Wondering if I'm piecing or Last Resort

[toughlover]

Well, this paragraph seems to get at the heart of the matter so I'm going to chime in on this.

Lastly, she told me that she doesn’t love me and doesn’t know if she ever will again. This is the bottom line; more important then the OM or anything else I think.

Yes. Both you and your wife have to grow. You both base much of what you do way too much on how you feel, and you both need some time and space (yes, you do even though you feel driven towards her) to chill out. The problem is that you're panicking and are worried something bad will happen any minute now, and that's driving your behavior, which will most likely back her into a corner and virtually insure something bad will happen. Something to consider.

I wanted to tell her that love is a choice and she can choose to love me – but I knew that wouldn’t sway her.

Then take your own advice, dude! If love is a choice, then you can choose to love her by respecting her request for space and no pressure. You can't expect her to be blown away by your love for her if you can't respect her wishes.

Besides, trying to argue her into loving you with logic would be like trying to convince someone who gags and chokes when they eat liver that they really love liver, it's the best thing ever. They may choose to eat it, may be forced to eat it, but they're just going to resent the person forcing them to eat it. That's probably how she looks at it. I know that's how my W looked at it with me.

So I ended up doing something that actually worked. I left her alone to the degree she wanted me to. I stopped talking about how I knew I really needed to GAL and I just did it. Stopped talking about how I knew I really needed to detach, and just did it.

Kirby, you've been at this a while now and you know what you have to do. There is no magic here. You have to start over from the ground up by being her friend, or just being friendly, and that's all, until she's ready. The longer it takes you to do that, the longer this process will take, and the more complicated it will get.

She hates to do anything, like go on a ‘date’ with me, because she doesn’t want to mislead me and doesn’t want me to have expectations.

Exactly. So if you want to make progress you have to give up those expectations, don't even hint at that stuff for a long time so that she will feel comfortable going with you. This is the really hard part but you're going to have to cowboy up and just do it. There's no guarantee it will pay off exactly like you want it to, but it's your best shot.

She will go to a movie with me, but we can’t call it a date.

Again, you're starting over as friends. She's not interested in the old Kirby because there were things about the old Kirby that she didn't care for. The new Kirby has to get rid of that negative stuff. It will take a long time for her to begin to trust in that again because she will just think you're doing it for the short term just to get what you want from her. But she doesn't want that and won't respond to it.

Until you back off, she will only see the negative stuff because it will overshadow all the good. I can almost guarantee you that IF things warm up between you two it won't suddenly happen, won't go from below freezing to 100 degrees overnight. It will warm up one degree per day.

This just doesn't happen in an instant. It will take a long time. But it can happen if you don't derail the process.

My W and I had some really good times over the holidays together. Something I didn't think would ever happen again back in July when we were at our lowest point. I think it only happened because she was willing and I was able to turn loose.

I say that because your wife is willing to go do things with you. She's there. She's in the game. She just isn't going to make things harder on herself by allowing you to think that just because she's going to the movies with you, she's interested in anything more. I know it hurts, man, I've been there.

But you've got to get over it for yourself. We've been singing this song to you for weeks upon weeks now. You're still stalking her emotionally. Deep down, though, you don't want to be held hostage to her emotionally for the rest of your life any more than she does.

Imagine how it would feel to live the rest of your life on pins and needles wondering if she's happy, if she's cheating or considering it, and worrying over it every day, letting it eat at you from the inside out. You don't want that, not really. You want to be free from that.

THAT should be your focus right now.