And Jeep74, I appreciate your insight as well, but I can't remember what the butterfly is about
Very simple yet very, very hard.
What happens if you squeeze a butterfly in your hand? It kills it, right? Think of your marriage/relationship/wife as the butterfly. If you squeeze it to hard to keep it from flying away, it will kill it - just like the butterfly. The best thing you can do is open your hand and let the butterfly fly away. Yep, let it go. You can provide a safe space for it to return if, and that's a big IF, it decides to return. Most likely it won't. But if it did and your opened hand isn't safe, it won't alight. Period. And to make your hand a safe place, that means work on you.
In other words, let your wife go. No easy way to say it. Leave her alone. Everything. She may/may not come back...but that's not up to you. The marriage is dead and gone - however, the possibility (DO NOT construe this as FALSE HOPE which is so readily spread here) of a completely new one does exist if conditions are right. Just live as if she doesn't exist.
There are moments in this life when you are so confident in the rightness of your actions, that not even for a second do you consider the option that you might be wrong.
