"Most wives DO express their feelings...but often their complaints -- especially for emotional intimacy, conversation, recreational closeness, more sex -- are ignored, pretended away, I suspect because the husband does not really know how to "fix" those types of things.
For others, it is that their presence in the marriage is more-or-less taken for granted. Men seem to feel that they've "done all the work needed" during dating, courtship...and they stop being the man and doing the things and treating her the way that helped the woman fell in love with them in the first place. The woman just ends up being sick of feeling, being treated like part of the household furniture. It accumulates over time when her trying to talk about it is ignored and "her" problem(s) pretended away. Then, when she's done, she is done. It takes a LONG and lonely, painful time to fall out of love and want to leave one's marriage. There is nothing "walk-away" about the process of falling out of love with one's husband or the difficult, painful decision to end one's marriage.
That is pretty much textbook. Look up the articles describing WAWS and this is it to a "T."
Notice too how a lot of what she said can be paraphrased with, "I waited for him to change and do better, but he never did." Note she never said, " I told him I was desperately unhappy and if things don't improve I AM going to leave!"
She probably did give a million little signs and hints that she was dissatisfied and she probably DID try to tell him what she needed many many many many many many many many times. He just didn't hear it.
This is where the whole Venus and Mars thing comes in. Men and women often speak different languages. Men don't speak, Signs-And-Hints. That is a foreign language to them.
Men only hear being cut off sexually for a couple years, catching wife in bed with another man and being handed divorce papers. A few men will understand the direct and explicit, "I am very unhappy and will leave you shortly if things don't improve." But not all men even pick up on that.
Women will endure misery a long long long long time before giving up. Then once they give up they will mark time and wait an even longer time to plan and prepare and let the kids grow and mature before the launch the departure plan.
By th time they file, they've declared the marriage dead literally YEARS earlier.
Sometimes they mark time untill the kids are older, untill they have a new job, untill they lose weight or many times untill a new man enters their life."
I am SO SO SORRY BABY!!! I could not have possibly loved you more and yet I failed you! God help me I know not WHY I could not understand/dig deeper than when you said "I'm unhappy". I would have done ANYTHING I could have to improved our relationship if you had only been able to help me clearly understand what it was!
Heartbroken...utterly...I am beside myself with grief for failing you!! I just couldn't/didn't hear what it was you needed!!!
