Hi,<P>I've been married for a year - a year that has had it's ups and downs. The downs stem from a couple of problem that I've caused which won't go away.<P>The main problem arose from when we started dating, a year before we got married. I committed the cardinal sin of looking around at other women (i.e. full head turn) when I was with her. This apparently happened a lot but I wasn't that aware that I was doing it until we had a fight about it. After that I tried to stop looking around when I was with her, but wasn't always successful resulting in more fights. Sometimes I was guilty, admittedly, but more often than not it was unintentional, e.g. seeing people in passing, or turning my head to check if the street was clear before crossing, and there just happened to be a woman in that direction.<P>I know I've been very disrespectful to her, and things are made worse by the fact that she's hypersensitive about how she looks (stemming from childhood and self-confidence issues). So when she thinks that I'm looking around, she feels that she is ugly and unattractive because she doesn't have my full attention.<P>As time has gone on, this issue has got worse and she feels anxious whenever we go out - fearing that I'll be looking around. At the same time, I'm also on edge because I don't want to upset her by looking around, even though I don't actively do it.<P>Another issue arose concerning my past relationships. I didn't talk about them much because I view them as history, no longer relevant. My wife, on the other hand, mentioned her exes every now and then, making me feel as though I was in competition with them, and not as good as they were. When I was pressed into talking about my previous relationships, I would be vague about them because I thought that the past was exactly that, the past. But whatever I did say, she would read it into it that my exes were more attractive or more intelligent than her, once again making her feel ugly and unhappy.<P>We've just been fighting all this weekend. I guess my previous looking around has hurt her so much that she thinks about it all the time and it makes her so unhappy. She equates my looking around to cheating on her and so she always wonders whether I'm looking around when I'm with her. Consequently, she feels that she can't trust me. I hate fighting and tend to be pretty passive when she's upset with me. Consequently, this made things worse, and when I did say something, it came out all wrong and made her more angry and hurt. <P>This morning she's now asked me to leave. I feel that if I stay away tonight as she has asked then it's the beginning of the end.<P>I love her dearly and fear that I've lost her. I know that I haven't always shown her that I love her, i.e. if I truly loved her, I wouldn't look around, etc. And I realize that I've really hurt her and I do feel guilty and ashamed of what I've done to her. But I don't know what to do, how to make things better, since I'm the cause.<P>I really need some advice because I don't know what to do and I feel as though my life is over.
