My wife wants us to seperate because she feels like there is no way our love banks can ever fill while we are living together. I do not want to because in doing so it will cause me to loose what little time I have with our children (I work a night shift that I have been trying to change jobs out of for 2 years, I am the only source of income for our family as my wife is a stay at home mother... so not something that is easy to just quit and I have not been able to find a new job.) and not have much time with her to fix things either. She wants me to stay in a camper on her dads land. She demanded I leave on Friday so I did for the weekend and came home after work on Monday knowing her and the kids would be gone because she did not want to be there with me. She has been staying with a friend this week but cannot stay there over the weekend. I do not want to leave the house without having a seperation agreement signed stating what we need to work on so I can move back in and a time frame (for instance if everything was fixed the first day she would not want me back before two weeks) but she is refusing to do anything like that and when I printed out a legal version of a seperation agreement she refused to work on that with me too. The reason I do not want to leave without the agreement is I don't want to be gone for months on end with no hope of return or if things should get worse I do not want her to be able to make a case that I abandoned her and the kids when I did not want to leave in the first place. She has continually said that I do not get what Marriage Builders or her is saying and all I am doing is pushing her away...

Am I wrong for wanting to have goals to work towards to get back together or wanting to protect my ability to be a father to my children? Is a seperation agreement unwarranted and should I just "stop fighting her" (her words) and do what she wants despite it being directly against everything I want?

Why does she want to separate? What are the biggest problems in your marriage?

Honestly I am not even sure where to start with that...
I am not good with openness and honesty, am really bad with individual behavior, I am working on them and meeting her other needs.
She has anger issues and is very bad when it comes to demands, disrespectful judgment, and angry outbursts.
It is my understanding that she wants to seperate to give us time to be able to work through the issues and to help her calm down because she has bad anxiety.
There are a lot of other issues that I feel are very important but that at least is where I feel she is coming from.

Hi Redbeard, welcome to Marriage Builders. You are wrong to separate. You shguold not separate at all. It will make the situation worse, not better. Obviously you can't work on a marriage if you are not there and your wife knows this.

Something more is going on here and you need to find out what it is. I would not leave the house again, but quietly start snooping to find out what is going on. I would put a voice activated recorder in your home and put spyware on her cell phone and a GPS on her car. If she has an iphone, you can do this: http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2832187#Post2832187

and check out this thread: http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2895326#Post2895326

I would start there. DON'T ASK HER IF SHE IS HAVING AN AFFAIR. Just quietly snoop around and come back with whta you find.

In the meantime, tell her you are not interested in "separating" and won't leave your home. Don't fight with her but don't leave.

Can you give us specific examples of what you mean by individual behavior?

I am an introvert, so I need time in my own to be able to approach the next day. Normally that comes in the form of watching movies or playing video games (thing I greatly enjoy but do not get to do much anymore as I am putting nearly any free time into finding and applying for jobs?). Because of my work hours (3:45 pm to 2:15am) I sleep until noon and have some time after I get home where I do stuff on my own and she hates it and everything about it.

As far as following her it is almost impossible without hiring someone, as of last night she will not even talk to me anymore as she feels I am being unreasonable and I do not even know where she is with our kids.

Your wife mentioned Marriage Builders...does she post here too.

What are her complaints?

You seem to expect her to accept the fact that you "need" time on your own.

I don't suppose she got married with the idea that her husband would want to spend time away from her. Why did you marry, if you need to be alone?

As for the specific things that you do when you are alone - watching movies and playing games - if she does not like your doing those specific things, why haven't you given them up? Are you willing to give them up?

Can you hire a PI?

Are you trying to find a job that has hours that compliments hers? Working opposite shifts will continue to kill your marriage.

Are you addicted to video games? And if she told you she hates this, why did you continue doing it?

Hello, I'm redbeard's wife. My husband and I have been struggling for year. It's truly hard to pick out the main problems at this time beaning as there are so many. We are fairly new to marriage builders. About two months ago I found his needs, her needs online and we read it and love buster. We have five steps to romantic love also. About four weeks ago we sat down to go over the memorandum of agreement. Unfortunately that's as far as we got. My husband wasn't comfortable signing it due to his need for sex not being met and not being willing to give up masturbation or porn. We talked about it multiple times and couldn't seem to get anywhere. I struggle with filling his need due to the state of our relationship and pain during sex. He mentioned contacting marriage builders to see what advice we could get. As of last Friday we were driving home and he handed me his phone to do something and on the screen was a conversation he was having with another women about taking a bath. I asked what it was and he grabbed it away and sad nothing. I insisted it wasn't noting and after talking a while he had agreed to read the conversation to me later. After getting in to a fight, him reading it and fighting more we went to bed. The next morning is when I woke up so angry and confused that I couldn't stand being in the same place with him. I asked for immediate separation. I asked for the kids 6, 4 and 11 months to stay in the house and for him and I to come and go. He left for the weekend and came back monday. I could not be in that house with him. The kids and I went to a friend house. He finely agreed if I signed a separation agreement I could come back with the kids and he would stay out of the home and come visit the kids. How ever the agreement he sent me I could not sign. With advice from an advocate I contacted our counselor to see if she could help us figure something out. I also told him at that time I would not have any further contact with him other than to do with the kids unless it was through our counselor or someone like that. That's about the time he started this thread.

We met with our counselor today and worked out an agreement in writing for separation.

I asked for the separation with intentions of working on our marriage because between not being able to move forward with the marriage builders the other women and our history. I felt like all we were doing was destroying each other.

Have you read this?
Dr. Harley on the Scourge of Pornography

When will you be giving up pornography?

Welcome to MB Mommaof123.

I would start your own thread instead of posting on your Hs.

How many affairs have you had? Why are you talking with an OW about taking a bath?

Mommaof3, thanks for posting and giving us the facts. Those facts seem to have been left out.

The most glaring issue is this---->
Who was this person and what is going on?

Rebeard,
Unless you are honest and forthcoming we cannot help your marriage and any help would be a waste of time. If you want help saving your marriage you have be straight with us.