She must be a very sensitive lady, and selfless, if she is willing to sacrifice her happiness rather than hurt someone else. Being sensitive must have brought her a lot of pain over time. On the other hand, if there have been true changes made in you, she should be able to see those results without you being so concerned as to how to project it.
Yes, this is my concern. I just don't know what to do. Perhaps I have become far too accommodating? I just don't know why she isn't picking up on it. I refer back to my message from yesterday in that her body language is the one thing that is STARKLY different - she will go out of her way to avoid touching me.
There are a few pointers that she defaults to when we get into a discussion about our relationship (which will involve her saying that it is not working and eventually drag me into justifying it, even though I know that strategy does not work):
"This just does not work. And I don't think my feeling about it will change"
"Wouldnt it be easier if we didn't have to keep dealing with the relationship all of the time? Accept that it doesn't work and not have to keep this up?"
"I think that you might have been better off with another woman who could minister to your needs better than I can/have"
"Nothing would change with regards to our child...we would commit in a separation agreement to always be in the same place. We would just be living in different physical buildings"
"I think that there have always been things wrong....even back when we were dating and just getting married. I just chose to ignore them."
"The difference between us and xxxx couple was that there was probably a time where for them, their relationship totally worked. A time where they were totally infatuated with each other. For us, however, I think that we've always had problems but I just chose to ignore them. We never had that honeymoon period. So when you show me these books that talk about remembering the good times, I don't think that works."
I've also seen some of the websites that she's googled, and the searches are "Married to the wrong man" Things like that.
Now I know the mantra is to believe very little of what a person says, but these points have been coming up fairly consistently for the last year. I pushed her specifically on the point about us not having had a good past and she conceded that a bit of that is her 'rewriting the narrative.' Still, I am gutted and though trying to stay strong, its very difficult. But, at the end of the day, I really can't see the reason why she is persisting on staying adrift. We actually have a great life together and most importantly a lovely 3 year old boy.
I am passed believing this is just a phase to punish me, and I believe that she really does want to leave. But she wants to do so with the absolute least amount of acrimony as possible, as her guilt will make it very difficult for her to leave on her own. When I bring up what this would do to our son, she shuts down, for example. And despite trying to pretend it will be alright, she knows that in comparison to what will harm more, excess sugar intake (her current crusade) is nothing compared to what a divorce will do to him, even though she puts on a brave face to pretend otherwise. She won't even touch papers/books that talk about the damage that divorce does to kids, for example.
So I am lost. I can't quite 180, because she hasn't ACTUALLY pulled the trigger. A bit of emotional distance for 4 months (no hugs, future talk, relationship talk), improved her attitude, but didn't change her underlying thoughts on the relationship, which she brought up after I had dropped talking about it. ON the other hand, I can't quite be the over attentive doting husband because that does trigger her to more actively push me away.
