Why is that, because you feel like you are hiding how you really feel from her? That's what she wants right now though- no pressure. So you are just giving her what she wants.
To a certain extent, yes? But also feel like a fraud in the sense that I have to pretend in front of others (especially family / friends) that nothing’s wrong. I understand keeping good boundaries, and I also understand DGAF about what others’ think. But in this sense, I am trying to give her what she says she wants / needs.
No matter what the outcome, a few years from now this will all seem like a bad memory. It's absolute hell to go through but you WILL come out the other side. Some of us come through with reconciled M's and some of us don't, but most of us end up happy and fulfilled no matter what the outcome of our M. So try to keep in mind that this misery you're going through right now is temporary. I know it consumes darned near every waking minute right now but that's just your fear of the unknown. If you could see the end result you probably wouldn't be worried at all.
You are very much correct—this has been the focus of a lot of my prayers, especially back in the spring. My prayer was / is that 5 years from now, we look back on this as a bad memory. And I hope we still do, but I also realize that this is not totally up to me. So the goal is for me to look at this as a bad memory in 5 or so years. But the goal should be to be happy (or ‘joyful,’ as I would tell my students) and fulfilled no matter what.
and had even bought a house together before we finally got married. We were both quite successful in our fields and we had some beautiful children. Throughout our 20 year M we were very happy with each other and had a great sex life. So what went wrong? I have no idea. All she ever said was she changed her mind about wanting to be married. I hope everyone here will take this lesson away from my sitch- people change. They can change slowly over time, or they can change so rapidly it leaves your head spinning. Sometimes it has something to do with you and sometimes it doesn't. But here's the thing- pretty much every long-term M goes through a major upheaval like this. I'e spoken to elderly couples that have been married 40+ years and they've all told me at some point they went through something similar and went through an in-house or out-of-house S. So you ask if it would have happened with someone other than your W? Yes. Maybe sooner than 7 years, or maybe much later. But yes, it's pretty much inevitable.
I bought a house for W and I to live in before we married, back when we lived in Middle America before moving out West. She lived there for 3 months or so, and while I moved in my stuff during our engagement, my first night sleeping in the bed with her was our wedding night. Looking back, I also know how that totally could have blown up in my face.
But yes, people change—and W admitted to me that she has changed a lot. And in certain respects, I do see those changes. I guess it’s heartening to know that most (or at least a lot of) couples go through something like this.
But you are losing sight of WHY she is unhappy. She THINKS it's the M, but chances are it's not. So you've got to give her time and space to figure that out.
In the OP, or back in original thread, I explained that she has laid a lot of the blame on me and the pregnancy—me for certain flaws (though she is flawed, too), but also for me insisting on us doing NFP which resulted in her getting pregnant and costing her a promotion. I’ll continue to give her the time and space to figure it out, but it sounds like she blames me a TON, even though it takes two to get pregnant, and I’m pretty sure she enjoyed getting to that point.
Now you are engaging in a WAS fantasy.
Yeah, probably—and I shouldn’t. I know I should keep centered and be the lighthouse and all that, but my mind does race. It is probably also poorly-executed self-talk on convincing myself that I am worthy of better—from her, or someone else down the road.
