3 year old EA - where do I go from here?

[Matrix5]

It's ok to pretend and act sometimes it gets us through to a point where if you do it long enough you start to feel it. I'm not a professional Matrix I'm just sharing what's working for me. It's not perfect yesterday I fell back into some of my old ways in the morning and it triggered my wife and she was super mad all day and looking for a fight. Even though she was yelling at me I help my temper and listened and in the afternoon I cornered her before she left for work and asked her what's the problem. She was mad but she told me. Ok good now I know what I need to do.

I agree, but I feel that when I’m nonchalant, friendly, cordial, and amicable in my interactions with her, I enable her to continue with her nonsense. I feel like I’m being taken for a ride. OTOH If I show discontent, she starts pressing to know what’s bothering me, and asks “what have I done now?” (A related question), etc.

So while I want to show content and happiness, I’m pretty sure she reads it as “oh good, he’s happy, there are no frictions around the house, and I can continue doing what I want to do” – and that’s a problem for me. I hate being taken for a ride, and be made a fool. At the same token, if I come up with accusations yet again, or better yet, with clear cut evidence, I’m pretty sure putting the last nail in this marriage’s coffin. Yes, she’ll say that I caught her or whatever, but she’ll quickly dismiss it and say “it doesn’t matter. There’s no trust between us, and we need to go our separate ways right now.”

The problem is that:

1) I can’t afford a divorce from a financial standpoint
2) We were planning to move to a better town with better schools for the kids’ sake. So a divorce, kills that plan and the kids end up suffering.

It's sounds like she's adamant about having her cake and at the slightest indication of you GAL and 180 she immediately tries to pull you back in. My advice to you is try calling her less. Don't be constantly calling and asking how she is. If she calls be polite and friendly but keep the chat to a minimum especially if she's trying to pull you back in. If its about the kids it's ok be to the point and end the conversation first. "Hey I need to go I need to take this call" or "hey I'm tied up right now I have to go". Ignore some of her calls and hit ignore and send her to voice mail. Give time before calling back even an hour or two "hey I saw you called what's up" and if she's calling to manipulate you just say "sorry super busy here I need to run I will talk to you later". Keep pulling back. Free yourself. Focus on yourself focus on your kids. You are a good guy you deserve the best in your life. Detach yourself emotionally it will take time but it's liberating and she will sense it in you and may panic. Rid yourself of your fears. You can't force change in her she needs to change and this has gone on far too long. When you hit that point where you have accepted your situation and realized you are powerless to change it unless you change yourself you will feel free. Have a great day.

I hear ya, some good pointers, and I’ll address them in order:

1. Calling less – going dark on her she interprets that as me being upset about something (most likely with the A). Same goes for me trying to be a man of less words around the house. She comes at me “What’s the matter now?”’
2. If she calls and I ignore her call, she’ll make this passive-aggressive comment the next time we talk “I called you”. No [censored] you called me, there’s caller ID these days. I know you called me. You telling me you called, is a passive aggressive comment, implying I was too ‘busy’ for you to answer, or didn’t want to answer at all…. I don’t know if she thinks I ignore her, or just pure curiosity as to what I may be up to that I couldn’t answer the phone.
3. It’s not really fears for me. It’s more about anger and frustration about being made a fool. When I don’t tell her that I know, but rather continue to be nice towards her, I feel as if I just enable her to continue eating her cake. And who knows, she seems so comfortable and nonchalant while eating her cake, that maybe really just having a platonic relationship, and doesn’t give a [censored] if it bother me or not, because she knows it innocent friendship. Same type of friendship she encourages me to have with women as well. She sees nothing wrong with those (cross gender friendships).