Have you said this to her this bluntly? (I can plainly see that any old random stray cat has more value to W than I do.)
If you haven't...you really need to. My gut is just screaming to me that she doesn't really know the depth she's hurting you. She's taking you sooooo for granted, and yes, I believe she believes you won't leave. And if she does, and you won't, you've removed a lot of your bargaining power (I think).
I guess I feel for those people who won't leave their R (for whatever reason, good/bad/indifferent) you simply hand over the reins to the R to the other person. Now, I know it's not that simple. But I guess for me it's kind of like that saying "how can I miss you if you never go away?" People who take others for granted, as your W does Zbube, are sometimes those who are most in need of something drastic to snap them out of it. If you aren't willing to take a drastic step....she'll likely continue living the way she is, and so will you.
I hate saying things like that...you're such a good man, and you do deserve to be happy. But perhaps you need to really look again at what you are willing to do and what you won't do to snap her out of it.
Lil...you're such a fan of patterns LOL (gotta rib you about that)...so I'm going to point this out to ZBub.
Honeypots H has done an about face...when she told him she no longer loved him. Drastic words....drastic change.
I told my H I couldn't live like this indefinitely and that I didn't trust he would do anything to change our situation. Once again....drastic words, but they've made signifigant changes in my house too.
Now right now Honeypot isn't willing to leave, but she told her H EXACTLY where she stood. It wasn't nice, but it was honest...and it woke her H up, eventually I believe those two are going to find a happy medium.
I was willing to leave...but you know what? I don't think that's what snapped my H out of things...it's the fact I told him I didn't trust him that did it.
Both of us...have been very clear to our spouses, we haven't held back. It seems to me that when we each got to that point and said "to heck with it!" and said what we really needed to say, how we really felt and stopped worrying about what the other person would say/do....it made a difference...and neither of us has had to leave.
Just something to chew on.
