I'm at the end of my rope. Please help me if possible. My wife and I have been married for 13 years and have 3 children ages 10,11,and 14. Our marriage is on it's last legs. I am/have been a sex addict. I allowed my addiction ruin my wife's image of herself due to my not being able to deal with the shame and all of the side effects related to my addiction. My addiction started many years ago and manifested itself in the form of being obsessed with pornography. It only got worse with the onset of the internet. She has twice found out about phone sex calls that I've made over the past 12 years and ten months ago found a "sex doll" hidden in my closet. She still stuck by me and asked me to get help but I couldn't. I also have suffered from depression and sleep apnea. Several times since she found the doll she asked me to get help and I didn't and in December she told me that she was thinking about separating. It was my rock bottom for my addiction. Slowly I started climbing out of this hole I had dug for myself and now have been taking anti-depressants which have been amazing. I now realize that I can control myself and have overcome my addiction for the last couple of months. I also have seen a therapist for my addiction and have lost 30 pounds to try to help with my sleep apnea. I've also re-established a long lost relationship with Jesus Christ and have been able to share that with my children. I'm a new person and my family is proud of me and happy for me, but she won't take me back. She has told me that she's happy for me that I've done these things, but that she doesn't want to be in a relationship with me anymore but she has asked me to be patient. We are separated and she wants to see other guys but when I have told her I'm done she doesn't want me to pressure her. I am still very much in love with her and feel like it's worth it to stick it out because I do love her and for our children, but can I really hope that this may work out? She says she will attend counseling, but she refuses to be willing to deal with reconciling our past and says I've had 14 years to show her that she comes first and she won't open herself up to it again. She went to see a therapist on her own and he just reinforced her feelings of leaving and said it's good that she knows what she wants. Help anyone???

Read everything on this website, except the forums - save those for later; for now you need to work on improving you and the links, etc. will tell you how. You have to become the kind of person you would want to be married to. If you truly change, discover her Emotional Needs and try to become the person who can provide for those needs, and continue with seeing a counselor, deleting your addiction, continue to lose weight - and exercise! - and become a great dad...eventually she may trust you again.

But don't expect it to happen in the next 6 months, or even a year. If I were her, I wouldn't trust you again for at least a year, if not two. That's how long it takes a person to truly redo themselves. The changes have to become ingrained in you, for a long time, so that you barely even remember the old you, and can't imagine how you were ever like that.

Consider this your chance to woo her all over again. She deserves that. It sounds like you may have chosen to get married because you already had a kid? If so, she may be wondering what life she would have had, had that not happened, so I'm not surprised she's wanting to date. Living together gives you a better chance at reconciling, but if she's unwilling, and she wants to see what she gave up to marry you, there's nothing you can do except make the changes permanent and become the person she wanted/wants to marry all over again.

Yep, good advice.

I would only add the comment that I understand your wife's position entirely. I feel the same way about my wife. It's messed up; but, when a spouse you've been trying to affect change on for a long time finally starts to come around, it makes you more trepidatious then before, because there's a modicum of hope developing which brings with it the potential for more disappointment. So, rather than be discouraged by her position, take it as evidence that hope is developing within her. Her natural reaction to that hope is naturally going to be to withdrawal, because she doesn't want to be disappointed again. Prove to her over time that she won't be.