Wife wants to leave me

[Anders]

I hear what you're saying and I think there is underlying issues. Could you elaborate on what you said about deferring to your W?

I do remember now that she has increased her reliance on me to clean and now she doesn't do [censored]. And overtime her letters to me have been increasingly more hostile.

Any other things you could elaborate on as I think we have a very similar issue?

In essence, I was very immature about relationships, in my understanding of what my wife wanted and what she was feeling.

I was so afraid of loosing her that I eventually would do anything to avoid conflict. I mistakenly thought that if I let her make the decisions, it would show her how considerate and loving I was being. I was the classic Mr. Nice Guy (A good book that explains this in detail is :"No More Mr. Nice Guy").

She only seemed to get more hostile. At the time, I was completely baffled. I didn't understand what was happening. I kept saying 'I am so confused right now. I am doing everything you are asking me to (cleaning house and running errands) but it does not seem to make a difference to you.'

The common issue she brought up was that she felt she was doing everything on her own and that she needed a real partner. The more she would 'attack me', the more I would withdraw, became very resentful of her.

Communication became very bad. I felt like she was not able to really articulate what was going wrong and suggested MC. We stopped after a few sessions and eventually I became a WAH with an overwhelming need to just get some space.

The deferring habit hit home again a few months ago and really woke me up as to how passive I had become in our M. After nearly a year, we had been slowly piecing and we took a walk through town. She asked me where we should go for coffee, and without thinking, I said "Wherever you want to go, doesn't matter to me."

She blew up at this and told me she just wanted me to make decisions.

It took a long time, and much later after the fact, for me to realize that I was not being emotionally available and I lacked decisiveness in our relationship. In other words, I was not being the man she needed me to be. The husband she thought I was. I was behaving like a kid. She was tired of being my mother.