Recent Separation...trying to cope

[MrBond]

Okay, so breaking things down... (just be forewarned that you may not like what you hear, but nonetheless, if you want to save your M, then you should look at all advice, especially those that you disagree with).

"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."

That is a great straight up reason and a VERY important one.
I just never knew what real passion in a marriage was growing up,"

So? That's just an excuse. You could have learned about it when she brought it up to you. You just didn't think it was that important to you.

"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."

You're not your parents. You have control over your own life. Adding your parents in there is just an excuse.

"There was one time when she gave me a book on '1001 ways to be romantic'"

Wow that is a definite clue if I ever heard one and you ignored it.

"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."

No you were just lazy. It wasn't important to you, so you ignored it, therefore ignoring her needs. Your needs were more important to her than yours.

"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."

That's a cop out. You could just as easily incorporated the porn into your romantic life. You could have tried new techniques on your W that you saw or learned how to seduce your W. You just didn't want to.

"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."

And she was probably right. You're pretty young. Why didn't you have more sex?

"She was somewhat close to her grandma (dad's mom) but her grief was not anywhere near where her dad was,"

Why would you say something like that? Why compare her to her dad? She's your W and her grandmother died. Period. Do you honestly think that she shouldn't be as sad as her dad? It shows you don't understand her.

"but it was still tough for her."

Of course it was.

"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."

It played a big part. If you were off putting to her and not really understood how much the death affected her, it would show her that you didn't care. Or at least not care to the extent that she wanted.

"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."

By that point she was already thinking of leaving.

"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."

Yes that is the worst thing you could have done. Do you normally distance yourself when there's conflict?

"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."

Wow you really hurt her. That's obvious. You acted like a spoiled child.

"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."

She's not your slave or housekeeper. She was going through alot of things. If she normally kept the house tidy and then she stopped, then you should have picked up the fact that there was something bothering her. And now look where it's gotten you. Now you're the one whose going to have to keep everything tidy all by yourself once she's gone.

"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."

Why do you want to control her like that? When you kept saying that you would leave her, that took away her safety net that she had with you. No woman wants to go out with a guy that they feel is going to leave them at any time. In this case, you pretty much told her that you were going to leave her because she didn't clean the house for a few days.

Seriously?

"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."

Well you did tell her that you would split up. She just finally stood up to you and called your bluff which you couldn't back up.

"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."

More control on your part. You want to control every part of her life it seems. Her cleaning, her life, etc.

"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."

Really? You don't see it? Emotional support IS A BIG THING! And it's something that you've shown that you didn't want to give her before. Let's put it this way. She chose a M'd guy with 4 kids OVER you. This says less about her and more about the kind of situation you created for her that made her choose that over you.

"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."

There's plenty you can do. First thing is to grow up. You are going to have to learn to understand her emotional needs. REALLY understand them and start showing compassion and understanding. It seems like you have a hard time doing that and put yourself first.

Are you willing to change?