Hi 25, I see from those cases what you mean. Believe me when I say after b-day I did MUCH soul searching. I saw where I had come up short but in every case, it just didn't rise to the level that would cause my W to just throw up her hands and go. I watched her change before my eyes. There was never any physical abuse nor emotional from me. I went out of my way to try and support the things she wanted or at least those she spoke about.
Soon after B-day when we had a talk she said to me that she was just so unhappy. She tried many things to change this. She tried being a mother, throwing herself into her work, losing weight/ getting in shape and nothing seemed to change the emptiness she felt inside. The biggest change she could think of was ending her marriage so she could regain "total control" of her life. She felt like my being there for her 'allowed' her to become depressed and if she was 'in charge" of everything in her life she would be too busy to be depressed. That before she was married, she was never depressed so maybe that was the answer. Was this really how she felt? I can't say and of course that changed over time as has every "reason" she has ever had for wanting to end the M.
At the same time she so wanted to be able to reconnect with her father who was ill. Her also kept telling her that she was wasting her life and that she needed to end her marriage to be able to "grow" as a person. How disappointed he was in her wasting her life as a wife and mother when he wanted to take her away and make up for all the bad he did over the last 40 years. Her M and family was holding her back from real happiness. Take a depressed person who is so "unhappy" add in the one person she has always wanted to respect her telling her this was the way and throw in MLC and her thinking time for her was running out to make a change and this is what you get.
In the years since she was depressed there were times when she would say she felt "uncomfortable in her own skin", couldn't sleep more than a few hours a night from anxiety and hating her home (I think because this was the place where she was stuck while depressed but can't really be sure). She was ripe for MLC and I don't think I could have stopped it if I was the perfect H.
