She’s getting angry because she has most likely made up her mind to D you and now you’re doing what she wanted you to do.
I agree. Or she's angry because she thinks I'm full of it and just saying what she wants to hear. Either way, I still feel good about saying what I did, because I intend to do that provided we stay married. If we are not married, and she has custody with the kids that day and she needs to work, I'm not going to bail her out. That is a boundary I intend to enforce.
Originally Posted by LH19
If she Ds you while you’re doing everything right then she’s the bad person.
Possibly. Maybe W can explore this in her IC. That's probably why she is in IC.
Like many of us here, we are in shock, and feel like if our spouse just made things more clear we would have made changes sooner and prevented where we are today.
Could W have made her concerns more clear? Yes. Could I have recognized these issues myself? Yes. I don't feel like a bad person. It's just not useful to try to figure out who is to blame how much for what. It is what it is. I'm here now in this awful situation that I feel was avoidable. It's so hard to just accept what is.
Originally Posted by LH19
Why do you think setting boundaries will make it harder to reconcile?
Good point.
Knowing my W quite well, I think reconciliation is out of the question, regardless of what I do. Once she makes decisions about people in her life, there is no going back. I'm firmly planted there. I don't think she would make this decision, and then later question herself. She is mentally strong, and not going to question something she did in the past. She does not have regrets about other relationships she has ended before - ex-boyfriends, friends, even family members.
Honestly, this process is mostly about me accepting that D is coming. There is a Hail Mary chance that we go to MC and somehow make enough headway that she reconsiders before the BD. I have zero illusions that this will happen. Like everyone says here, she has probably been thinking about this for months if not years... once she builds up the courage to BD, there is realistically no going back.
I'm curious how much boundary-setting I should be doing before the BD? Sometimes we talk 20 minutes about things she wants to talk about, and I work on validating, active listening, etc. I feel like I am practicing skills that will be useful to me regardless of what happens, but sometimes wonder if I need to grow a pair and pull away a bit.
