WAW or WW? What should I do to save my MR.

[Wyoung]

sandi2, thank you so much for taking an interest in my situation and offering these extremely valuable advices. Your overall assessment that my W is a "unhappy, lonely and depressed young mother" perfectly describes her status quo. My overall questions is how I should approach this. Obviously I need to change a lot, which I have been working on and was acknowledged by her. I need to validate. But do I detach, and to what degree do I implement sandi's rule? Most of them I agree 100% and I wish I had seen them earlier. There are some that I am not entire sure. Let me be more specific.

-- rule #3 says "do not point out good points in marriage ..." In the past, when I talk to her about how we fell in love in the past, she would cry. This made me wonder if doing this will help her to recover feelings for me.

-- rule #8 says " do not buy gifts". But when I did it for our anniversary, she clearly liked the gift. She appreciates that I still cares her so much.

-- rule #32 says "do not believe anything they say....". Is this only directed to the negative words she says? Does this contradict with rule #25?

Some of your questions
My wife started working this year (2018). She also worked before. But she was not in 2017. And it was 2017 that did most of the damage.

When she says negative things about herself, it is hurting me to affirm that. But I worry that will hurt her even more.

Her personality overall is lack of self confidence, and passive. She often times feel regretted or embarrassed by small things.

Her family doesn't have any history of mental illness. She grow up in a very loving family. She has been an extremely good girl, but now she despise that and thinks she was not a normal girl in the past. She is very stubborn. The only reason she refuses to seek any professional help is that she thinks it's not that bad. There might be others but she doesn't say so.

We did make some friends (couples with kids) when we moved to our current place. We held multiple parties in the last year. However, she wasn't close to those friends in the sense that she wouldn't share any of this with them. Before son and I took the trip, I asked one of the friends (we live in the same subdivision) to keep her company. When the fried volunteer to come over and chat, she refused it and immediately asked me if I told them our situation. I denied. She is on her guards and is not willing to talk to anyone. She often says she is perfectly okay by herself and no need to be looked after.

She finally texted me today after 2 days in silence to check up on us (mostly for S4, video chatted a couple of minutes with S4). She did notice that I should shave and told me so.