We can still be friends

[liono]

Well, here we go.

Hi there. Me: 34 years old. W: 39. Two daughters 4 and 6. Current status is living together, W is considering separation I guess, still trying to figure stuff out.

I'll start from the beginning, but first I want to acknowledge: I now see my sitch is so much better off than many others (sorry if you're in the "others"), but I just express gratefulness and it gives me a lot of hope. I'm still going through all the craziness of being the LBS. But reading the section on WAW describes our situation EXACTLY. It's uncanny. And from the little I've tried, DB'ing seems to be working...I hope.

Sex has been maybe 5 times in the last 2 years. As of BD, about 6 months since any intimacy. Now in retrospect I see that was the "silent" phase. W had given up on trying to change me and things were just settling into a grey boring separate-but-married life. Beginning of April, W sat me down and said with a lot of seriousness "don't feel close, feel like we are very separate". My response: "yeah I agree with you" but nothing really aside from that. Didn't know what I was supposed to say. Followed up with her a couple weeks later, on Apr 22. Considering this BD day.

We went out and had lunch, and W said she felt like it was time for a "new chapter" for us. Took a bit to sink in, but she started talking about:
"really care for you"
"want you to be happy"
"so much hurt for such a long time"
"you're a great father"
"can still live at home but we'll just have a different arrangement"
"we're too different, you want to be able to go camping" (she's very sophisticated. will explain more later)
It was not argumentative, was very emotional. Sadness. Sadness everywhere. My response was, I would still like to try to be happily married, I think we can be. Can we go to counseling.
W: yes, first I'd like to see IC on my own, figure some stuff out. then we can see someone together.
Me: fine sounds good

I have a IC I had seen before about my anxiety + food addiction, but hadn't seen in a while. Gave her a call and set up an appt for me.

Thing is, I didn't really see BD as a 'bomb' right away. It kind of sunk in as I thought about it more like "wait a minute, she has thought this whole thing through. I'm going to live in the other bedroom, we'll coparent, but we won't be married, we can each do whatever we want". Started to hit home.

My head was bouncing around all over the place. From wanting to beg her, to "hey maybe I WOULD like to move out and get a motorcycle and tattoos and smoke weed (I don't right now but who knows hahaha)..... etc.." fantasizing about the bachelor life. But a few days went by and it all sank in, and I definitely wanted to save the M.

Mind started going crazy starting to think about an A. No evidence. Nada. Was she being more secretive? Keeping her phone more close by her than usual? Just my imagination? I honestly don't know. Hard to trust my own thoughts. But I started getting paranoid big time. Looking at her phone every time I could to see if I could spy what messages were popping up. Big thing that didn't help was she had a business trip across the world coming up. Would be gone for a week. At a fancy hotel. With 8 other dudes (W works in IT upper management).

I started doing what I know realize is classic LBS freak-out. She had to "work on her presentations for the trip" so she was going to stay in the guest bedroom so she didn't "bother anybody". Meanwhile, I stared at our bed not being able to bring myself to get in it, and crying in the corner for 45 minutes. Thank GOD she never actually saw me cry like this (although I would tell her about it later). All I could think about was how I f****d everything up and was going to lose the person most important to me in the world.

I pursued. I knew in my head that being needy was a turn off so I was trying to hold back, but stuff kept coming out. I bought a couple gifts (nothing huge), some flowers, did a bunch of favors, etc. Didn't do any major harm, I don't think, but certainly didn't help!

Anyway, the trip came and went, surprise surprise everything was the same when she got home (worse, even). Went to first MC 2 weeks ago, second session this week. Got a lot of stuff off our chest in the first one which was good. W didn't want to discuss our R outside of professional help, worried I would explode or create chaos in the house (I never would, I'm classic Nice Guy, all I want to do is curl up on the ground and beg, but her XH started becoming violent and abusive when their M was falling apart, so I think some bad memories there).

But nothing is really different.

Wow, I have written a lot. Can go into all my flaws and craziness later, let's get to the DBing.

My dad went through a separation with mom 15+ years ago, and he DB'd successfully. They're still married very happily now. He's been a huge help for me, I just go to him and say all the wet noodly stuff I want to say to W.

Now reading a lot of the other stories, can relate so much to the feelings of just wanting to fix it, to explain myself, to do whatever she wants me to do. I'm so willing. But I get that the dynamic is different now. 6 months ago she wanted me to buy more thoughtful gifts. Not now.

Here are my DB successes:
* getting healthy (for maybe the first time in my life!), lost 25 lbs, lifting weights regularly. feel GREAT about my body. eating disorder feels completely under control (which for such a stressful time, should be the opposite)
* buying nicer clothes, taking care of my skin, grooming more. it started with thinking "what was I like when we met" but I'm doing it b/c it feels good for me. if she likes what she sees, that's a side benefit
* went out with a friend. been a looooong time since I did that.
* W tends to go to bed same time as the kids, so I stay up and do what I want. Reading DR a lot, relaxing in the hot tub, having a nice glass of bourbon,
* calling out W on her bullshit criticism. This is a 180 for me. Like when she got on me about putting too much whipped cream on D's pancakes, commenting that I was projecting my own food issues onto them trying to get them to eat more. I waited until we were in another room w/o kids and told her that comment was "not ok. I'm happy to help think of ways to feed the kids healthier food, but we give them candy and treats regularly. You've never mentioned this concern before and this is literally the first time you brought it up and it's totally uncalled for to just jump to conclusions like that." She texted me to apologize later. I felt wonderful.
* going out to do stuff and letting it be somewhat of a mystery. scheduling things on my own (with respect to kid care) and not telling her about it other than e.g. "i'll be home 30 minutes late tonight, you ok getting kids dinner?"

So much more I could go into, about my snooping for evidence of A (and finding nothing), all my flaws and the issues that led up to this. Will save it for some more posts.