"If you wish that it would go any other way, there's no reason it has to go in the direction of a divorce. We can pay attention to this now, we can address this now. We can continue with a separation to give each other time and space, we can go to counseling to work on making sure these reoccurring issues do not keep happening. Everyone who is currently way too involved in our lives will eventually either forget or no longer be a part of our lives, but what you are proposing to do is permanent and affects the rest of our daily lives."
The people he is referring to are friends, not even ones he stays in contact with much. Our relatives have unfortunately been involved as well, but my parents are more than willing to forgive and accept him and I know my in laws are fond of me. During our previous separation, my FIL was begging me to please take his son back, and what can he do to make that happen. The separation was my husband's choice, so I told FIL that I had no control over it but wanted things to work out.
That's what I want to say. But of course it goes entirely against doing the 180. The problem is that my H tends to make very rushed, very brash decisions without thinking too far in the future. I don't think he realizes this. He truly feels that we've tried everything because we went to two counseling sessions before he gave up (the counselor told us that we should remain in counseling for at least one year), and because we separated twice for honestly too short of periods for anything to change (3 months and 2 months respectively). We haven't tried being separated and doing counseling together, or even taking either of them seriously.
Unfortunately, I know I cannot force him to change his mind. I'm still very much dedicated to the marriage though, unfortunately that's been true from day one of the relationship and it's been pretty one-sided for the majority. I just don't know what else I can do or say.
The good news is, I know that it will take him months (if at all) to file the paperwork...he's not very proactive, if I'm being honest. The bad news is, he's not filing them because he doesn't want to divorce, he won't be filing them because it's inconvenient.
M 24 H 27 together 6 • married 3.5 BD round #3: 07/10/2016
