Depressed H- save my marriage

[hope222]

Hoping someone can give me some insight in how I should be interacting with and/or moving on from my marriage.

My Husband (29) and I (29) have known each other for 11 years, been together for 8.5 and married for 5 years. I thought that we had a good marriage. We have always had intimacy issues but I thought our love was enough. I moved away from my family to be with him 7 years ago and we have spent almost all of our time together. My life has been completely wrapped up in him and I believed he was completely wrapped up in me. It felt comfortable.

In June he had a chronic pain flair-up and was on steroids for 2 weeks. During this period 2 instances happened where he believes I was not there for him when he needed me the most. I think this is when he started to question our relationship.

In the beginning of July he told me he was not sure of us and our relationship. I spent the next 10 weeks in panic mode. Crying, begging, pleading, and bargaining with him to save the marriage. He kept saying that he wanted to work on himself and then he would know if he could work on is. During this period I suspected an emotional affair with a co-worker who he considered his best friend. I do believe this has ended based on his current behavior. He said things like “I don’t know if I am where I am today because of you or in spite of you.” “Your love is poison to me” “I don’t know if I have been depressed or if someone has been putting me in a box” We only attended 4 counseling sessions and he was never really able to work on anything. He slowly started detaching from me and at the end of September he told me that he is done. He has told me this on a few different occasions since then. I stopped bringing it up 1.5 weeks after he told me. I have backed off.

The problem is we are still living together. No physical contact. He is sleeping in the guest room. He told me that he loves me as a friend “but I love everybody” He isn’t reaching out to me accept to communicate about the dog. We still have joint finances. He has talked about selling the house in the spring and calling a lawyer but has yet to use the word Divorce. He has told his friends and family he is leaving me so everyone in our world knows. He stopped wearing his wedding ring.

The confusing thing is he is being really nice to me. Recently it appears that he either A) is getting comfortable with our situation or B) might be reconsidering his thoughts? Last week Friday I went out by myself for the first time to a bar. He was very interested the next morning in what I had done and even brought these plans up again on Sunday. He has been around the house a little more this week than previous weeks. Monday night he didn’t eat dinner at happy hour and I made us dinner. (He had been staying out until 11:30 most nights) Then on Wednesday night I was going to go out and he texted me about wanting to know where I was going so that if he went out he wouldn’t run into me. Then when I got home he was very chatty with me, asked me to walk the dog with him to go kill a Pokémon, and then sat on the middle cushion of the couch when we got back after months of sitting on the other side of the couch. He was really engaged with me and turned on funny you-tube videos that we laughed to. Last night he was out until 9:45 but I was in bed when he got home so we didn’t talk at all yesterday. I am trying not reach out to him accept to let him know if I will be home for purposes of the dog.

My question is-why is he being so engaging? When he is around me he tells me all about his life, his work, what he is doing with me asking very minimal questions and just using validation. He does not ask about me much and if I bring up anything about how I am feeling/missing him (which I have only done 1x per week) he just avoids the topic. He never brings anything up about future plans or anything to do with actually separating anything.

I am just so confused. It is making it hard for me to accept this and move on. He has called me hun 6x in the last week. I have not addressed any of this with him because I am afraid it will push him away and create more negative feelings about me for him. Does anyone have any advice/insight. I am happy to give more details I just didn’t want this to be too long.