I have never answered or posted on this site before but after reading your post, I wanted to let you in on a few things going on in my life.
I am on the opposite end of you. I am where your wife is right now. I am been emotionally neglected for nine years now and it can do a lot of damage. I have lost hope. My husband wants to work it out but doesn't have a clue how to. At least your here on this site. That is a great start. I've tried to get my husband here and he shows little interest.
I have always felt my only alternative to end the horrible pain of neglect and loneliness is to leave and that is why I continue to mention it to my husband. I can't imagine going on like this for the rest of my life. Maybe that is why your wife says that all the time. If she is anything like me, she says it as a way to end her pain. A means to an end. It is unbearable sometimes. She might really want it too because she feels like there is no hope. She wants an end to hurting.
If you can find out how to fulfill her needs she might end up dropping it eventually. I know one thing for sure, the quicker you are to give up on her, the more right you make her in her doubts as to whether or not you love her. If you keep telling her that you will agree to a divorce or you even say it one more time, she will divorce you. My husband is so quick to give up. Not because he doesn't love me but because he doesn't know how to deal with it. He won't learn. You can learn how to make sure your wife's needs are met emotionally and make sure it happens. Giving up or giving her any indication you are giving up only confirms her fears that you never really cared in the first place.
Don't give up on her and tell her all the time you won't give up. Ask her what to do. Communicate with her. Tell her your not leaving and would never give up. I know if my husband were doing that, it would be a start. She is still with you and that means that she still loves you and there is always hope as long as you are together. You have to try really hard. Emotional neglect is serious to a woman and can do a lot of damage.
Ann:
As someone who has painfully become a victim of infidelity and later an unwanted subsequent lay expert on the topic, I must comment on your post.
A man thrives on respect, affirmation, and sexual intimacy with his wife and a woman thrives on attention, protective care, and emotional intimacy with her husband. It seems, very often, that so many men and women unintentionally neglect or fail to realize that they are failing to provide adequate amounts of these qualities to their spouses. Most are completely in the dark and have meant no harm or lack of loving expression--they just do not know. It also seems that so many men and women do a very poor job of properly communicating their sense of unmet need/desire and just believe that he/she "should know by now". Well, in most cases, they DON'T KNOW and had no malice in their heart by their "failures". The spouses who feel unvalued (the same ones who often are themselves guilty of non-communicative assumptions) are the ones ripe for affairs based on self-entitlement with their betrayed husbands/wives feeling blindsided and violated. It appears that you are in the "ripe for an affair" category here...
I have witnessed many husbands foolishly affair with some low-class tramp simply because she "looked up to him" and offered him hot, exciting sex. I have also witnessed many wives ludicrously throw themselves at smooth-talking, loser men simply because he "gave her attention" and "listened to her". Frankly, it is all SO COMPLETELY STUPID AND BENEATH CONTEMPT.
In these situations, any marginally physically attractive woman who displays admiration and any reasonably personable man who gives attention becomes prime affair-bait. You might as well thrown some raw meat into a cage filled with hungry lions. Makes me want to
Please, please do not fall into that trap. Have an intervention with friends and family, call in your trusted clergy, hire a skywriter to put in the heavens, or buy some red spray paint and grafitti up the house with what you need to say...anything to make your points known. Just DON'T HAVE AN AFFAIR! As an absolute last resort, write a detailed letter and separate, giving your spouse a few months to respond appropriately and get a divorce to be on your own if he/she doesn't. Whatever you do, do NOT convince yourself that he/she is doing this on purpose because "there is no hope" as you put it. That is YOUR impression and not necessarily a true or accurate one at that. There are a million divorcees out there who can tell you that the "grass isn't greener" afterwards too.
As for your last 2 paragraphs, I must strongly disagree. Sounds reasonable--and it is normally--but, once an affair is underway, no wayward (man or woman) listens to a spouse who "won't give up" or who chases them professing their commitment and desire for renewal. They have all by that point become sanctimonious and "entitled" in their own minds to do whatever they want no matter who get hurt in the process. Believe me, I lived it with a WW and they don't give a s**t about how "devoted" their BH is...they care about absolutely NOTHING and absolutely NO ONE but themselves once they have crossed that line of betrayal. Sorry, but there is NEVER an excuse for "falling in love" or "finding someone new"; you voluntarily, publicly, and permanently relinquished that option when you got married.
