BSanborn

Got this email today - my wife and I have been having trouble for quite sometime now and we went to our first counseling session last week. I don't know what to do.


This is not easy to write. I am going to try to be more honest with you than I have ever been.

I have tried for the last 6 years to get you to love me. I have tried to be enough for you. I tried everything I could think of. Maybe I wasnt speaking your "love language". But I tried. I have had my heart broken repeatedly by you. This year, I gave up. I quit emotionally. I checked out. I decided I didnt want to do it anymore. All I kept doing for the past 6 years is get hopeful, only to get disappointed again. It has slowly beaten me down. My honest feelings right now are that this will only be short lived. I dont think it will stay. I do not honestly believe a year from now, things will still be happening like he talked about in his book. I read the whole book, did my quiz, and I was hoping to feel differently than I do. I want to want to try. But in reality, I dont want to. I have given up on us. I went to Columbus hoping to miss you, and I didnt. I wanted to be excited to see you again, and I wasnt. I was relieved when I got home and you werent here. I feel horrible for feeling this way, I do. But I am also tired for feeling guilty for feeling the way I do. I need to realize that it is okay for me to feel how I do.

I am not saying that I cant eventually get back to that place in our relationship. Part of me does want that. But I feel like you are trying too hard too soon. I am very overwhelmed, almost smothered. I cant go from 0 to 60 like this. I need time to figure out what I want. I have no idea what I want. I am not asking you to completely stop what you are doing, but I need some space. I do see you trying, dont think that I dont, I just dont know what to do with it.

I am sorry if any of this hurt you.

Losing

I do think reading that book is good advice for me. The reason I say this is because she told me many times I want man enough and didn't have a backbone. Sounds like this book deals with that.
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Emerald

I am sorry your marriage is ending. Because you are here seeking advice, I think you are showing certainly more character than she laid out in her email/letter to you.

I get that she is the most wonderful, beautiful woman in the world to you but she's done.

I think your next wife will benefit from the changes you want to make.

Good luck.

moxy

Get yourself into counseling. Figure out why you have behaved this way. Choose not to be this kind of person anymore.

Apologize. See if she will give you another chance if you demonstrate change.

My stbxh behaved horrendously and I would have taken him back if he'd agreed to change his ways. She may not have given up entirely but may be fed up with your neglect. She may have given up, though; if she has, then respect her wishes and let her go.

Go work on you for a while. Even if she doesn't change her mind, you'll be a better partner for the next woman you get together with and you'll feel better about having made some positive changes to yourself.

__________________
"He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." -Martin Luther King, Jr.

"“We first crush people to the earth, & then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate." -Lydia Maria Child.