I would have missed you post but another poster sent me over because I have also lost a son. He dies thirteen years ago. He was eight.
My advice to you is to ask your wife to come home and attend a Compassionate Friends meeting with you. This is an organization and a support group for parents who have lost children. This is a national organization with chapters all across the US. You should find a meeting to attend near you home.
The first year after a child dies, you are for all practical purposes, not playing with a full deck. You will not realize this until years later when you look back at the crazy things you thought and the irrational things you did; and you remember how they made perfect sense for you at this time.
There is a book, a memoir called "The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion, a famous novelist and journalist. It is a personal account of the grief, loss and craziness she experienced after the death of her husband.
This is likely a normal human response to the loss...a survival mechanism because we all go through it.
My advice to you would be to not make any life-altering decisions at this time because these decisions cannot be rationally made and are rarely in your best interest. These decisions would include, getting a divorce or a legal separation, moving, changing jobs or religions, going back to school, taking up a new hobby, etc.
When I attended Compassionate Friend's meeting after my son died, I met many parents who lost children to all kinds of deaths: disease, accident and suicide. The parents who lost children to suicide had the hardest time of all.
As far as your withdrawal from your wife goes, this is a very common response. So is clinging to a spouse. If one spouse withdraws and the other gets clingy, the clingy one usually pushes the withdrawing one further away. This makes the clingy one more desperate and a downward spiral ensues.
It is good to hear that you have identified you issues with AO's.
We have had our fights and she is very passive and lacks common since but is very intelligent. I am the dominate one and I usually end up yelling at her because she doesn't see that the way she did something was wrong. Like driving on a flat tire three times and ruining three tires and one wheel putting her in danger of an accident, or hitting a car and then leaving the scene without calling the police,bringing home narcotics from the hospital on accident and then not worrying about it. There are allot more incidents like these and when we fight she will not talk or acknowledge that something is wrong and needs to be changed and if I ask her for a solution she has no idea and just wants to be loved. So we didn't get anything settled and just went around in a circle. I would get mad and not talk or be affectionate with her for a couple of days which hurt her but I get so frustrated about not working anything out.
This paragraph tells me that you have been judging your wife very disrespectfully in your marriage. I suspect that you are realizing this now that your are becoming familiar with MB principals. We all do stupid things. I'm certain you have done stupid things yourself.
When I do something stupid, my husband does not yell at me, pick a fight or punish me by withdrawing his affection. A marriage and a family needs to be a safe place to fall. When you insist that your wife has done some thing stupid, she does not talk and does not acknowledge she needs to change because she is deeply hurt by your unloving behavior toward her. This can also cause serious depression, self-esteem issues, motivation, self-loathing, etc. especially in fragile personalities.
