You sound like a very reasonable person , who thinks things through. Because of your long marrige, the fact that you have children, you have not lost all love for your wife and the two of you did not have an affair, you have very good chances of saving your marriage.

I read that you contemplated to talk with your wife about the hurt you hace caused one another. Although it is important that both of you realize which things hurt or bother the other, this may not be a good place to start healing your marriage and making is better than it even was.

Many of the things that bother you about your wife and that bother your wife about you, do so because the two of you have fallen out of love. MB is a very good program to bring back the love into your marriage. As soon as you and your wife are giddy, head-over-heels, madly in love with each other again (yes, this is realistically possible), many of the small irritations will not have such significance anymore. This does not mean that you should not try to avoid anything that makes your spouse feel bad.

The MB plan can help restore the love you had by:
1. helping you identify the things that you AND your spouse can do to make each other the happiest (to help you build love).
2. helping you to avoid the things that hurt or bother the other (to avoid losing love).
3. helping you set simple rules to make the two of you more compatible (e.g. Policy of radical honesty, policy of joint agreement).

This way, you avoid building a marriage that is just mediocre, or worse, you are only sharing a house because of the kids.
If you succeed in building the marriage the two of you had dreamed of when you said 'I do', this will be a tremendous example for your kids.

Allthough it is obvious that your needs havve not been met as you would have liked to, I would refrain from having an hour in which you tell your wife of all the things that she did wrong. By filling out the questionaires together (emotional needs questionaire, love buster questionaire) you and your wife can start to speak about yow to make each other happy and the marriage better, without having a fight about who has been hurt more and who has pulled more of the weight. (My husband always says: solve the problem, not the question who is guilty.) You and your wife will gain insight along the way, where you have hurt eachother.

Start with the materials on the website and you will notice a difference sooner than you think. Of youse it takes some time. but it took you 20 years to get to this point, so I think, that you will be able to put all of your effort to get things back on track. Trust me, it will be a whole lot easier to save a marriage with the mother of your children than to deal with step parents, coparenting etc, etc.

May God bless your efforts,

Happyheart

Melody, thank you for responding. I'm going to try to edit the long chapter and verse I started this thread with. I agree that we came to the place of incompatibility and neither of us were specific in spelling out what our desires were from one another.

My main concern in speaking with my wife is that she has been affirmed by her support network and the "counselor" that she has done all that she can do and that I am unreasonable in my requests to get to the bottom of why there were two sets of rules in our home, one for me and the other for her. I feel as if I did truly try to meet her wishes and desires in the very best ways I knew how. I rarely placed my feelings above hers and encouraged her to purchase what she wanted, go when she desired, and experience life....one with me and one with a peer group of great people.

I'm not one who believes that a husband and wife need to be side by side 24/7 to be in love and have a harmonious relationship. What I wanted was the same ability to have a touch of independence from time to time. I don't golf, fish, bike, or fly model airplanes. I don't have a hobby or an outlet of "me" time at all. I have come to the realization that I was living totally as a provider for my wife and children, working hours on end, and being home whenever I could. I came to resent the irritation that came about when I wanted to do something outside of the family unit and yet she was perfectly good with her own independence ( and so was/am I). This remains a major issue in my head and hearing "I wanted you home because I loved you and wanted you with me" doesn't seem to cut it when she would go off on days with her friends. I hope this made some semblance of sense.

Would you rather that she lie to you about her irritation over your desires to do things outside of the family? Believe me, that would not help your marriage and would surely result in LESS sex, not more. You both have different preferences and obviously it doesn't bother you if she has the occasional day out with the girls. But it sounds like some of the things you proposed DID bother her. IT is not tit for tat here, but a matter of what makes you each comfortable.

There should be one set of rules in your house and that is "never do anything that makes the other spouse unhappy." That means that you should not go off fishing if it makes her unhappy. But if you are enthusiastic about her going fishing, then that should be just fine. Do you see what I mean? ONE RULE for 2 very different people results in one thing: HAPPY PEOPLE.

Independent behavior is a disaster for marriages. A better alternative is interdependent behavior.

Confused, you didn't "come to;" you created incompatibility in your marriage by making choices that do not take the other person into account.

Did you read the articles I posted? And have you read His NEeds, Her Needs? It is very hard to explain all this to you when you have not read that book. You will better understand it when you read the book.

Every man needs to escape some time. But you can build a wonderful escape with your wife if she is not willing for you to escape alone. And it is a very good idea to do so.

The Policy of Undivided Attention
Together when you are the happiest

Perfect rules for creating compatibility in marriage!

When the 20% of marriages that are successful are studied, it is found that they all live this way.