book. I know I also don't agree with some of them as well. I don't really know the answers but I think I would feel better if the marriage fails and I tried not only the DB'ing approach but everything else I could possibly do as well.