Onwards and upwards.

[Barry]

Thanks for that RD, good to hear from you.
Whenever I see you're signature by the way, I think how similar our family's are in numbers, kids ages, length of R and M, difference in age between H&W. Obviously you've got 10 years on me but still, very similar.

As it stands, I'm done. To turn this around now, I think it would take too much effort from W. That list up there ^^ ^^, is a partial list of what I don't want my M to be like for ME to be happy.

Those are things that W will not change. She doesn't believe she needs to change anything about herself, apart from getting away from me.
She's actually quite comfortable with who she is and what she wants now.
I can tell you for sure that her friends are all helping enable this transition from a married yummy mummy, to a single MILF.

I've become the symbol of her old life now, and everything that was wrong with it. I'm not saying she won't at some point realise that that may not be the case, just that I'd think I'd stepped into a parallel universe if she changed any of them. It makes me angry to even consider she might, but with someone else.

As I say, these things have bugged me for a long time and they're part of the reason she feels I'm controlling, of why I've been unhappy and why I find myself here. It's my reactions to these actions that caused W to decide to end things and I appreciate that I could of reacted differently. The cooking, cleaning, domestic chores things I could cope with to some extent, it's really the lack of desire for closeness with me (which has always been there but has been unbearable in the last 18 months) that tell me I shouldnt WANT to be with someone who doesn't return my affections.

I'm sure there are lots of women out there who are in the same position as me here, and they could write that list about there H's. I used to love loving my W, it didn't used to feel like hard work to have that love returned either. For a long time I've felt lonely in my M because I didn't feel loved. That's not how life is meant to be..we only get one chance, life isn't a dress rehearsal.

I need to accept that I had a good life with W but that for whatever underlying reason (from her perspective), she no longer feels like I'm the one. I wish that weren't true and that I could turn everything around. I just can't. She's not interested in how a M should be, only in how W wants to be.

If she ever decided she'd made a mistake in doing this, and she hadn't missed the boat and I was with someone, I would consider taking her back but it would take such a change in W that it becomes incomprehendable that this will ever happen. So for now, I move on...

Onwards and upwards