Hi all, I've been reading here for a while and trying to follow the practices, definitely have had set backs, and as of right now I do feel my marriage is over. I don't want to get to long winded in this first post so I will try to summarize and I hope to start a good conversation with everyone here!
I am 39 and my wife is 29. This is my second marriage, I have an 11 year old son. My wife and I have been together for 5 years, and married for two years. We have no children together.
My wife was head over heals for me from the moment we met, our relationship was great and perhaps moved a bit to fast. Looking back we certainly should have spent more time learning how to communicate with each other. After we got married we did start to grow apart and I really see it was me just not allowing myself to be fully open with her, something she desperately wanted. In the back of my mind I was always afraid of losing her, even though she never showed anything but absolute love towards me. This always had me reserved and basically being the "nice guy" because I never wanted to do anything that would potentially scare her away. In the end that's exactly what I ended up doing.
She did try to communicate this to me, but I always took it the wrong way, like she was attacking me, and it just further solidified my confidence issues with her, to the point where I just started to shutdown. Of course I didn't realize this as it was happening, and when she stopped bringing it up, it was the classic attitude of well, no news is good news.
Then one day the wake up call came, she said she was no longer happy and she was going to stay at her mother's house for a few days to figure herself out. A few days turned into a few weeks. At which point I found out she had met another man. This other man has kids of his own and is married. She has told me this man is separated and his wife is already dating someone else and that his wife knows about the two of them, however they have not filed for a divorce.
It's now been about 3 months, she is fully moved out and still seeing the other man. She has not made the other man public to anyone in our circles. Her family knows she has moved out, but not that she is seeing someone else. To the general "world" we are still are married.
She still communicates with me on occasion, and even though she has said she wants a divorce, she hasn't gone through with any action towards a divorce. This has been hard for me, because when we do speak I just get the feeling she doesn't really want to commit to the divorce. Then it gets hard to follow the DB principles because I feel like I have to do something to save it. Which led to us having a conversation a few days ago.
This last conversation was still very neutral, where it appears she has doubts she is doing the right thing with this new man, and she has doubts she is doing the right thing with a divorce. She has told me she is stuck in all aspects of her life right now and basically just spends her time working, sleeping, or getting drunk. She refers to it as being on auto-pilot and she said she is being self destructive, but right now that makes her happy, very confusing! I did tell her I have been going through counseling to improve myself and she does say she really sees the changes in me. She gets frustrated seeing these changes now because she feels like it is to late for her to be in love with me again. She then said she wishes she hadn't wasted these past 3 months doing nothing and would have worked on herself too. She continues to tell me I am a great husband and she knows what she is giving up, but goes back to the fact that she can't get the loving feeling back for me again because I made her feel so unwanted and hurt. She says she tells me these things because she doesn't want me to think our marriage failing was all my fault and for me to bring that into a future relationship.
At the end of the day, she is still moved out and still seeing this other guy. I love my wife and do not want to end this marriage, but I think I also need to come to terms that I drove her away and it could already be over. Just looking for some advice!
