Thank you all for the input. I very much appreciate it. Last night was a little rough, but wait.

I got out of the house for the day and went golfing with my brother, which is always nice, but I can’t shut my brain off. Everywhere I look is constant reminders of her and nothing but happy couples and families enjoying themselves. It’s painful. She even bought me my golf clubs, so there’s that reminder as well. After golf I had a great talk with my brother and his wife that probably made me feel the best yet. In a short version, my wife has been surrounded by negativity and pain, one could argue, the majority of her life starting in childhood with a verbally abusive, short tempered father. That, then continued with me, so in a sense, I became the same persona her father portrayed, which undoubtedly brought back a lot of painful memories which erects walls quickly. My sister in law (SIL) suggested to simply kill her with kindness. Like you said Mark, put all my feelings aside. Do nice little things for her and eventually she’ll come back. She’ll feed off it, it’ll take time,  but she’ll come back. Stop taking about us and just be the person she needs right now. Be positivity in her life. My brother and his family are leaving for a week and my SIL offered my wife their house so she could have a break and get away from me. My wife turned it down saying that we’re going to go to counseling and, Anita, there were already plans in place for my wife to move in to the spare room. Thank you for the suggestion as well. I offered an actual separation where I would go stay with my brother and we would just coordinate care of our son for however long it took, 2 weeks, 6 months, whatever. She wanted me to, but didn’t, I think due to her witnessing my devastation of not being able to be around my son every day. I can honestly say I probably have not cried harder in my life than realizing what was happening, or about to happen, at that moment. Her turning down the offer to stay away from me, to me, says there’s hope in her somewhere. Her saying that she could see us getting back together years down the road, to me, says there’s hope within her. We agreed to go to counseling like I have mentioned before. A stipulation for our marriage counselor, whom we’ve seen before, and she’s amazing, is that we both see individual counselors as well. A big difference in counseling, I felt, was that she was going with the thought of an easier divorce transition, and I with the intention of us reconciling. I have never wavered in the thought that we are so much bigger and stronger than this.

I don’t know what happened but I could just see it in her face. We’re over, no hope, it’s done, stop trying, throw in the towel, game over. In no way do I want to stop trying, but no matter what, there comes a time when you call it. I don’t know what that triggered in me, but it was hail mary, 4th quarter, end of the game time. One last time to lay it all out completely, so maybe at least I can tell myself I gave it my all, I don’t know. I laid out my plan for us. How badly I screwed up in the previous years, how it will always be considered my biggest failure as a person, how I had the my soulmate and didn’t make sure she realized what that meant to me. I don’t throw that term around lightly. How I would so gladly give her the rest of my life to make it up to her and make sure she never feels anything remotely close to this again. How at the very least we should be able to say we’ve been on, at the minimum, 33 date nights since our son has been born, which would be about one a month or so, not 3. How I don’t care about the money anymore, only the time and the memories. (Money has been extremely important to me as I grew up poor and even still we don’t make a lot, but I think we’re mostly comfortable at least) I told her that if we had 5k sitting in a savings account and we took it and blew it on a vacation. . . . great. We’re not gonna remember that 5k, but we’re gonna remember that vacation. I seriously laid out everything. How we could start completely over and all is entirely forgiven and we need not look to the past or discuss it, only forward from this point on. To rebuild, regrow, learn how to be friends again, learn to love each other again, learn to respect each other, learn how to be an amazing couple once again. All she has to do is say OK. Two letters and everything we used to have starts its final transition of returning. We had it before, we lost it. Why can’t we find it again? As I’m telling her of my plans for her and us and how I want to court her forever and never stop dating her, she begins to cry and seemingly starts to thaw in regards to her feelings of me. I lay myself to her mercy. This is what I have to give and to offer you. My full heart, my soul, my life, in your hands either to embrace, or throw away. Then she said it. She opened up, smiled and said I’m open to it. I finally did it. I finally have my chance. I hope it’s apparent from these posts what this chance means to me.

Even though I have my chance we still have a lot of work to do.  We’re still going to counseling and will not stop. We can taper off when the time comes but we both feel it’s important to regularly go just to do a checkup and make sure nothing is there and rebuilding and to make sure we’re utilizing the skills we’re going to learn to effectively communicate with each other. We’ll still go to individual counseling because we both have work to do as individuals as well. We’re definitely not jumping back in full steam. We’re going to do it correctly. But man, how nice it was to get some sleep last night. I feel like a new man today. I’m so excited to date my wife and prove to her over and over just how important she is to me and how much I appreciate her.

So, since my wife decided to work on us and give us a chance we have been to two counseling sessions, with a third coming this Wednesday.  The sessions have been pretty good for the most part with some setbacks, if that’s the correct word to use.  For example, she agreed to be open and give us a shot, which I thought was her opening up to me and to us, yet in counseling when asked why this time and what changed, she said that I basically just broke her will to leave.  Sure doesn’t sound that positive when put like that and almost like she’s just settling.  She also said she planned on calling a realtor and a mediator last week (prior to the counseling sessions) and initiating the divorce process.  Still, though, in my mind, that’s crazy.  We haven’t even started to work on anything.  Yes it’s quite different for her and for me in the sense that this has been building up for her over the course of years and I got all the pain hurt at once over the course of a weekend and everyday since.  So, in that respect I understand to an extent, but she also doesn’t seem to recognize and/or believe me when I say had I truly known what was going on and how it was truly affecting her that I guarantee this would not have happened.  I would have made absolutely sure of that.  I never want to hurt my wife in any way. I want to make sure she feels loved and respected and appreciated every day for the rest of her life.

The days since have been challenging.  Some days seem okay, but most she seems cold and distant and almost like she doesn’t want to put in effort.  In a way it makes it feel and seem to me that this is my problem to fix and she’s not at fault in any way and/or absolved of any wrongdoing.  I would really hope that’s the not the case, but it’s the perspective I’ve been seeing.  I’m trying to give her time and space throughout this.  Admittedly, I’ve failed miserably at that a few times.  I know that she doesn’t want to talk about any of that outside of session and we agreed to that while in session.  Since we agreed to that, I’ve been pretty good on that.  A couple times the subject matter got pretty close to the line, but then it was steered away.  A frustrating part is that it seems any progress we make is so easily derailed by the tiniest of things.  She wants to get back to the very basics of communicating and really just start off with “how was your day” kind of stuff, which I can respect, but also feel if I don’t initiate any conversation, we wouldn’t have any.  I’m leaving town tonight for work, but will be back late tomorrow night.  I don’t plan on contacting her other than to let her know I’ve reached my destination safely, sort of in a way to see if she’ll actually reach out to me.  I don’t want to say it’s like a test, but it kind of is.  It also wreaks havoc on myself with anxiety and wondering and not knowing, but I feel like it’s better if I don’t contact her.  Since this all happened, she has contacted me first in the day, maybe only three or four times, in the last month.

Last night we had a really good talk.  We had some liquid courage on board, which I’m starting to think wasn’t a great idea considering how the night ended.  The conversation went there.  It went to us, but we were also communicating quite well and very openly.  She was saying several times how this is a new area for her, in the sense of working on this stuff instead of running, like she’s done with every relationship she’s had, and how this is a lot of pain to get over.  She was saying she’s expecting it to take probably six months to get really back to being us, but then would flip flop and say if that happens. I told her six months is no problem as long as we’re continuing to move in the right direction.  This is a marathon, not a sprint. I also said six months in comparison to the next 40 years together is nothing and I’ll be by her side supporting her the whole way.  Then somehow, and neither of us know how, the conversation took a horrible turn and more or less ended in a big argument.  Oddly enough it seemed to happen around the topic of me complimenting her and how it’s so exaggerated and doesn’t seem sincere at all!? I was pretty dumbfounded at this and still am.  How is a compliment a bad thing?  I would say things like “you run that ship” in terms of her work building.  I would think it’s pretty obvious that’s a huge exaggeration and really I’m just very proud of how far she has come from being a teller (works for a credit union) to migrating to the corporate offices and running meetings with high level executives.  I’m immensely proud of her, but she almost takes it as a dig and says it’s so insincere.  I don’t know when she started taking everything I say so literally, but now realize I need to stop with the exaggerations.  Less really is more apparently.  Then I didn’t get any sleep and now have to leave for the night.  We hugged goodbye when I left and I texted her that I’m really sorry for how the night ended and that I hope she has a good couple days, to which she replied she’s sorry too, but I just really hate leaving things like this.  Why couldn’t it have been a great night like it started out as and me leaving with us on a happy note for once?  My head is still so screwed up from all of this.  I’m really tired of feeling this way.  I just want my wife back, so we rebuild, restart, and regrow.

I’ll update with more soon…