Long story but I will try to break it down into sections.

My wife left the home about six weeeks ago. She is currently living with her friend who is married and their family. We have a 3 year old son. We have been married for four years and have been together for a total of 10 years. She said for the last three years, since my son has been born our relationship has gone downhill.
She said that I am controlling, not affectionate, not supportive enough with her work issues, I have angry outburst and that I dont respect her about sex. I see my flaws and what I have contributed to make the relationship go bad. I believe she is in the critical withdrawl state now. She has bascially given up on the relationship. Her main concern is that she does not believe that I could change becasue she has tried for so long to change me. I know we had discussions before about the issues, but I would fix them and then go back weeks later.
At this point she does not even contact me unless its about when I am going to pickup my son. For the last two weeks, I been making dinner at home and then inviting her over to have dinner. She came over the last two nights and we had peaceful dinner. I would even massage her back after dinner.
The issue is she still refuses to come back home because she said that things wont change. We are seeing a marriage counselor and next week will be our second session. I just cannot get her to tell me if she still wants to work on our relationship. She tells me that she does not want to get a divorce but yet it seems she is dragging her feet on how we can make the marriage better. I have asked about what she wants or need me to do to show her that I love her and want to make this better but she refuse to tell me. I have read through the whole website and have printed out the questionair to see if I can get her to try it.
What more is there for me to do to show her that I want to be the person who meets all of her emotional needs. Now she tells me that she is going to move out with her friend's brother and his wife and their two kids into another apartment. I am very uncomfortanle with this as I do not know any of them.
I know there needs to be more info so please post any questions and I will answer them. I really need motivation to keep this up because it is killing me inside.

Hi T0186, welcome to Marriage Builders. How long have you been married?

What happened to cause her to move out? Was there a fight?

It was the last fight we had. She was going go go out with her friends the night before. I asked that when she leaves the bar or wherever they are to call me so I know she was coming home. And all I wanted was to have sex when she gets home. Well she texted me instead of calling and she got home 30min before I had to go to work at 4AM. Everything was good I was okay with it. That night she worked late, she is usually out by 11PM but she didn't leave till 12:30AM. She called me and all i asked was why she was so late, she told me one of the workers called out so she had to work later. So she got home, took a shower, we hung out for 30 minutes and went to sleep. I try to make a a move on her and she said no to sex. I simply stated that I had waited all day for her and just wanted to make love with her. She got upset so I told her that it hurts my feelings and makes me feel unwanted by my wife. She got very angry and just went to sleep. Next day she completely ignored me and decided she was going to go home(two hours away) to see her mom. She came back from seeing her mom and said she needed to get out of the house and just left. It started out with she needed time away, to more time away and now she calls us separated.
We been married for 4 years and been together for 10 years.

The biggest issues I see is her resentment because of all the times she has tried to change me and have failed. She have just simply give up the fight to change me and decided to leave because I did not see it. She just will not believe anything I say to her. I am at a lost as to why she still dont know if she wants to fix the marriage or not. But she is willing to go to counseling. And then everytime I see her now she gives me the cold shoulder. Every thing I say to her seems to irritate her. I feel like telling her either you want to fix the relationship or not!! There is no maybe!

There are a lot of issues here obviously, now, one of them is going to be your wife going out partying with coworkers late when her husband is at home wanting to be with her. I also think there is a strong possibility your wife is having an affair.

That aside, when a man demands sex and gets angry when he doesn't get it, it makes a woman feel like a piece of meat and it is very upsetting to us. We need romantic love to want to have sex. If she is having an affair, demands for sex will be met with such blow-outs like this.

I think you will need to start with investigating for an affair AND you should sign up with anger management.

So the truth is she had an emotional affair three months ago. She came home one day and told me about seeing someone at work for the last two weeks. The affair ended because the individual left the state. Yes what I keep feeling is now that I been doing more research I found that I have been at fault for alot of these issues. Its the way I communicate it. I honestly doubt that she is having an affair now as she is with my son 5 of the seven days and she works 10 hrs a day 5 days a week.

What is happening here is that your wife has left you for another man. When a spouse does this, they typically manufacture grievances against their spouse to justify the affair. That keeps the betrayed spouse off balance and keeps them focusing on their OWN faults rather than sniffing out the affair.

Sure, you probably had some issues that led to the sad state of the marriage, but the REASON for the separation is your wife's affair.

You are being gaslighted.

So, your mission is to QUIETLY get the evidence of the affair without letting on to your wife that you know. Get the evidence and come back here. We will help you with next steps.

I still cannot believe that she is having an affair right now. All the phone records show no weird numbers at all. I can't get access to her phone to install anything but I can see all the calls and there is not much going on there.

Even the dumbest wayward spouse knows how to hide an affair. If she knows you have access to her phone records, she would know to get a burner phone.

here

I dont feel like honestly it is an affair that is causing this. I mean I could be in denial but she is willing to go to counseling and she told me she doesnt want a divorce.

Fogbabble to keep cake-eating. She doesn't want a divorce 'yet' until she is sure about the OM. That's how most women work anyway. As for counseling, that is a way to scape-goat and make YOU the bad guy and justify her actions in her mind. 'I went to counseling and it didn't work'....more fogbabble. Have you read the thread 'Craziest Things to Come Out of a Waywards Piehole'? I bumped it for you.

http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2315999#Post2315999

And we could be completely wrong. I could be a crazy kook on the internet who doesn't know what she is talking about. So it is best to find out FOR SURE. Find out for a FACT what is really happening. Because if she is having an affair, which she is, nothing you do will make a difference. Nothing. You can go to counseling until you are 80 and it won't make a difference.

So instead of sitting here guessing about it, why not do some actual sleuthing and find out for sure?

I will so some investigation tonight. I just wonder why everyone is saying she is having an affair. I pray not but it really drives me down to have everyone say that she is.
The other thing I am wondering is she is coming over tomorrow for dinner, should I avoid doing anything? Act normal? Or just be nice about Everythjng?

That is because we have long experience with this. Unfortunately, we are almost always right. Rarely do women leave unless they are having an affair. We have a horrendous time even getting ABUSED women to leave their husbands. Go look on MB101; there are several cases there now where abused women will not leave their husbands. It takes a POWERFUL motivator to get a woman to leave her own home, and not even abuse will motivate her to leave! But, an affair WILL.

When a woman is having an affair she does want to leave. And the way she does it is to demonize her husband by creating a whole laundry list of grievances. She will rewrite history and say she has been unhappy for years and/or she has never been in love.

Your wife was just in an affair so I am somewhat baffled why you think this is such a stretch? The affair is almost certainly with that same guy.

Be very nice and say nothing about your suspicions. Nothing. How can you spy on her to see what she is doing? Can you slip a GPS on her car and follow her?

Also, as far as her cell phone bill showing nothing, firstly she knows you can see it so she is not going to do anything that will give her away. But secondly, it wouldn't be hard to avoid using it if she sees him at work every day. He is a coworker.