angelpixie

First of all, I"m sorry that you're having to join us on the Island of Misfit Spouses. If you've been reading everyone's stories, you know that yours follows the script pretty closely.

Some will automatically say there is someone else. Do you see any signs of that? Someone at work?

Perhaps it is a sort of mid-life crisis, and she's got the 'Grass is greener' syndrome.

In either case, sad to say, you may need to just keep working on yourself (good for you for staying with the counseling!) and let her go until the fog passes.

It is interesting that she does keep initiating contact with you, and that she asked about your birthday. It's always possible that she keeps telling you how happy she is in a sort of 'methinks thou dost protest too much' sort of way.

The 180 is difficult when you still love your spouse. The natural instinct is to fight for something when you feel on the verge of losing it. If you feel you are strong enough inside yourself that you can see her on your birthday and leave discussions of your relationship out of it, it might be worth a shot to try it. But I would think the most important thing would be how you handle yourself. No indication to her of how much you love her or miss her. You must be cool but cordial. Nothing more. Show her that you are strong.

And another thing in your post that struck me -- are you absolutely sure that a divorce will take your name off the mortgage? This is often a common misconception about divorce. It can order your name off the deed, but a court cannot order a bank to take someone's name off a loan. They would have the right to call the loan in for immediate payment in full. They granted the mortgage based on the financial information of both of you. In every state I know of, the only way to get one person's name off the mortgage is for the other person to buy the house from him/her. That is also done through a bank, and involves refinancing the loan based on one spouse's financial information. It is true that, in most cases, a divorce is necessary to allow the spouses to sever their ties on property such as a house. Otherwise, even if only one name was on the mortgage, the other non-owning spouse could be hit for unpaid payments, taxes, etc. Divorce would prevent that.

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