I'm assuming you listened to yesterday's show. Do you plan to catch today's?

I do not have the book love busters right now, I will be purchasing that this Friday on pay day. Since my lack of funds have been used up from retaining an attorney and our account split up. I was about to start yesterday's radio show but after getting the kids settled the wife came home and I wanted to invite her on a family walk. Had every attention of listening after the walk but was to upset. I will be listening tonight though. I have currently installed the app on my phone. I will stick to the plan and hope for the best!

Sounds good - next time on the walk, don't talk about anything upsetting.

You can't go about this as "I'm doing this and that but she's not..." You are the one trying to salvage the marriage and prove you're the husband she wants. You do this to become a better you and hopefully she will become interested. But you cannot do this with expectations of her. And do not start fault finding in her to justify your actions.

The other thing is when she tells you she feels unsafe because you're doing something, you acknowledge her feelings and cease doing the source of her unhappiness. She does not have to explain our defend. Your reaction says to her that her feelings aren't important.

You want to look attractive and assertive. So when she says "You're drinking makes me feel unsafe." You should say, "I'm sorry. I didn't realize my drinking was making you feel this way. I'll quit immediately." And stick with it.

If you're having anxiety and depression then go see a counselor or a psychiatrist to get a prescription.

First of all, keep working on your anger issues.
Remember that in a marriage you have to think about "extraordinary care". As in you shouldn't be saying hurtful things (love destroyer) but you should be saying helpful things.

Also remember that there are 3 states of intimacy in marriage according to MB:

Withdrawal - won't meet your needs, won't let you meet her needs
Conflict - won't meet your needs, will let you meet her needs
Intimacy - will meet your needs, will let you meet her needs

So you are starting to go from Withdrawal to Conflict. Believe it or not this is good! Her reaction is perfectly normal, to be expected, and a sign of progress.

Imagine a Love Bank...she has a negative balance. You have been making deposits and you are saying "Why isn't she meeting my needs now?". But you have taken her from -100 to -50. You have to get up to +100! But see how fast you have gone from withdrawal to conflict?

If she says "why now?" You say "Because I was acting like an idiot. I was just thinking of me. I want us to think about us!
Because the best outcome in the world would be for us to be in love with each other and living together with our kids."

There is TOTALLY HOPE if you keep stopping the Love Busters (Angry Outbursts, Independent Behavior, Dishonesty) and keep up the Love Builders (Conversation, Admiration, Family Support, etc etc). We here can see it working already.

You may have seen these fights as occasionally but I assure you that an angry outburst takes 3 weeks of hard Emotional Need meeting and throws it right out the window. You are supposed to be the one who loves and cares for her the most in ALL THE WORLD and here you are screaming at her?

You may also find that she comes home more...if home is a warm, inviting, low stress place to be then she will want to be there.
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Caught up on the whole thread.
Keep up the emotional need meeting.
You may say "Why bother?"
Because do you want to look back and say "I gave it my all" or "Oh, that was too hard."

Also reading your posts it seems like you expected your wife to do alot of child care...you are equally capable. That is something you should come to a joint agreement on.

Like others say, if she says drinking made her feel unsafe, then quit drinking. It may help your marriage stay together, but if it doesn't, you don't want drinking used against you in custody determination.

Wow!! Thanks for the support wannabophim! I'm glad that you see hope I myself don't see any hope at the moment. However, I will not give up I will keep trying everyday in the hopes that the MB philosophy will be a success. She is still throwing negative comments my way and still threatening no matter how hard I try she won't ever love me the same. She also keeps saying she don't believe me. Not sure what their is not to believe, but my actions have back up my word. Here are the current emotional needs I'm focusing on at the moment:

1) domestic support: teaching our kids their homework and working with our little one whom is in pre-school on her letters. Also teaching them about various things throught-out the house. I'm currently and will remain packing their lunches, making dinner, setting out their clothes and putting toothpaste on their toothbrush before I leave for work in the am. Since I use to work afternoons I was unable to provide these things by switching to days I'm able to do these things plus give them baths every night.

2) family support: since funds our limited do to separate accounts, I have been keeping milk and bread stocked up. The littles one eat a lot. All laundry as been kept up ( always use to be agruments about it) along with never having a dirty dish in the sink when I'm home another argument. I also have been maintaining the kids bedrooms along with the rest of the house. Yet something we fought about a lot cause we could barely walk into their rooms.

3) affection(I believe) she is not really speaking to much to me at the moment, and when she does it is always in regards to the divorce. So I have been sending her text messages three times a day. One before she wakes up telling her to have a great day followed by xoxo, one in the afternoon asking how her day has been also followed by xoxo and finally one at night hoping that she will have a good night sleep followed by xoxo. Each day I have been adding an extra "x" or an "o". When she comes home from work I also give her hug and a small kiss on neck. She does not seem to like it but barley puts her arms around me.

So any feedback would be great along with more advice, I'm going to listen to the radio show in a few.

Owen it is absolutely crucial that you follow MLs advice to the letter.

While you HAVE lovebusted in the marriage, your wife's reactions and behaviour causes me slight alarm at the moment.

If you get kicked out of your house by the police over safety fears your plan to right past wrongs will be in tatters.

Please keep a recording device on you at all times to defend yourself from allegations. Quit drinking entirely and use properly prescribed ADs to get through this hard time. You can't afford to ignore her complaint or her implied threat here.

Do not move out of the house no matter what. Do not lose your temper in any way. Be pleasant and walk away if you are prodded.

I don't think you have snooped very hard for an A and I think you are very possibly overlooking one.

Much of what she says sounds like a woman in an A. The majority of her life takes place away from home, she has male friends she confides in (so she probably does this with men at work too), she has filed for a D, she is in total withdrawal. Its not impossible that she's having an A.

If an A is ongoing then nothing you are doing will work until you find it and stop it.

Looking in the places she would expect (email, facebook, phone) is not enough to catch even a dull wayward. You also need to look where she would not expect you to. Can you get spyware on the computers and phones? Hire a PI? Scope out her workplace from across the street?

Yes it's possible its is only the withdrawal of her lovebank causing everything, but I'm not reassured by her reactions to your offer of amend making. It doesn't sound like wariness of your sincerity as much as it sounds like a plan to get rid of you asap.

Her reasons for the D sound awfully and suspiciously familiar and you need to RULE OUT the possibility that something else is happening.

Do you have evidence of her illegal drug use? Is it current? Don't make any kind of threat, but keep this evidence somewhere safe.

I really don't think she is having an affair. She is way to upset by my action in the past and this has been talked about before. I was just to stupid to realize what I had and never did anything about it to now. She really is not the type to have an Affair either, she would get caught way to easy she is very forgetful. She loses everything it would slip out. I examined phone records and nothing is out of norm. There are no text messages or calls that exceed my number or anyone else in our family. Only thing I think where it might be happening if it was going on would be at work. And everything would have to take place at her job. With the amount of people who come into that place I would say it would be very difficult to do. I did and still do have some suspicion on how she is not responding to my love and affection. But then again she does not want to stay at her current job or even live around here. She wants to move 55 miles away to be around her family and start a new position out there that her sister in law offered.

And yes I do have update factual evidence of legal and iilegal drugs. However, I really don't want to play that move yet unless I have to cause I love her dearly.

I also believe she would tell me if she was having an affair. She has said some pretty horrible things to me over the past few weeks and she knows how I feel about cheaters. She would defiantly rub that in my face if she was. I could be wrong but no one in her family or mine suspect her of doing it. She sees the amount of pain I'm in and I can also see that she is hurt to. I have asked her several times in the beginning and all it did was make more withdrawals and push her away further.

There isn't any such thing as a 'type' who has an affair. Unless you mean human. We are all vulnerable to an affair if we allow certain conditions to happen in our lives. The two most dangerous conditions is allowing your marriage to go off road and then confiding in opposite sex friends. Your wife does engage in this very risky behaviour, and whether she meant to or not, could have easily let someone else into her affections. Affairs are not planned.

As for her forgetfulness - well she isn't going to forget to hide something like that! Few people are forgetful about such a very serious thing. It would be easy to hide at work - and the majority of affairs ARE conducted at busy workplaces. Under everybodys noses. We see that here every day.

I'm not saying she definitely is having an affair, but you most certainly have not recognised how likely it is an affair could be happening. Infidelity affects 60 per cent of all marriages, involving all 'types' of people. Your marriage is one of the many that is most certainly not affair proof because your wife has her ENs met by other men and works long hours.

As I said before her phone records may not show anything up, she could easily have another phone or be communicating at work.

Do please consider properly ruling this out. As well as the possibility of an ongoing affair, she is also in danger of one starting up at this vulnerable time in your marriage.

Owen,

I've been wondering do you have a job?

Yes, I have a full time job in which up to last week I worked afternoon shift 3-1130pm. Realizing it was so hard on my wife and family i pushed the issue to go on days. Which I currently started this week and my hours are 7am-330pm. I have full benefits which I supply to my entire family.

Why do you ask?

Good move!

You don't understand how cheaters operate. A cheater typically says horrible to their spouse. You know why? It is because in order to justify the affair in their mind, they have to demonize their spouse. But very rarely do cheaters ever admit the affair because they want to protect the affair. Telling you would invite interference and embarrassment. And MOST cheaters carry on affairs at work, so that is no surprise. We have known cheaters who didn't even drive a car; he was driven to work by his wife! And he carried on an affair at work for years. The things you have told us don't convince us she is not in an affair, they raise more red flags.

Why would she want to quit her job and move? She has already been looking at places 50+ miles away. She has not changed her appearance or anything. She is a director of food and beverage at the club, it comes with a lot of responsibilities and long hours.

How can I find out if anything is going on at work? I don't have access to her building or her computer? What can I possibly do to catch her?

I honestly believe is was just my actions, I hurt her really bad. She confided in me and when we fought I used that against her for years. I completely betrayed her!

I agree that it is possible that she is having an affair (Physical or Emotional) but I also think it possible she is one of those women in the "Why Women Leave Men Article".

Angry, verbally abusive Husband who works a strange shift? Sounds like a recipe for marital disaster.

Yes I would agree with that article more than she having an affair. I'm not ruling it out but I can tell by her body language when I questioned her that she seems sincere. She gets upset and it causes another withdrawal when I ask if there is someone else.

I'm just not sure what to think right now, I'm hurt, now wondering if she is having an affair, and wondering if this will even keep my marriage going with her. I know that she is hurt pretty bad. Just don't understand all these mixed emotions right now.

Stop asking her if she's having an affair. If she is she will lie and as you found it only creates more distance between you.

Snoop. If you find nothing then great. No need to confront.

If you find something then it's time to bust up the affair.

Meanwhile keep up your Plan A. You're doing well.

Who's mixed emotions? Yours or hers?