My Wife and I have been married for 9 years and have two kids, one is 5, the other 2. She was trying to evaluate her life and ended up in a depression last summer. She started taking anti depressants and things really seemed to improve. She has since stopped with the pills and has decided that she wants a separation. The reason is that she has no feelings left inside for me. I have not had much experience with this since both our parents are still together and all our friends are still married. I would think that a period of discussion followed by counseling is needed before starting to go the separation route. I need to know if I should insist on counseling or give her some time alone to help sort things out. I am not abusive, not an alcoholic and love my wife and children very much. I WANT MY FAMILY BACK!<P><BR>[This message has been edited by Mark7 (edited April 04, 2000).]<p>[This message has been edited by Mark7 (edited April 04, 2000).]

Mark7,<P>Don't force anything. Right now her "Taker" is in charge and all she wants to do is look out for number one. Give her space, give her time. Outpour the love and deposit as many love units as you can. Make her feel important and let her know you want her to be happy. You need to forget about your wants for the time being. Work on finding out what is driving her away from you so you can fix them. Let her know her happiness is the most important thing in the world. And don't ask her to do anything she doesn't want to do. Be supportive and loving. Eventually you will be able to move the focus back to you, but first she needs to care about you. It will be a slow process. But don't act like you are dependent on her; it will only drive her further away. Instead, treat her well, but don't force, so she will want to come back. Come over to the "Emotional Needs" forum. My story is there along with many others and I think it will be great support for you. Also, I suggest a couple of Dr. Harley's books- "Love Busters" and "His Needs, Her Needs." But don't push and don't give up. Keep us posted!

I am no expert but I agree with CharisAvalon. I think if you try to push her into counseling it would only drive her away. I know it is very hard sometimes to put your spouses wants and needs above your own, when you get nothing in return. Especially when you don't see any improvement after a while. But what you need is a lot of patience. Personally I think it might help if you had a friend you could talk to about this (preferably a male) to help you or if you had a support group. From my female perspective, I know what it's like to give, give, give with someone you love and then not get anything in return. It has helped me to have other people around who care about me to help give me strength in a time of great difficulty. I don't know if you are a Christian but I would also reccomend pouring your heart out to God, where lies unending strength and comfort. Anyways, it seems that you love your wife and children very much and I hope for the best for you. I hope that she will eventually open up to you and realize that marriage can last through our ever-changing feelings.

Thanks for your replies. You never really know how much another persons perspective can help with serios matters like this until you really need it. We have set a time to talk about things tonight and I hope we can start on the right path to getting our lives back on track. The most confusing part about this is we bought a new house two weeks ago and I don't understand how we can go from that decision to a seperation within such a short period of time. I wonder if the idea of a new house really sped up the process in her own mind about whehter she wants to spend the rest of her life with me. She is usually not one to make very serious decisons without a lot of thought. I pray that everything goes well tonight. If anyone has some last minute thoughts they are greatly appreciated.

To insist that your wife attend counseling would be a demand regardless of your motives. My wife and I had an in-depth discussion about when to seek marriage counseling. She had very strong feelings about being forced to do something that she was against and said that if she was forced to go then she would not be receptive to the counselor. We both agreed that if either of us felt that we needed counseling and the other was not receptive to that idea than we would seek counseling individually.<P>My best advice to you would be to contact Steve Harley at Marriage Builders phone 888-639-1639 and begin counseling alone. With something as important as you family I would not monkey around with other actions considering your wife’s state of withdrawal. <P>Good Luck<BR> <P>------------------<BR>Scott<p>[This message has been edited by Promised Forever (edited April 05, 2000).]

Well we had our talk and I really believe that my wife just needs some time to figure out where she is and where she wants to go. As of Monday I am going to stay with some friends of ours and begin counseling for myself. I want to do everything that I can to help her through this. As well as the prior posts which agree with this and I had a chance to talk to our Pastor last night and he believes that this is the right action to take. She has also started talking to people about the situation and that makes me really happy. People who know us know that we have a great family unit and would hate to see this go any further. In the meantime I am going to get myself some support and will be praying.

I too finally opened up to a few of my closest friends and I feel SO MUCH BETTER about not hiding things from them. My W and I have been basically living a lie for some time now and the truth is slowly leaking out. As more find out what's really "troubling" us, the support from them will come forth and make our ordeal somewhat easier to deal with (but not likely by much).