Quote: because i have been a very faithful husband and great father, i have got her anything she has asked for, gone anywhere she wanted to go, gave her a life that i thought she wanted. but i and everyone i know were wrong, MY wife needs more, thats probaly why it hurts me so much, i have always showed her love and affection.
This one stood out to me Shippd. Even though you admit to being "wrong" about what your W needed in the R, you still close with "i have always showed her love and affection."
Have you read The Five Love Languages? If not, it may help explain what I am saying here.
You may have THOUGHT you were showing her love and affection, but I suspect that you were showing her those things in ways YOU would like them shown to you, NOT in ways SHE wants them shown to her. We ALL do that. It's natural. You even talked about it later on in the post saying that you wanted basically a woman who returns what you give her.
I submit that it's much better to learn each other's "love language", i.e. what communicates love to THEM, and then work to learn to express love in that way. For instance, if your W's primary love language was Quality Time but yours was Physical Touch, then you may have gone around giving her hugs, kisses and initiating sex, thinking that you were showing her love, all the while, being gone all the time and really "absent" when you were home. She, on the other hand, being a "Quality Time" girl would always try to spend time with you, not really to touch you or have sex, but just to talk or watch TV, thinking that because THAT was what said "I love you" to her, it would communicate the same to you. She may have missed the whole part about Physical Touch being YOUR way of feeling loved, mistaking it for just a horny guy.
I don't know what your LL's are, those were just examples, but I hope you get my point.
Your idea that you got her things, went where she wanted and gave her the life you thought she wanted may be WAY off. The most important part of that is that you THOUGHT she wanted the life you gave her but in fact, you may have misunderstood what she wanted/needs.
It's not so much that she needs MORE necessarily, but that she may need DIFFERENT from you, different ways of being shown you love her.
ok GH: what you say about LL's how do you find out what they truely want, i have said to you that we discussed this, WHAT SHE EXPECTS, and i have been giving her that. but you said that what she told me might not be totally true. how can i give her what she so disires if in fact i really dont know. i am not a mind reader, when we discussed this i thougt we were being totally honest with each other. at this point i would give her what ever she needed from me, if i truely knew what the was(as long as it was in the contents of our marriage. you know one of her big issues now is that i have lost so much weight and the fact that we live in a small town everyone that sees us together come up to us and asked me how i have lost so much weight and that i look really good. i know this bothers her, because she says she needs to loose weight and also blames me for her weight gain in the last several months. GH we do have alot of issues she has not or WILL not let go of, no matter what i do to change them. i might be fighting a loosing battle, but i am still trying, but as i said i am now going to change my way of doing them. i will detach in a loving way, but the little things i do, massages, physical touching, talking too much and always being around. i have to stop these things to see if they really mean anything to her, or if they are just things i like doing and the do nothing for her. if i stop doing these things i should know pretty fast if they are things that she likes or not right??
last night wife was i same mood, i was nice and told her IF she wanted to talk about it i would listen. well she did want to so i listened.
she told me that this is not my problem, i have been doing all the right things and she notices. she told me that i will think she is crazy, but she is irratated by everything, i asked her to give me some examples, she said everything, me, kids,house,dog,everything. i dont know how to handle these issues she is having, other then just let her feel them, and maybe just maybe she will come out of her fog. i dont know if she will stay or go, maybe even this weekend. i can not go on with this anymore. i told her that im here if she needs me, and can talk about it anytime she wants too. she says she appricates that but cannot talk to me right now. i am getting to the point of WTF, i am doing the right things and she is still depressed. i dont think she will come out of this, and now i have to start prepairing myself for being a single dad, i really think thats where this is heading. its like she can now tell her family and friends that she did try, she moved home to TRY, and i didnt work out. which in a way thats fine with me. it is time i move on.
You know Shippd, you seem really frustrated with your W again, and it seems to me that you are focusing on her again, her decisions, her feelings - and they have become the state of the M again.
The most powerful part of this DB stuff to me is the realization that your life is entirely your own - and your W's life is too. It seems that you are putting way too much emphasis on how your wife is feeling right now. I think you need to get back on track doing positive work on and for yourself - if you need to set a goal like working towards being a single dad, maybe that's what you should do, I personally think you can accomplish becoming a better dad, and man without PLANNING for the single part.
I understand that you feel very vulnerable right now, and I think you're feeling some dissonance between your expectations and reality right now. I can imagine I would feel the same thing (and I'd sure like to be in a position to feel that way). I think it's important right now to deal with the part of this situation that you can conrol: YOUR expectations. One of the concepts that works really well with disciplining children is positive redirection. If they're doing something you don't want them to do, don't just tell them not to do it, but give them something positive to do instead. I think right now you're starting to focus on what you can't control, and you're allowing yourself to feel all sorts of negative emotions that wont help either of you. Redirect your focus to something positive that you can control that will build you up rather than tear down yourself and possibly your family.
I think you have a really great opportunity here - don't give up.
PS: I think what your W is feeling is normal - the situation won't change that. She has to work at actively finding happiness in herself and her life. Unhappy people tend to project their unhappiness and blame others for it all. This is out of your hands and doesn't mean that your marriage wont work. This is her issue to deal with.
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. ” – Albert Einstein
thanks for the help muddlethrough, i do understand what you are saying, and i am going to go back to the basics. i am only human and last friday i was on cloud nine, i moved my wife home and YES i was ready for a happy ending. but instead i got the same wife i had before she moved out. that is not what i or we wanted, and now i have to deal with this. i know deep down my w wants to work it out, but i dont know if she will dig deep and work out her issues and save her marriage to me, or if she just gives in to the surface of her issues and quits. i know she has to make those choices, not me, but i do have choices also, i am and will for a little longer chose to stay and work on myself and my marriage, but i also know i can pull the plug on this life support of my marriage and for the good of my wife and children, end this whole mess and move on. its not what i want to do but when you are back into a corner (like i feel i am now) we all have to make the choice of staying or moving on.
Of course you're right - you can always choose to end it. But didn't YOU choose to stick it out? Didn't YOU choose to try and make it work? I think YOU deserve to stand by your choice and see it through with the same optimism you had before your W came home. Don't forget that your goal wasn't to get your W home, but to have a happy M. If you can't maintain your faith in your decision to work this out, than how can you expect your W to? Have some empathy for her lack of confidence in her decision, and remain detached, knowing that what she feels now has little bearing on the potential for a great M. Don't make your decisions based on her feelings, make yours based on you.
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. ” – Albert Einstein
your right, i didnt look at it that way. i am feeling like giving up based only on what her feelings are. your are correct. i will continue to have faith that all this fog she is in will clear and our marriage will survive. i will stay on the long black train she is driving, for now, because i want to, hopefully to see grace at the end of the tracks. thanks for setting me straight
Quote: i am getting to the point of WTF, i am doing the right things and she is still depressed.
STOP TRYING TO FIX HER! YOU CANNOT DO THAT! I believe if you look at it, this is an underlying problem in your marriage just like it is in mine. I would actually get angry because my W was not happy. It was MY fault she was not happy of course, right? I mean, if I was a good husband, father, did the things she liked, bought her things she wanted, etc, she WOULD BE HAPPY, and since she's not, then there's something wrong with ME. You see, it was always about ME. That was the problem, even HER problems were about me, even if they had nothing to do with me. I see this in you BIG TIME. You need to stop taking all this personally.
You may very well be doing all the right things, but for how long? A week? A month? What's that compared to years of the wrong things? You really expect it to happen this quickly. Please, snap out of that thinking. This takes time.
BTW, if you keep thinking negativly, negative things will happen. Try some PMA.
Sorry, got to run. I had to be blunt because I think you needed to hear that...again.
your right, i didnt look at it that way. i am feeling like giving up based only on what her feelings are. your are correct. i will continue to have faith that all this fog she is in will clear and our marriage will survive. i will stay on the long black train she is driving, for now, because i want to, hopefully to see grace at the end of the tracks. thanks for setting me straight
well this weekend was not at ALL good, although sunday i might have found a breakthru with our sitch. i try and not talk about our r with my w, but she brings it up all the time, and stupid me once she does i can not stop from talking. i do realize that at this point i am alot farther along with forgiveness and change. she is just starting to do that, and i have a hard time remembering that. she has not forgave me for all my wrong doings in our marriage. i dont know neither does she if she will ever let go of the past. she told me she wants to but just cant, and dosent know if she ever will. why cant i just let her speak and not end up speaking too much. i can not get a handle on that. we had a big discussing and fight sunday, with me leaving for awhile. when i got home i didnt even go into the house i started working on the yard and she came outside to me and said she was sorry for the fight earlier. instead of just accepting her appoligy i starting talking and talking. i told her i needed to stop talking so much and she told me that even though she does not talk much she does listen and wants me to talk this out. but everytime i say something it sounds right to her at the moment and then she thinks about what i say and turns it totally around. how do you learn to stop this behaver and instead of talking, start listening? i wish i could figure this out. she wants my love, but she is so affaid of letting the past go, that even she thinks at this point, that will be our downfall. after our last talk on sunday the rest of the day was pretty good. we laughed and just had normal conversation. later that night i told her i was going for a walk and she asked to go along. while walking we had fun, with at one point she grabed my arm, held my hand, just had a good time. she still kisses me good by and tells me she loves me.
