This is my first post on your message board. I am reading The Divorce Remedy and find it to on target with respect to my situation. My wife and I have been married for 13 years (I'm 48, she's 43 and this is both of our second marriages), and, especially since the birth of our second child 5 years ago, we have been drifting furhter and further apart. My wife wasn't meeting my needs (marriage has to be more than raising the kids -the children have been her only major major priority - an understandable one given our loss of two babies early in the third tri-mester from pre-term labor) and I wasn't meeting hers (intense emotional connectedness, lots of romance and sharing of feelings). Her attempts to get me to meet her needs felt like nagging, and I just emotionally and physically checked out on her somewhere around 1 1/2 years ago. I think I may have been clinically depressed, at least my life at home (but not work) felt like I was often in a fog.
In any event I finally woke up one day and asked her why she was so unhappy. While I knew we had problems (serious ones, that I had been ignoring because I was too much of a coward to face another lecture about her needing more romance,more intense emotional connectedness and more sharing of feelings), I was surprised, shocked and dismayed to find out that she had basically given up on our marriage.
So, now that I'm ready to move forward she's stuck. From reading your book, it seems like a pretty classic Walk-Away Wife situation. I love my wife and value our marriage. I feel like a real schmuck for sitting on my hands so long, for putting her through all her pain, and putting myself into the bottom of the ninth with two outs, nobody on base and behind 9-0.
We are both in marital counseling (for about 6 weeks, same counseler she was seeing for 6 months -- I thought for grief counseling to help her with the death of her father, but as it turns out, our marriage and I was the main source of discusssion).
So...here is my question. I am certainly at a point where I cannot ask my wife for anything (Chapter 3). While we are friendly, there is no physical intimacy, and she has indicated great pessimism that I can change, and even suggests that change isn't even relevant. Her main perspective is that we got to where we are because we both have different beliefs and values, and over time we changed to a point where there just isn't enough common ground to build on. Her attitude towards change is that, if you have to change (other than superficial change) then you aren't being true to yourself and as a result, the change is wrong. She says she is okay the way she is and I am ok the way I am, and if we no longer connect, then it must be a case of irreconcileable differences. I don't believe any of this, but I'm only 50% of this general partnership.
Don't worry, there is a question. One of the real sticking points that has been a barrier to effective communication between my wife and I, is that whenever I ask my wife to give me a specific example of what I can do that would help her feel the kind of closeness and shared feelings she is looking for, all I get are more vague references, a lot of churning of hands, and a look on her face that says "how can I make the blind see?". The closest she comes to being specific is to say that if I was willing to sit and talk about anything and everything with her and some of her friends (male and female)frequently, for an extended period of time (3-4 hours) that this bonding might take place. I'm sorry, but that doesn't work for me, I've tried and it just wears me down. Finally, here comes the question, How can I get my wife to articulate more clearly and in a more action oriented way, what she wants me to do (at that point when the timing is right to bring up the subject of me asking her and her asking me for specific changes -- until then, I'm just working on me, and trying to be as good a housemate and father as I can be). Being specific and giving action-oriented examples is a real issue for her, so unless we can overcome this, I'm not sure how to make any progress.
