Sandi2, The four days after your post my wife had a couple of drinks and after expressing frustration about issues with her parents, she turned on me and out of the blue told me again that she was done with our marriage, she wanted a divorce, and I wasn’t going to stop her.
Last night she calmly brought it up again and after watching a video online by Sharon Pope she told me that she wanted to work with me to Lovingly Release (Sharon’s words) our marriage.
Looking back, I don’t think the EA was ever resolved. She never took true ownership of what happened and she never accepted responsibility for it. There was also a critical event that was glossed over that I never got the details of that left a lingering question mark in my mind. We tried to discuss it repeatedly in counseling, but we never got through it, we moved on. We found a different marriage counselor and never went back into it.
I agree my wife was numb before and after the EA. There is no doubt about that. She wanted to have two more kids when she had the hysterectomy. She was 31 at the time. It was a partial, not a full. She had an executive physical and her hormone levels did not come up, though it was always a concern she could start menopause early.
I have struggled with rational detachment. When I think I’m there something happens (like two weeks ago or last night) and I can feel the cortisol rush through my veins and I struggle to sleep and eat.
I like your advice of focusing on what feels good to me. I try to do that. With young kids it is tough because if I leave the house then she has to be responsible for them and that creates friction. Many of our arguments seem to stem from times I’ve gone out with friends and somehow I didn’t communicate it well to her – this makes me less likely to do it again because of the threats and tongue lashing I get at home.
She does get a lot of benefits from the marriage. She gets regular massages, she plays tennis two or three days a week, works out every day. I cook half the meals and we split up the house cleaning so that I do half of that as well. I know that the situation is not fair but any push back I give ends up threatening the marriage.
And Sandi2, I’m not a wimpy guy but I feel as though my values get held against me because I don’t push back. My number one value in my life is family. Family, begins with marriage in my mind. Up there with my number one is my Christian faith, where marriage is sacred. I also believe that my kids are better off in a household with us together, and that their kids will be better off (this presumes we get this on the right track).
So if there is good news, my wife is interesting in a course with Sharon Pope called the decision where you go through a program to decide definitively if you are going to work on your marriage on lovingly release. The program is about learning tools to work on your marriage, applying them to see if they work, and if not then you have your answer. If they do, then things improve.
And you are right. My grip on my end of the rope has changed. I am still holding it, but before these recent conversations I was already struggling. The positive at this time is that we are moving in a direction (or at least we seem to be).
I can’t see a way that our marriage gets saved unless she decides she wants to commit to it and work on it. She was last in that position as of March of 2019, but she doesn’t like to do the work so when I would bring things up she would push them off until a bomb drop last September of 2019.
Since then we have been where we are. Again, at least we seem to be moving in a direction. I can deal with trying to build Marriage 2.0 and I can deal with her leaving.
