Hello,

My relationship is currently in a very precarious situation. We were married relatively quickly (after just one year together) and immediately moved overseas.

We were naive and completely unprepared for this and to be honest had never really had to deal with relationship stress before. We had always had a very open and communicative, honest, loving, caring and supportive relationship. We felt we should spend our lives together from very early on and had spoken a great deal about getting married.

However, once we arrived overseas we were hit hard by reality. We had (and particularly my wife) always been very social, with close family and a large circle of friends. She especially has not dealt well with this reversal of fortune. I am working and she isn't, which has made our social isolation easier for me to handle.

Where we now live, it is rather difficult to make friends. Culturally. We have started to open those doors, but it is too little too late I'm afraid. This isn't helped by the fact that I am quite shy in new social settings. Though once "in" I am very friendly and social.

This situation led to an almost immediate withdrawal of my wife. She began to pull away emotionally and start to call our decision and our relationship into question. This eventually and quickly led to a feeling of entrapment for her (particularly being such a social and independent person) and a resurfacing of past issues of hers (some of which I know about some of which I don't).

We had already begun down the path of Unconditional Love. Both of us drifting towards one extreme. She began to look out for herself and push me away and I began to try to fix things by doing anything in my power to try to make her happy. This of course merely made things worse. Smothering her and increasing and feeding her feelings of entrapment. While I previously saw her pushing me away as her becoming a Taker, I had never realised that I myself had become a Giver and as you will no doubt expect eventually a Taker myself.

Both of us began to demand our needs and have gone from a couple that rarely if ever fought, to a couple that bickers and snipes, are often disrespectful of each other and are self involved. Though I do feel that I still regularly cave in, in an attempt to make her happy.

Exacerbating this she began receiving therapy for her issues, which has convinced her that she needs to look after herself and concentrate on her own happiness without any regard for me or anyone else. She was told to stop being a "care giver" and to concentrate on herself.

While I understand this advice I feel like it is bad advice and though it has in the short term helped her to some extent with her own issues, it has greatly worsened our relationship. It has fed the feedback loop and has all but completely severed the emotional and physical connection between us, feeding her doubts.

Through out all this year she has repeated told me that she does love me and that this is about her demons and she will beat them and then we will be ok, or we will work on us.

She recently went away with a girlfriend for a few weeks, something she has desperately wanted to do to escape our situation. A few days ago, while still away, she told me that she is torn and that she no longer thinks she is in love with me. She said she cares about me and she wants our marriage to work, but that she is confused. She also said that she doesn't regret things because she has discovered herself and her needs, and needs to make herself happy without thinking about anyone else. She also still wanted me to meet her (as was our plan) but that we would be travelling as friends. She also said that she wants to move home (to our home country) and live separately.

After my hysterics subsided (privately), I thought long and hard about this and explained that I didn't think it was possible for us to travel together with this hanging over us and that I think she should come back as soon as she can.

I told her that I love her, and that I think our marriage is worth saving and that it can be saved if we work on things together. I said that if she wants to live apart I while we start to do this, that I have to accept that. But only if she is genuinely committed to repairing and rebuilding our love. That we have to date and talk and share positive and happy experiences again, and we need to see a therapist (individually and together).

She agreed to all of that. But with the extra comment that she still needs to work on herself first, because she has always worried about other people and never truly worried about herself. Though she was positive and genuine about working on our relationship, baby steps as she called it, at the same time.

I really need advice, I'm not sure what else to write or do. Are we doing the right thing and going about it the right way? When I read this site it mostly rang true for me, particularly the description about the giver and taker versions of unconditional love, and the need to strike a balance there.

My main concerns are firstly, how do we talk and reconnect. Particularly because our relationship is full of love busters and nothing that used to make love deposits seems to work anymore. For example, compliments and little signs of affection. We used to give these all the time, but now they only make things worse because she rejects them. Neither of us are making deposits, and most of the deposits I try to make seem to become withdrawals (when they used to be deposits). We have also stopped communicating about anything serious. For example her therapist advised her NOT to talk to me about it. That she should not tell me about what she is going through. That seems very counterproductive to me. I don't understand why I can't be used as support, and if the therapy is ABOUT me, how it can possibly be resolved without talking TO me about it.

Secondly, how do I talk to her about this balance between give and take when she has been convinced by her therapist that she needs to be a Taker and ignore everyone else. She has been very adamant that distance and "boundaries" are what will fix things for her, and what she "needs". This feels like a reaction against entrapment. Like what she really wants is her feeling of independence back, which is something I am completely in favour of and have always been. I feel unfairly treated, as if I want the opposite.

Finally, I have read most of the site in the last two days and I am concerned about the Join Agreement type systems. Not the concept of agreeing, but I am worried that it is stripping away individuality and independence. I agree that we are a team and need to work together to make each other and ourselves happy, to maintain our love banks, and to help and support each other in our goals. But we are also independent and individual people. We are one team, but NOT one person. How do we deal with that. I don't think should do everything together (though when we were happy we did do most things together whether that is what ideal or not is open for debate I suppose, and while here we have done everything together because we are forced to). Part of a healthy relationship surely must be helping maintain our own identities and supporting each other with our individual goals as well as our shared goals.

How do I talk about this shared decision making and shared life, without it being misconstrued as a surrendering of individuality or trying to trap someone, or trying to force someone to settle down—she recently objected to the idea of getting a mortgage and having kids in the short to medium term. Something I have never even suggested. The only serious conversation we ever had about it were that we may buy an investment property somewhere one day and that we would both like to have kids at some point in the future. But not until we are BOTH ready... Somewhere along the line I feel like her fears have been attached to me as if I actually want them.

That's a long message. Longer than I thought it would be.

Any advice and help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

I don't feel qualified to answer the rest of your post but I wanted to answer this bit. I may be misinterpreting it but even before finding this site my husband and I were finding our way to conducting our marriage in this way. Its not about sacrificing yourself and your goals, but about recognising that everything you do impacts on your spouse in some way and involving them in the decisions made for your life.

My husband in the last 3 years gave up his job to train as a pilot, he's now working for an airline and is really happy. He wouldn't have done it had I not been happy too, but it took us almost a year of talking and negotiations to get to the point where I was happy for the plans to go ahead. There have been ups and downs and its not been an easy ride but we were in it together and I never felt angry at him because it was a joint decision to do it. I had a lot of input into HOW it all happened though (which training school, where we lived, how he fit studying in around our family etc.) The Policy of Joint Agreement means finding a way to live and grow in a way that doesn't make either person happy at the others expense.

I think you should seriously consider that she may be cheating on you.

Going away for a few weeks? Yikes. The language that you say she is using sounds like she is trying to justify an affair, especially the bit about delaying repairing your relationship so that she can continue to focus on herself (ie, continue an affair(s)).

Affairs happen very frequently, and result from exactly the problems that you are having.

If there is any hope, you have to demand that you live together. Seperation is a prelude to divorce. Don't be anybody's safety net while they "figure it out". You are married, duh!

If you like your new country, think seriously about following her to another one.

By the way, you sound like a sensitive guy. You should try to use other peoples stories as a guide.

There is no shortage of stories about women who love to drag out failing relationships with no intention of fixing them. It's some kind of ego boost to them. They can live fun and fancy free while some slobbering heartbroken guy massages their ego by trying to fix things.

You have to be a little insistant. The idea of divorce may be scary, but I think forcing a decision sooner rather than later will be a lot less painful. I think this is also more likely to get fixed sooner rather than later, but not if you make it "ok" for her to be single. There was a commitment and she owes it to you to live with you. That is what the marriage ceremony was about. It wasn't just a fancy party.

It's too late. She refuses to even try. My world is collapsing around me.

Have you snooped to see if she's having an affair?

It's a moot point. My life is over.

Bullhockey. If you're saying that because she left you, or something like that, it's far from over. One, if it's just because she didn't like how you treated her, show her you can treat her better. If it's because she's 'not in love with you any more' then she's having an affair, and there is a LOT you can do to fix it.

More details please.

I've already told you everything I know. I have been nothing but supportive and loving and caring. She withdraw and ran away and refused to deal with what was happening between us. Explicitly telling me everything was ok. That she loved me and we would be ok. She just had to deal with her demons first.

Now she has taken even that away. She doesn't even want to try now. She has decided to simply walk away. She has kept me at arms length for so long. And now she wont let me back in at all.

Today she sent me an email saying she's divided all our things up and mine are there to be collected. That she doesn't regret anything and she has made her decision. We are back in our home country. Where she promised we would try to work things out. But that was a lie too.

She has still not told me anything of any value.

You say there as a lot I can do to fix it... How? I can't fix it without her help.

I feel completely worthless, used, betrayed and utterly devastated.

Here is what you can do.

You can hire an investigator to find out what she is doing, who she is doing it with.

When you find out the man she has been seeing, or even just texting or calling, you can expose the affair to everyone he cares about and everyone she cares about, so the affair will stop.

You can go to her girlfriend (who helped the affair) and her family and/or anyone else she is now spending time with, tell them what is going on, and ask them for their help.

Once the affair stops, she won't have that fairy tale to fall back on, and the fog will start to clear, and you can continue to find ways to show her a good Plan A.

Eventually, she may realize what she has done, and that you stood by her in her foolishness, and may ask you to take her back.

If she was actually having an affair, which I'm not sure of—at least not a physical one. Then it is over now. We just moved 17000 km.

Uh...computer? Internet?