You sound good right now. Keep the 1/2 full thing going and save some for me cuz mine just spilled. Anyway, one difference between our sitches is that my wife's actions and words are making me take stock on our life together and I can honestly say that going as far back as our honeymoon I can find examples of my destructive behavior that I believe led in part to this situation. I am not blaming myself, but I am not as sure as you are that there is a happy place to get back to. Sure, there is a content, peaceful place, but according to my self-discovery and her recent words to me, there probably was never the marriage I imagined we had. That said, I now KNOW that there is a chance that we could build a marriage based on years of genuine love, that would provide us the life and love feelings we both need. I know the skills can be learned to some extent but the ole leading a horse to water analogy applies. I feel for you in getting to reconciliation and then realizing it was false, or at least partially false. That is one of my biggest fears and really one of the reasons why I go so crazy when I "act as if" and she pretends nothing is going on. It almost seems like things are ok again and then comes the time when before I would get a hug or kiss and...nothing. It's almost like I keep setting up myself for failure. In your case, it seems like your W is trying, for some reason, really hard to protect what YOU need in the relationship. She is saying the words and even doing some of the acts. If my wife did that and then called the OM the next minute, I don't know how I would feel. On one hand I would feel great that she may be warming up to me again, and that my DBing was working, but then I would feel like a doormat that maybe just needed a little cleaning (i.e. a hug, kiss, ily) to keep serving it's purpose. Honestly, I think the best advice we keep getting is to realize that no matter what, we cannot control them. We can try to influence them but to make expectations that our influence will work and get us what we want is the same as controlling them. It makes us feel the same way when it doesn't work. I don't know about you, but for me, my control issues are internal. I never told my wife not to do anything. I never "forbid" her. I just have expectations that she will behave in a way that makes sense to ME and when she doesn't I get upset. Crazy, huh. Keep on moving forward and I think the real turning point for both of us will be when we've had enough. Not in a bad, hateful way, but in a self esteem reaffirming way that enables us to put our feelings ahead of any other factor in this process. Right now I don't even know what I really feel other than pain and loss. Right now, as of that post, you feel hope. Grab ahold of that and ride it for as long as you can. Who knows, she may just get on with you and ride away into the sunset with the OM left in the dark...
