3 Months since she said i dont love you (3)

[AndrewP]

Natus - I think you're doing great. Even though I've walked a different path I think we are in a similar crossroad at present.

In my case my WW still hasn't told me that her A is over - she actually has rarely talked to me about emotional issues over the 27 years that we've been married so I only have speculation to go on. She is also an intensely private person even with me which has certainly made being married to her difficult for all these years.

After I presumed the A was over though, like your W, mine would go on and on about leaving and how she had such great support from friends etc but she wouldn't actually DO anything. I have no idea why that would be but perhaps it's part of what I think of as a disconnect between the fairy-tale land she's been living in and "Realsville". Perhaps Scheherazade is believing her own stories ;-) Personally I found it very draining and frustrating.

So - in an attempt to take control of the agenda I had a preliminary meeting with a L (which she discovered when looking at our bank account) which put a bit of a scare into her that I was getting serious. Her noticing that prompted me to give her a letter that I had been sweating blood over for several weeks that I had been delaying giving to her for fear of what it could trigger. In it I spend 90% of it telling her how much I loved her and how much her behaviour had hurt me but that I had stood by her regardless. I asked her to reconcile and work with me to build a new MR. I also had one sentence in there where I said that if she did not want to reconcile or could not decide in a "reasonable time" - maybe should have had an actual date on there - that I would act to end the marriage.

After she read the letter she asked to be able to think about it and since then (2 weeks now) has not talked about leaving. Mind you, she hasn't talked about staying either. This was a major shift because the night before she had gone on in great detail about the fact that she was definitely leaving. In the mean-time I've been accumulating the forms and documentation needed for a divorce so that I can pull that trigger if I need to. One big thing that that letter has done for "me" is to make me feel like I have more control over the agenda which it sounds like you are feeling frustrated with as well. For me, I was emotionally unable to go the "tough" ultimatum route that many people suggested to me but I feel that what I did has set a firm direction. You could call what I did an ultimatum but I feel that it was delivered in a loving, caring way and W certainly has paid attention to it.