[unchien]

Her "truth" is different than yours. She thinks she's in a terrible, cold, unloving relationship. And she thinks it's all your fault. You see another "truth"- a nice home, healthy kids, a future together. You've got to accept that her truth is her reality though.

...

This is very typical with WAS's. It's like a shooting gallery, you shoot one target down and two more pop up. You CAN'T PLACATE HER back into the M. I know it's tempting to try and it never, ever works. It just makes the WAS lose all respect for the LBS.

Scott - This advice is absolute gold, and AS the whack-a-mole analogy is perfect. Feelings = Truth. When your W communicates with you, think "feelings feelings feelings." This is harder than it may appear when she's giving you reasons things aren't working, or things she thinks you should change. The more you seek reasons from your W, the more you will be confused because she will keep throwing them out there. This is about emotional thinking, not rational thinking. Asking for reasons does not work.

I lived this life with my W for about a year before BD. We went to MC. She wanted more help around the house, less pressure for physical affection. I did more chores, I came home on time from work, I helped with the kids, I gave her more breaks from the kids (weekends to see friends/family), I stopped all pursuit. Absolutely nothing changed. She didn't change anything. We didn't actually *work* on the MR. When I pressed to work on the MR, she changed her reasons to other things.

Understand she is fighting with her internal feelings. Let her work that out.

A consistent one is that i don’t “get” her or that we don’t have an emotional connection. Now this seems to be the target, that I need to feel more and share my feelings to improve communication.

She's not telling you this so you can fix it. She's explaining to you why in her eyes the M is over. Again, you can't "placate" her back to the M. You've got to earn respect back before she'll find you attractive again. You do that by detaching, letting her go, working on yourself, being an alpha again. I bet you've been trying to show her how great a husband you are by taking out the trash, doing laundry, cooking, cleaning, helping more with the kids? All beta behavior. Beta is fine in combination with alpha, but most men lose their alpha traits in marriage and go full beta. Then when they get BD'd they double down on beta behavior, exactly the opposite of what they should be doing to attract her back.

Again, this is gold advice. I got the "emotional connection" reason as well. It is a "catch-all" bucket for pretty much anything.

Part of the advantage of detaching is it will give you time and space also. A lot of us early on get stuck on 180s, and think we should 180 everything because our W is telling us to do that.

You need that to sort out what is your truth. How many of your W's complaints are valid things you should 180 on? And how many of them are just her feelings and complaints?

Finally, I have to agree on stopping MC. She will probably accuse you of not wanting to work on the MR by doing so. Again, you can't placate her back.

I identify with a lot of your story... sorry you are here.