"Was never in love" part deux

[Mat]

Hi again,

So I think that my W didn't believe I loved her, as I was not connecting with her and emotionally distant. She's come to accept that I did, through the things I did for her (I would do favours, help her with everything, run errands, get her things, give her gifts, solve her problems - including ones she DID want me to solve!).

But now, she wants "something else".

I agree that there was a "something else" to be had, and I just wish that we could give ourselves the chance to learn how to provide it for each other.

I think I mentioned before that this isn't what I wanted either. A marriage where we only talked of mundane things, where I struggled to show interest on the same stories every day. I would have liked a marriage where I was able to get involved in her life and interest to a point, and she in mine. But to a certain extent we were trying to do that. What killed us was the lack of romance. Neither of us grew up with such examples in our households, and we have issues with affection. To overcome that we would have had to make a coordinated and conscious efforts to create new habits of the heart, if you will.

I want a marriage where she shows interest in some of what I'm interested in. I would have to let her into my world a bit more for that.

This is probably what she's found in the other guy. as I mentioned before he's quite sirupy and the texts he sent her show that. She simply went to get that "something else" that we could never give each other.

This is pretty much her interpretation of what went wrong as well, as I was saying.

As I mentioned to her, if she was willing to work on the marriage it wouldn't mean that we'd be able to get back together, necessarily. We'd have quite a job to do.