My wife began acting strange a year ago. I "snooped" and found that she had been texting an ex-boyfriend. They had exchanged over 1200 texts in less than one month. I confronted her and now, my life is spinning out of control.
She managed to place the blame for her text relationship on me for forcing her to fill a void in her life. She says that her biggest problem is that over the 15 years of our marriage, I did not initiate sex enough and that I did not make her feel sexy or desired. While I may be guilty of this to some degree, I have found that she is exaggerating things like this and other things, and even concocting things to feel better about herself. I am crushed. I am not handling this well. I am suspicious and paranoid and hyper-aware, and suspect of her every move, looking for hidden meaning or hidden motives in everything she does. I need her to help me feel better about our relationship, but she refuses. She has done nothing to make it up to me. So, I have become more and more withdrawn and depressed and probably not very fun to live with, which makes her pull away even more, which makes me more withdrawn. It is an awful downward spiral. She says that when she turned 39, she decided she was making changes in her life (she is not quite 40 now) and that a switch turned off (towards me). She now works out like a fiend and avoids me like the plague, though we live together with 2 children (12 and 10). I keep telling her that all I need is some genuine affection and caring from her and I can get past this. She cannot bring herself to do it. Sex is SO off the table. We have been to one couples counseling session. Now, she will only go if we go separately. We cannot afford to separate, but that is what she wants. I don't know what to do or how to handle this. I cannot shake the suspicion that she has some kind of relationship going with someone else. And I also wonder if this is simply mid life crisis. If that's the case, I don't think she would take it well if I suggested that to her. PLEASE HELP.
She managed to place the blame for her text relationship on me for forcing her to fill a void in her life. She says that her biggest problem is that over the 15 years of our marriage, I did not initiate sex enough and that I did not make her feel sexy or desired. While I may be guilty of this to some degree, I have found that she is exaggerating things like this and other things, and even concocting things to feel better about herself. I am crushed. I am not handling this well. I am suspicious and paranoid and hyper-aware, and suspect of her every move, looking for hidden meaning or hidden motives in everything she does. I need her to help me feel better about our relationship, but she refuses. She has done nothing to make it up to me. So, I have become more and more withdrawn and depressed and probably not very fun to live with, which makes her pull away even more, which makes me more withdrawn. It is an awful downward spiral. She says that when she turned 39, she decided she was making changes in her life (she is not quite 40 now) and that a switch turned off (towards me). She now works out like a fiend and avoids me like the plague, though we live together with 2 children (12 and 10). I keep telling her that all I need is some genuine affection and caring from her and I can get past this. She cannot bring herself to do it. Sex is SO off the table. We have been to one couples counseling session. Now, she will only go if we go separately. We cannot afford to separate, but that is what she wants. I don't know what to do or how to handle this. I cannot shake the suspicion that she has some kind of relationship going with someone else. And I also wonder if this is simply mid life crisis. If that's the case, I don't think she would take it well if I suggested that to her. PLEASE HELP.
