Recent Separation...trying to cope

[dil]

This has been a rough few weeks. Apologies for the wall of text here.

My W and I have been together for 14yrs and 8yrs married. We were pretty much high school sweethearts even though we never were there together because of the difference in grade level. I was initially friends with her brother and I would go to her parents house often and through the years I started to notice her and then told her I liked her a couple years later. We never really 'dated' per se but we always hung out. Her family moved to Utah from MN in '02, and we kept in touch. I decided to go on a church mission for 2 yrs (mormon missionary) and she waited for me. After I got back we dated and there was one point we broke up for 4 months because she wasn't sure about the future she wanted with me so she took some time from our relationship to think about it. We get back together and 6mos later I asked her to marry me. This is our pre-marriage story in a nutshell.

Throughout our marriage we always had few issues. Your typical issues early on in the marriage but she always complained about not having enough passion in the marriage. When we would have an argument, which was not that often btw, it was that issue that she always brought up which was the lack of passion in our relationship. I just never knew what real passion in a marriage was growing up, since my parents never showed in their marriage. My parents divorced when I was 16. So I thought the things I was doing, like working, being there for her, talking to her, was just enough. There was one time when she gave me a book on '1001 ways to be romantic' and I read it for the first few weeks and did a few things but I never really stuck with it, for reason I don't really know. Maybe I just thought I could just do them on my own and not need a book to tell me, I'm not sure.

I did have an addiction to porn which started very early on in my life and I feel that it has affected my abilities to maintain the passion and affection in our relationship, for reasons we are all to familiar with when pornography is mentioned. We had sex about 2-3 times a month consistently throughout our whole marriage. A few times we would go 1, almost 2 months without sex. I had this problem the whole time but was to ashamed and scared to tell her. It was only until this breaking point in our marriage 3 weeks ago that I had the courage to admit to her that I had this problem. She told me that regardless if I told her or not doesn't change the fact that she lost her love for me. She told me she would have helped me through it if it wasn't too late.

We just celebrated our 8yr anniversary (08/31/14) on a 7-day cruise in the western Caribbean. I thought we had a wonderful time and were connecting really well. We had sex 4-5 days of the 7 we were our there. I thought it was great. A week later her grandma died. She was somewhat close to her grandma (dad's mom) but her grief was not anywhere near where her dad was, but it was still tough for her. However I don't think it played any role in the issues of our marriage shortly thereafter. During that time I was there to console her and make sure she was doing ok.

We came back from the funeral in Utah and the first few days were fine, I felt like everything was going back to normal and I was doing a lot of things around the house and the day before we split up I just was really annoyed about the fact that I was doing everything around the house, like cleaning, taking care of the cats, dishes, while she did nothing. My mistake was that I was still very much dwelling within my ego and not thinking about how I should resolve this, so I distanced myself and she did the same thing.

The next day after work I just got fed up and right before things went down hill I was laying on the bed being distant and angry and she laid on me, kind of cuddling like trying to make me feel better but I sort of resisted and she backed away. At that point I think she had gotten angry and really distanced herself from me. After that, I decided we should get something to eat, I asked her if she wanted to come with and initially she said no but I told her I wanted her to come with me. It was during our time in the car when I told her I was mad that she was not doing anything around the house. Her response was that she didn't want to. Then I made the huge mistake of saying 'what should we do then? split up?' Which I completely regret because I said it out of anger/emotion and didn't know how she was going to take it. Then she asked why I kept bringing it up as a solution, which I might have said that a couple times before but mostly out of anger because I wanted her to say that it wasn't a solution. Then I asked if it would be better if we just separated and she said, 'Do you think it would be weird if I said yes'. My heart sank and I was feeling so many emotions at that point, anger, sadness, resentment etc. I said ok, I'll pack my things and stay at my moms house, so I did.

The weeks following, I did everything wrong. I wrote her a heartfelt letter, I begged, I pleaded, etc. I did find out about an EA. She told me she has been texting a friend from work and she told me it was sort of an EA. The day I found out, I texted her EA partner telling him to stop texting my W. I also told my W to stop texting him as well which mostly she did stop, however I know they talk at work. Then this past Saturday I found out she went to his house to 'play video games' and I confronted her through text. She called and we talked and brought up all the reasons why she wanted to divorce me again. Her EA partner is married and has 4 kids, one of them just born this past August, so I don't know what he see's in him other than he's giving her emotional support.

The past 3 weeks have been a rollercoaster. I just don't know whether to give up and let her go and continue with the 180s and GAL activies and move on. I've read DR and have been seeing a therapist, which helps. She doesn't want to go to MC but she did mention she wanted to do IC, but she hasn't scheduled anything yet. I'm sort of at a lost and starting to think there is nothing I can do.