No movement. · Marriage Recovery Community

No movement.

I sensed Polly seems low and distant last night. We were both at the house for a few hours in the afternoon as it was my day with the kids but she had nowhere to go. After the kids went down I went to leave but said I noticed she was low and asked if she was ok. this lead to an almost 2 hour chat. It began with her saying she is having a bad day and feeling trapped at not being able to move forward with her finances and not having a space for her. She moved into relationship chat. The takeaways of it were she is still very strongly seeing separation as the only option, and there is no hint at reconciliation on the cards. She got into all the ways I had hurt her and not showed up like the man she thought she married. I wasn’t the calm stable rock she had initially married, but I had met her ups and down with my own. She said it was like having another child, and my emotional immaturity had lead her to feel like my Mum and that killed attraction. The lens she is viewing our entire marriage and relationship with is very dark, she can only see the negatives. When I mentioned some of the positives she just could not see them. She is dead clear that she needs to prioritize her needs now, and although she is recognizing the changes I am making, there wasn’t an ounce of hope given or reflection that the new me might ever have a place in her heart.

She said ‘we will always be friends Dan, we get on’ but she didn’t wish for anything more. I know she is conflicted about how to move the separation forward and the guilt towards the kids, but I didn’t see any signs of her wavering on her decision. Just someone struggling with how to actually do it, practical and financially. I had misread recent signs of her softening and allowing me around more as her enjoying time with me and maybe starting to question herself, but I didn’t get that tonight, she seems as resolute as ever, and said those family moment had been hard for her.

I tried to ask the Q again, what would a healthy version of this marriage look like if we were to reconcile? She said its a very hard question, and really struggled to put together a reply. But she said someone who was mature and calm and supported her and loved her. But I could see she was in psychological turmoil today, she couldnt view anything positive.

She was calm, but blamed me for everything, from her losing herself, to feeling alone, to putting so much on her she didnt enjoy the years of motherhood. She kept talking of anger, then correcting herself that she wasnt angry, bouncing backwards and forwards, a mind in flux. I was listening and validating everything, not defensive. She even said ‘you’ve never listened to me like this before’.

She reiterated that it was great to see me making changes and im looking so much better. She said im being brilliant with the kids, I have really stepped up. She feels trust is regained there with me looming after them. She said it made her angry that im now going to become ‘awesome’, and that why couldnt I do that before when I was obviously capable of doing it. I said ‘well try to be open to that’ but she shut it down quickly.

There was no ‘maybe’ tonight. No hope given. Not even the slightest sign of her wishing to ever continue a relationship with me as anything other than friends. Very sad to hear the women I love speak like this.

Although she is seeing the changes, she is 100% not feeling any differently towards me or attracted towards me. She said she hasn’t felt attracted to me for a long time, years.

I said that I needed to be true, and im not saying it to add pressure, but that I do love her deeply, her good points and her bad points, and that the greatest act of love I can show at the moment is to let her go. She wants to be let go. She wants freedom. She wants out of the house and to ideally have a life which isnt intrinsically centred around me, but she is in a slump as she cannot figure out how to do it. And then tells me about it as though I should want to support that!!

She is not looking inwards at all, only externalising blame on me and ‘society’ and is angry at marriage and the rules of what society says a wife should be etc. that is not like her. She seems to me like she is in a hard psychological place. There is very little progression in her healing path. She admitted that the relief and positivity of initially departing has subsided. She’s definitely now facing reality. She now views ADHD and Menopause as just labels, labels she doesn’t need, she isn’t looking at them as a factor at all, and views them as things I have put in here. She obviously isn’t viewing the 4 months of HRT as a factor either.

I now imagine that the divorse word has only not come up, not because she is conflicted how she is feeling about me, but that she cannot figure a financial way through making a home for the girls without keeping the house and me involved in finances. That is sad. But she was adamant her feelings towards me have not changed one bit.

I don’t know how to feel after this convo. I’m sad that there hasn’t been any change towards how she feels to me, even though I have been consistently showing up in a positive light for 5 weeks now. She has noticed and acknowledged the changes but they haven’t shifted her dial at all. She is so vehemently pushing forward with separation that I’m sure there are some more big blows to come. And yet she doesn’t seem to be operating from a place of happiness or ease. But just hasn’t any capacity for the possibilty that we might fix this marriage, which is very sad.

Am I still on the path here, or do I have to give into the fact this women doesn’t want me anymore and move on. She can’t say it any clearer…

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No movement.