Hello everyone, I am a first time poster here, becoming a regular reader.<p>My wife and I have been separated for 2 1/2 months and have been married for 7 1/2 years with no children. I am 31, she is 27. We have had marriage problems on and off for the last 5 1/2 years punctuated by my father's death in a motorcycle accident, which was followed by my mom's emotional break-down, my aunts (mom’s sister) death from cancer the following year, and elderly family members passing away each year after that. The grief and anger was tremendous. The aftermath was, after my aunt passed away her emotionally challenged child became my mother’s responsibility with very little help from the rest of the extended family, my brother getting married and divorcing about 2 1/2 years later, my sister getting married to guy who came from a family with physical abuse problems and deciding to try that out on her, my mother ending up marrying the father of my brother's ex-wife, and the general helplessness displayed by my aunts, uncles, and cousins when it came to helping my family. My immediate family turned to me for help many times, and I felt obligated to stand in where my dad normally would have been. I felt an enormous amount of pressure to keep it together for everyone.<p>At first my wife tried to be supportive. Gradually the support seemed to fade and indifference set in. My wife told me many times that she didn't want to hear about the problems, that they depressed her, so I tried to lock them up in myself. Unfortunately when we would get into arguments about little things the pressure would bubble over and the arguments would escalate with either us getting into "he said/she said" games, silent treatments or on occasion flat out yelling and screaming at each other. Our relationship was under a lot of stress. What I didn't realize was that the pressure was killing off my wife's love for me.<p>About 2 years ago, I had felt like life was finally starting to head in a positive direction and that finally the worst was behind us. That’s when my wife told me she had love for me, but was no longer in love with me. I was devastated. With all of the problems we had been through I’d never thought our basic love for each other would be affected. I was naive. She told me that she had felt very hurt by me after my dad died. She said I took out all of my angry feelings on her. When I asked why she never said anything about her love dying to me before, she said she knew I was dealing with a lot of things and didn't want to add to the stress, but that she could no longer keep it in. My thought was, “ my god what have I done, she’s the most important person in my life and I’ve destroyed her love. How could I have let my grief effect our relationship like this.” At that point I convinced myself that I must have been an emotionally abusive person for her to feel the way she did and spent the next year trying to prove my love to her, in spite of the constant rejection of my attempts.<p>About this same time my wife started attending college again. She made some guy friends, and started doing things with them on a regular basis. Meanwhile our relationship became, sterile. She didn’t want to have any physical contact with me. She said she didn’t want to leave me, but she wasn’t comfortable around me either. I felt like such a creep. We bought some different books on marriage, but she said they made her angry, and that the books just made her more mad at me. I thought maybe books were a bad way for us to fix things. Maybe if I bottled up more and just be as supportive as I could, things would get better.<p>Her friendship with her guy friends continued to grow. They would work out together, study together, go biking together, and at one point last summer they took a biking trip together across the state for a week with a biking organization. I felt my attempts to make amends where looked at as, too little to late, or at least too late. I expressed that this “being just friends” with these other guys made me uncomfortable, but that I wasn’t going to tell her what to or not to do. I thought that because of the awful things I must have done emotionally to her, who was I to say anything to her. In honesty, it really upset me, and later bubbled out in arguments. I realize now I should have been honest with my feelings at the time I first felt them.<p>Things seemed to start getting better between us late last summer and into the fall. We were being intimate towards each other, talking like we used to, we sold our house, paid off debts, moved up towards her family and things were starting to look bright again. <p>Towards the end of December things went sour again. More arguments, more misunderstandings and my wife immediately put the wall back up. This time it made me angry. I wasn’t gonna feel like a creep again. I felt I had a right to be loved too. I needed to be loved and I was sick of hurting this way.<p>We mostly argued through January. I wrote her a love poem thinking maybe I wasn’t being open enough with how I felt about her, but again the indifference showed through. Up and down we went, with a few days of relative calm and then another argument. One night we were going at it and the “he said/she said” scenario started happening again. I hate that. She would tell me what I said, and I would explain what I meant, only to find that my explanation would then be used in another part of the argument. I was confused, tired, and angry. I burst. I jumped up yelled something like “I can’t do this!” and slammed my hand into the wall. I fell to the ground and just started sobbing. I told her “I don’t understand what’s wrong, I want our marriage to work.” When I looked up, she looked very cautious. I told her how sorry I was for getting so upset over and over, and I asked her to not leave me.<p>At the end of February of this year, three weeks after my wife left me for her parents, we started seeing a MC together after having an individual session with the MC each. During this time I have seen my wife increasingly separate herself from me. Our only communication at this point is in the one hour session with the MC we have each week. Most of this time is spent talking about past hurts and the situations surrounding them. In many ways I think that the MC is validating many of my wife's feelings in a way that is encouraging her to leave me. She said that emotional abuse is defined from the perspective of the person who has felt the abuse. While trying to understand what she was saying, and talking about the anger I felt after my dad died, and how my wife caught some of those angry feelings in our arguments, the MC stopped me in mid-sentence and said “That’s emotional abuse!” I started to speak, and she cut me off again and repeated herself. My third attempt to speak was cut off too. I finally caved and said that maybe it was, I wanted to do some research. The MC said, “what’s there to look up?! That’s emotional abuse.” I looked at my wife’s face and saw the wall widen a mile.<p>The next day, I thought I was a worthless creep, but I was angry. So I contacted a psychologist about the emotional abuse issue and because I felt my experience was being totally invalidated by the MC. I have found him to be extremely helpful in understanding the situation that occurred after my dad died. He said calling what happened “emotional abuse” is an unfortunate labeling of what should be considered misdirected anger, and that by using the MC’s definition, everyone would be considered abusive and some point in their life. His thought was that the MC didn’t understand the complete situation, and encouraged me to express how I felt I was treated in the next MC session. He’s helping me to understand how to channel that grief and to understand emotions in general, and that’s feeling really good.
Since then I've asked my wife if she would want to talk between sessions and she has said that she doesn't think so, if she does she will call me. I had been driving her old car to work and she has always driven the “good” car. Two weeks ago, she asked for her car back. This week, I found that she had removed most of the rest of her clothes and personal belongings and closed a joint checking account we had with about $1500, and another $400 was pulled from a joint savings account. I told a friend about this and they are encouraging me to protect myself and close credit card accounts, start-up my own separate checking/savings accounts, etc. It seems to make sense, and yet I am afraid that this will be taken as a "war" like response to what she’s done this week. <p>I really want to save our marriage, without sacrificing anybody’s happiness. Is this possible? Should I “protect” myself at this time? <p>I don’t want to endanger the marriage even further, and at the same time I don’t want to be hurt by her actions.<p>There is lot’s more to my story. I hope this gives a general idea of my situation. I know this was lengthy (originally this was gonna be 2 or 3 paragraphs!), so thanks for taking the time to read it.

hey, i'm really sorry about the pain & frustration you are going through, but your friends are right. you have to pay attention to protecting yourself. you obviously know that that is exactly what she is doing. <p>i wish you all the luck & prayers in the world buddy, but take care of you.

Welcome iM1...<p>There is a post of general welcome I wish to share with you... [img]images/icons/cool.gif" border="0[/img] <p>It has a lot of quick links to many of the most important MB sites...
Click here ==> General Welcome for All New Builders(Newbies)<p>About your post...<p>Your W seems to be following the pattern of a "walk-away-wife"....Check out...walk away wife syndrome<p>Do start on a Plan A...
Check out the post Plan A - 101 (2nd ed.)... to save you... (but no guarantee on your marriage).<p>It's also time to document all your finances...
...because protection may be an issue.<p> [img]images/icons/smile.gif" border="0[/img] <p>Jim / NSR<p>[ April 20, 2002: Message edited by: NSR ]</p>

iM1 - <p>I'm sorry that you've had t ogo through so much. <p>By now I'm sure you've clicked on the General Welcome on the opening page of the Discussion Forum and read some of the material therein.<p>Right now it does sound like you need to protect yourself financially. Your wife if taking steps to separate herself from you at this time without talking to you about it, so taking the same steps should be ok for you to do too.<p>Now, unfortunately it sounds like you didn't get a very good MC - you need one that is pro-marriage. There is a section on this site about how to choose a counselor, but it may be too late to change one now. You may want to call your MC and ask MC if she is pro marriage and why she isn't pushing you and your wife to give the marriage a chance, and that you both won't be attending much longer if some progress isn't made.<p>There may be nothing to do at this moment except to protect yourself financially, gather a support system for yourself - family, friends, church group, God, priest/minister, IC. It sounds like your wife wants to separate at this time. Now this does not mean that you can't start Plan A, which I would do immediately.<p>Support her in her decision to separate, and try to meet her EN's and stop all LB's. You can print of the EN and LB quesitonaire off of this site and fill them out as if you were your wife. Then begin to implement them.<p>Learn about Plan A and follow it so that when your wife looks at the marriage, she can see your changes and feel that the marriage is a safe place to be.<p>It also seems like your wife needs to work on herself before she will be able to work on your marriage, so you may have to be patient for awhile while she comes to some conclusions on her own. This is where Plan A fits in.<p>Don't lose hope, your WW may find that life isn't as wonderful as it seems oustside the marriage especially when she notices the changes that you've made.<p>Hang in there! K

thank you all for the replies.<p>I am reading, reading, reading everything I can get my hands on. thanks for the suggestions everyone.<p>one question - I can neither confirm nor deny that my wife has had a physical affair with one of her guy friends. I asked her 2 months ago if she was in an affair and she calmly, confidently said no. For the most part, even though I have been uncomfortable with her hanging with these guys, I've tried to assume that they were/are just want she says they are - "friends." <p>Does plan A still apply then?<p>I just don't want to overact, of course plan A/B doesn't take that approach so I guess I don't really have to worry about that. heh - anyway just curious.<p>iM1

The only real reason to find out if it was a physical affair(PA) is to protect yourself from STD's.<p>Other wise, it doesn't matter if it is an Emotional Affair (EA) or a PA, Plan A is the way to go.<p>Most people want to know so it is normal to question. WS usually deny anyways though.<p>Trying to find out is a BIG TIME LOVEBUSTER (LB) however.

In some cases, once the affair is out in the open, the secretiveness takes some of the shine off the relationship.

Hello all,<p>Since I last posted, I protected my financial assets, and had a couple of sessions with my wife and our councelor. My wife's reason for closing the account and taking the money from our savings was because I put a bill in with her mail a couple of weeks ago, and she took that as to mean "you pay for it." Before each session I sort our mail into piles and give her her's when I see her.<p>Back in the fall I opened up a line of credit and bought her a laptop as a gift. The credit line was in her name to take advantage of the student discount on the system. Well, the bill came in, I sorted the mail, and she accidentally got the bill, then she reacted. I think I made the smart move with my finances - I'd hate to think if I accidentally gave her a car loan bill or something! Honestly it was a mistake to have put that in with her mail, but I don't know if she believes me.<p>In the last two sessions, my wife has said that she does not see any improvement in our relationship and therefore wants a legal seperation. She said, she is not in love with me, and couldn't see anything between us more than friends. My reply was that I did not want a legal seperation or a divorce, rather I wanted to rebuild our marriage. She did not like this, I read scowls and anger from her. <p>I have spent the last two sessions being understanding of her feelings, and not disagreeing with the way she felt. When I asked how I felt, I said I felt that the marriage had value and was worth rebuilding. The councelor asked me how I would go about doing that and I said that I would continue to learn about myself and become a better and better person, and to do my part to make the relationship successful. My wife says firmly that if our past cannot be resolved that their can be no future us, and the councelor seems to agree with her.<p>On a positive note, my wife called me Sunday morning and we sorted out some financial issues and ended up eating lunch together and walking around the mall. That was a nice day. The first of it's kind since February, in fact. She told me today in our session, for her it was simply being friends. I told her that I understood, and I thought "hey, that's a start."<p>I am reading tons, and learning. I know there are no guarantee's, but I am not ready to give up on this thing. Thanks everyone for the support.

I have a question concerning counceling. My wife has made it clear to me that she no longer wants to be married to me, she doesn't want a divorce, she wants a legal seperation or the closest thing to that in Michigan. I asked her why she still was going to marriage counceling with me. Her reply was, "If you don't want to go just tell me." I said that I wanted to rebuild our marriage, so I did want to go. Later she said at this point that she was going ONLY to resolve issue's between us, but she was not there to repair the marriage (I am not sure if she meant money or something else). She said she can never love me again and that over the last couple of months she's seen no improvement in our relationship while going to counceling. I keep saying I understand, and that I accept the way she feels. On one hand, she says we must talk about OR issue's if anything will ever get better, on the other hand she says when we talk about OR I am controlling or manipulating the conversation. I don't know what to do. Anyway I am getting a little off my original question - Should I still be going to the marriage councelor with my wife even though my wife has made it clear that she is not there to rebuild the marriage?
I feel like she wants me to take the steps to end the marriage, and is slowly guilting me into it.

Well, my situation took a turn for the worst. My wife called me today to tell me that she filed some papers today with an attorney. I asked what were the papers and she said they were a notice for filing a divorce. She said she wanted a "friendly" divorce, and gave me the attorney's name, number and address. I did my best to sound calm while we talked, although my voice started to break when we were saying goodbye. This is a black day for me. I was always knew this was a possibility, but I had hoped it wasn't gonna happen. I'm numb.