Hello everyone,
I am currently 33, my wife 32, We don't have any children. We were married in 1998, during our graduate school training. At that time, we had known each other for >7 years but only dated for ~2 years.

Marriage was exciting we were living in NYC while going to school, but as we moved closer to our family and friends, during more of my postgraduate training, we began having some arguments about time spent with my family and friends.
At some point she felt her emotional needs not being met by me. As much as I wanted to assure her that my love and devotion was only for her, my needs to spend time occasionally (~2-3 times a month) with family and friends were seen as my lack of emotional need for her or lack of romance in our relationship or my loss of attraction for her (I don't know for sure).

She tried to set rules and restrict my time with family and friends I felt "Trapped" and didn't know what to do so my response was to pull away even further and argue. Over 1-2 years, because of these fights, she moved back to her parents' home (15min away) temporarily several times out
of anger but at the request of her parents I always apologized and asked her to return home after 2-3 days.

14 months ago however, she moved home and I didn't apologize nor did I contact her. 1 ½ months later she filed for divorce. It crushed me. I begged her to give us another try and that I will change.

Over the past year we saw a marriage counselor ~8-9 months ago for a few months. Our therapist was pretty much worthless in bringing up the issue of meeting eachother's needs. Looking back, she took our words at face value. At least in my case, never got down to my feelings. She had no insight into our problem. And for any given scenario, she would give conflicting messages by saying what my wife wants to hear in private session with her and what I want to hear in my private session.

I also reduced my activities with friends and tried to be more romantic but she doesn't recognize it. I have never asked her to limit her activities with her family (which live within few minutes from us and see her almost daily) nor her activities with her friends (which live further away).

During the past 14 months of separation without our divorce finalized, we continued to have 2 battles with her refusing to talk to me for weeks at a time and her threatening to finalize the divorce.

The latest, however, was different. 2 weeks after hanging up on me at the end of August 2005, with no contact between us, she moved away from the area to San Francisco. I did not find out until 2 wks after the fact through her brother-in-law (he and I work in the same office).

Again this crushed me; I immediately tried to contact her through phone and emails with no response. Only an email saying: "We've been through all this before. We're not a good match. I have moved on and hope you have as well. It's better to not have any contact so we can both heal from our wounds. Please don't call me about this."

There was no final "I'm moving forward with the divorce", nor did she remove any of her possessions from my apartment (eg. furniture, appliances). It was simply a move away to an area where she has only one friend that she talks to occasionally and no contact with me.

In my panic I drove up to SF where she was staying with a friend and pleaded with her to talk to me. She finally agreed and spoke to me for ~45min. I lay out that I'm willing to move away from family and friends to be with her, just as she moved away from her family. That my views on my so called "friends" have changed not only that I don't NEED to spend time with them but that I don't WANT to spend time with them. She stated that these were just words to get back together again and she does not want to get back together because she is not putting herself through this again.

Since then, in the past 3 weeks, I have sent 2 emails to her, writing about my understandings and new realizations. She has responded only once to an email about a marriage seminar weekend that "she can't do this to her self anymore".

I'm afraid that this marriage is irreversibly damaged but I like to hold out hope that there is still a small ember within her that I can restart. I still like to believe that if her needs were met by me in terms of intimacy, priority, and romance, that we would be happy in our marriage. But at this time I don't know how to get her to listen to me and let her know that without appearing to further lose self-respect and her respect for me.

At the same time I fear that if I don't try to reverse this situation now before the idea of divorce is solidified with the final court order, that I may never have the chance again. I know this is wordy but if anyone has any constructive advice on how I can save my marriage I would really appreciate any input... If the audience here is largely cross-over from ASM then please just ignore this thread.

Stu,
sorry you are here. There are many wise MB'ers on this site. It sounds like you have already familiarized yourself with the concept of emotional needs, which is good. Go ahead and read the rest of Dr. Harley's concepts. I would strongly recommend you move this post over to General QuestionsII board. That board gets a lot more traffic and you will get a much bigger response. My prayers are with you. If you are willing to fight for this marriage, embracing the MB concepts will give you a great chance of saving it.

Thank you I'll move the thread. I have read the entire concepts laid out on this website, I'm just hoping for a chance to apply them to my current dwindling marriage.

what's keeping you from applying them? many of the concepts work well in an interaction, married or not. .

and then, why would anyone treat a stranger better than their family?

wiftty

wiftty said:
"what's keeping you from applying them? many of the concepts work well in an interaction, married or not."

I haven't had the chance to apply them because I just found this website within the past week. I'm currently unable to get my wife to talk to me for me to apply these concepts.

"and then, why would anyone treat a stranger better than their family?"

I'm not sure what you mean about strangers? I assume you mean I treat my friends better than my wife? after self reflections, I now realize that I am guilty of that.

I am quite a dense person so I need help understanding the message from this reading. What that I've extracted from reading this article is this; please correct me if I'm wrong...
1. that I must fight for my marriage and remind her of the vows we made to each other.
2. have the patience to fight for my marriage and even if it takes tough love, don't expect quick fixes.

BTW, I don't know how to merge the 2 threads together. If you wouldn't mind please post replies here: