Dear friends-<P>I hope you'll bear with this introduction if it gets a little long, but it's important. I'm thinking about posting this on both the MB and the DB sites so that I can get maximum feedback. DB is a good book and a good site, but it seems to me that MB deals with tougher situations in general, unless I missed something in DB. I promise DB I'll go back and read it again.<BR> My situation is this- I have been married to my wife for almost five years. She is originally from a country in South America, where I met her at a wedding reception. We corresponded for almost two years, and then she came up here. I will admit that we may have gotten married somewhat precipitously (immigration time-lines) but I felt that the fundamental right stuff was there and we went ahead. <BR> The main issue for me is that the whole thing has just gotten out of balance in terms of emotional needs. I will admit that I probably sort of "kept quiet hoping things would get better" in terms of establishing something that would meet my emotional needs too, but it came to the point where this past January I had really had it with my perceived lack of getting my emotional needs met and pointed this out to her rather vociferously. We did manage to get to a pretty good therapist, but this therapist is definitely not Dr. H or MWD, that is, Dr. H or MWD would work hard to prevent a divorce in this situation where most therapists would let a divorce happen if they thought that was what was going to happen. This one thinks that that is what is going to happen, and I know that both Dr. H and MWD would be aghast at that.<BR> The reason I'm asking for feedback (or "advice") about "Getting off Ground Zero" is that that is where it just sort of sits at this juncture. My wife attends therapy, and is "trying" to have the discussions as outlined in "Fighting for Your Marriage", but they just really do not seem to be getting us anywhere. The present offer she has made me is that we can continue to "live together as friends" (which is the part that didn't get paid enough attention to in the first place). But again, this does not seem to me to be moving in any particular direction. "Living together as friends" was supposed to either provide us with the opportunity to get to know each other in ways that we apparently did not at first and allow us to take a new angle on the marriage, or to prepare us for a relatively friendly divorce. But that really isn't happening either. When we do have the conversations, we rarely are able to follow the listener-speaker format, and there seems to be a perception that somehow I am really just insisting that we fix this marriage rather than keeping it as relaxed as she wants it to be. <BR> So nothing is really happening, which is why I'm looking for advice about "getting off of Ground Zero". Suffice it to say that usually I feel like I'm talking to myself (or a bowl of oatmeal, or trying to eat jello with a fork). She has agreed to go to Retrouvaille, and we're just waiting for that weekend, but I have no idea what to do in the meantime. What I'm looking for is something other than a lukewarm, noncommittal response, in other words, a perspective to approach this from that gets this off ground zero- a conversational approach, an appropriate "180", whatever. I'm completely out of ideas, which is why I'm writing. So if anyone has any feedback as to what I might do to get something other than this very lukewarm and noncommittal response that I'm getting, I'd appreciate hearing from you.<BR> I'm going to close here in the faith that somebody gets the idea and wait to hear from you.
