My wife's midlife crisis

[Gerda]

Faceman, believe me, we know how tough it is! You are doing amazingly well on the GAL side of things, good for you! Took me a lot longer to do that stuff.

For the rest, I read what you wrote and I think I know what is going on, I was there too. You don't believe us when we say how long it is going to take! You think that if you do some of these DB things, she will start to come around and you are frustrated when it doesn't "work." It's not going to work for a looooooooong time. You are doing all those things not to get her to snap out of it. You are doing those things so that you can live life and take joy in it and not become a slave to despair, bitterness, etc. But your doing those things are not going to snap her out of this. It might take a couple years, it might take longer. Your choice is to wait or not wait. You don't have any choice in terms of what she does, only whether or not you are willing to wait through it.

Of course you still have all those feelings for your W -- she is your WIFE and you still love her! I have lived for five years with someone doing all those things, waffling, threatening to leave, etc. Mine doesn't even support my kids financially and often asks me for money. I rarely feel attraction to him anymore but I definitely did when I was at your stage of things, and it is really hard. Now I ask God to return those feelings of attraction and love because I am committed to standing from a faith perspective. But I am not sure how you do it otherwise, though I know that people do.

Anyway, I just wish I could help you accept that this is a long process and that you are only doing all the DB things so that you can make it through the long process, not to end the process.

Sending you lots of courage!