I am open to any and all suggestions, but a one shot last resort style maneuver is not where I'm at, yet.
Then you're not "open to any and all suggestions." That's cool; you are certainly the one who has to live with the consequences of whichever approach you take.
Jefe, I too prayed -- DAILY -- for God to change my wife's heart. Ultimately, it turned out that He was trying to change mine, first, and teach me to work on some pretty unhealthy behaviors that run deep in my family (I am the child of an alcoholic, with lots of other alcoholics in my family, and I come from a long line of "pleasers" and "Mr. Nice Guy" types).
He also was prodding me to take a stand for holiness in my marriage, and let HIM work on my wayward wife. Letting her go, and -- in prayer -- "laying her at the foot of the Cross" -- was the single hardest thing I've ever done in my life, and I still remember where I was when I did that (I was mowing my lawn, and bawling like a baby in my backyard in the hot Florida heat, tears streaming down my face).
I was lucky, and surely blessed. God never gave up working on me, and my wife did ultimately soften her heart toward me and toward God, and we reconciled. It took a LOT of work, over several years, but today -- 7 1/2 years later -- our marriage is stronger than ever.
But it started with me. I had to learn to take a stand for holiness in my marriage and in my home, and I had to learn how to set and enforce healthy boundaries. It STILL doesn't come naturally to me, but I'm happy to report that those skills that I learned while DBing have served me today, and now I've begun to teach them to our adult children, for use in their own relationships and business dealings.
Ultimately, DBing says to "do what works." Just make sure you don't define "works" as "my wife being nice to me." Instead, look for things that cause her to make demonstrable moves back toward the marriage, and toward her family.
