Thank you UD for clarifying it for me. I understand better now. Holly, thanks for the support, and muddle, I don't know if you can understand the extent to which my W HATES to do things like that. We DON'T talk about us. Really, before all this, I think we maybe talked about our relationship, and I really mean this, well, never. We DON'T talk about us. We are both content to just let things be as they may and assume that it will all work out. I guess W figured out before I did that it doesn't work that way. Problem is instead of learning to communicate with me (not that it was easy or anything) she just did what SHE thought was enough to change the sitch and when that failed, she bolted for the affair. Sadly, she has still not seen the value of us openly communicating about US.
The other day I was walking through the kitchen and she asked me if I was ok. I said yes, why? She said I was quiet. I said, well, I am just thinking about US. Would you like to talk? W just said "no" and that was that.
She WON'T talk about us, and I think part of it is her upbringing, where you just didn't do that (actually, that's my upbringing too) and part of it is the carryover from how I used to be, getting defensive at the drop of a dime, effectively killing any attempt by her to talk to me about negative feelings she had. I really think it's more of the latter because now that I think of it, she USED to try to talk to me, albeit at horrible times like 1am when I was tired, but she DID try and it was ME who managed to shut it down.
In any event, I think a more natural, "in the flow" method will work better with her rather than scheduling time to talk. Maybe that will work later on.
