Quote: So, I have the choice between discomfort and a long term improvement of our R (which I might be jumping the gun even thinking about at this point) or making W as comfortable in a R that isn't "right".
I don't see this as an either/or situation. I think you can do both somehow. I know I deal with a lot of the same issues and I KNOW I still support her dependance on me, but one thing I do differently now is ALSO TRULY support the attempts she makes to be independent. I have dropped my desire to control her and that alone has made her feel a lot more free.
Your W's freedom to make her own decisions is just that, freedom. You can't temper that with any sort of partial control. You either let go or you don't but in either case, I think you can still "be there" for her and not be enabling her codependency.
As usual, it's a fine line.
Quote: The codependency in my R seems to me to be a way of ensuring our security in the R because we are NEEDED, rather than wanted. In this way - I mean that by continuing to feed into my W's dependance, I am somehow disallowing her the "choice" to be with me, because she can and might look upon it as her NEED and not her choice.
You don't "allow" or "disallow" her choice. You only react to them in ways you see fit. I know what you mean though. You want to make sure the sitch is such that she FEELS like she's making an independent decision. The problem is that you can't control how she feels so stop trying. Eventually she will have to come to grips with the fact that you are growing beyond her and the sitch and the YOU will be capable of living independently from her, even IN the marriage, if not out of it and in turn, I think she will have to decide if she can do the same thing.
These are DEEP issues, ones that probably shape both our marriages but I think simply being aware of them is a HUGE step in the right direction because if you're like me, you had no conscious idea that things were this bad.
