We had a "breakthrough" this morning! Yeah! She accepted responsibility as did I for the state of our marriage. I guess the honesty thing works! She promised that if I could watch the kids that she'd go upstairs and read Dr Harley's book. Here was my note to her and I'm so very excited to begin the journey together. I know it will be rough and we'll make mistakes along the way but I'm prepared for that. Thanks so much to all of you for the wonderful advice, it helped me tremendously and I plan to visit this forum frequently to continue receiving help and then hopefully eventually helping others.

My note early this morning to her:

Thank you for this, it is so important in my mind that we BOTH accept responsibility for the state of our marriage. By no means does fault lie with one person or the other. I have accepted that I don't meet your emotional needs and have neglected them for a long, long time. As I began to research it and do some soul searching I eventually stumbled on MarriageBuilders.com. This was not the first website I came across, I've looked at a ton. It is however the biggest and the best and after reading quite literally dozens of stories of people that were in the place we were but now have marital bliss I became a believer. Most marriage counselors, especially the free kind, don't work. It does no good for us to sit in a room together with a counselor and sit there and debate back and forth trying to get the counselors to take our side. That is exactly how it always turns out which is why there are very few successful marriage counselors period. I believe that by reading and following the principles of Dr Harley like so many others have before us, we can rebuild love back in our marriage. The Love Bank we both have right now if in the negative for each other which is why we don't feel love. When we feel that feeling of love for each other it becomes much easier and in fact exciting to be with each other.

You talked about your motivations for hurting me below. I don't think either one of us makes a conscious choice to hurt or disrespect the other. A lot of times we probably don't even realize we've done it. Many times we view hurtful things in our own eyes rather than in the eyes of our spouse. Just because I don't find some of the little things that you like don't mean they are not important to you. Just because you don't feel that you are hurting me doesn't mean that you aren't.

You refer to my wanting to always be right and being vengeful, how so? I don't want to be right or vengeful, I just want for you to love me and for me to love you. If you see being so persistent coming back to the same things over and over again it is because it means a lot to me to have a good marriage. That is my motivation, nothing else.

I will watch all the kids tonight so you can go read upstairs and I thank you for starting this first step. I don't see myself as being better than you for finding this wonderful site that I truly believe will help us by the way. I was just lucky for having stumbled upon it. If you can learn and read and take action with me this will snowball. One love deposit from me leads to one from you which leads to a whole lot of them back and forth. I know it might seem hard to believe that you could actually love me and be excited for me to come home after work, but it is true. We will have our mistakes along the way but it is worth it all. Our kids need to see a mommy and daddy that love each other, don't disrespect or undermine each other. They need to see parents that are on the same side of the fence. You can grab the book or you can read the basic concepts right on their site. Link is below. Oh, and one more thing, I DO love you very much.

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi3100_how.html