I'm new here as well and may not have a lot of advice, but what you've been through recently is awful. You must be traumatized and totally lost. For your wife to change suddenly like that, and turn against you, and keep leaving and attacking you, etc.. is a total mystery.
It sounds like you've done the right things a loving husband would do. Perhaps if you threw a marker or a cup out of frustration it would be a little uncomfortable for your wife, but that's not abuse.
These situations when the other person blames everything on you are hard because they make you question yourself and your own sanity. It sounds like you've talked with enough family members and counselors that someone would have been honest with you and told you if they thought you were the cause, but you don't mention that happening. Therefore we assume that you've been doing the right things and your wife is simply out-of-control for some unknown reason.
There is a slight sense of familiarity between your story and my own. My husband was the best guy in the world before we married and for the first few years after we got married. Then he got admitted into an academic program and we moved to the city where that program took place. Suddenly, one day, he was staying out until 4 AM, not telling me where he was, and coming home shouting at me that he doesn't care what I think and he'll do whatever he wants. I was in utter shock. I couldn't even process how my amazing husband could do something like that. One day, a few weeks later after continuing that behavior, he came home and apologized for everything and said he loved me and wouldn't do that again. Then as fast as he changed, he was back to normal. I did find out there was a woman involved and some kind of affair that must have been driving his behavior but either he or she must have ended it.
Later on, after a long period of stability and in a totally different city, suddenly my husband was very depressed, stopped talking to me, and started going to the gym everyday for hours. He neglected his training program, neglected our daughter and I, and just totally changed. He started mixing all kinds of chemical cocktails before the gym such as caffeine "explosive energy" mixtures to lift more weights, protein shakes, and other body building drinks. His diet totally changed, he dropped a lot of weight suddenly, and he was experiencing some kind of euphoria. Whenever I questioned it he attacked me. Again later I find out there was another affair with another woman.
In any case, I say these things just to sympathize with you. How can someone you love and trust change just like that? And how can you buy tickets for a concert, make a special dinner, and have your wife attack you like that and leave you home while she goes with someone else? Then flies to California the next morning? It's bizarre.
In my case my husband has never been the same and has since left. He seems depressed around me, but totally normal around his family and friends. He saw a psychologist two times and I saw the same psychologist separately. I asked the psychologist if it appeared my husband had a mental illness and the psychologist said no, he didn't detect anything although he couldn't be sure.
It's really hard to know if your wife is mentally ill or if she's having an affair (or affairs) that are driving this behavior. I don't know much about mental illness but the way she's not sleeping and working so hard on her art, and acting erratically, sounds like a mental illness. Bipolar disorder could be one possibility but there's also dissociative personality disorder which almost sounds like a match based on what you're saying.
My general sense is that the best you can do is ask her family (mom and sister) to intervene and also ask her friends to check on her frequently. It doesn't sound like there's much you can do if she asked for a divorce and is posting bad things about you on instagram. It seems any further effort on your part will send her closer to the brink.
If you haven't read the Divorce Busters book that serves as the basis for this forum you'll probably want to buy and read it. It sounds like you don't want to get divorced so it's a good book for you. The sections on mid-life crisis and affairs may be applicable in your situation and offer guidance on detaching, riding out the bad spell in your spouse's life, and things you can do to help yourself.
I'd like to follow your situation and hope you'll post updates frequently because I'm personally interested in seeing what happens with your wife. Since my husband exhibited similar behaviors and also left my situation is not entirely different than yours. Perhaps I'll post more about that on the thread regarding my situation.
In any case, there's still hope your wife will return to normal if she's mentally ill and gets effective treatment. There's still hope for your marriage, I assume, if you find yourself able to proceed knowing this could happen again if her illness 'flares up.' Or, if she's having an affair it may end and she'll be back when it's over. So there's hope, but things will surely never be the same and you have the right to mourn the end of the first part of your marriage where you thought you knew who you married.
Hopefully you'll take care of your own health and keep reaching out to everyone who's been supporting you to make it through this. Your wife is really lucky to have someone who cares so much about her. We can only hope she'll realize what she might lose and return home soon.
