Hi everyone,

I am new to this forum so I am going to apologize if this is a lengthy post.  My wife and I have been together 16 years (married for 12).  I found out that she was having an affair a few months ago.  The day that I found out, I confronted her and she told me that the conversations with this person (who happened to be a former work colleague) had only been going on for a couple of months and that they only slept together one time, which happened to be the day that I discovered that something was going on.  She was very forthcoming and answered all of my questions.

The day in question, we had a long conversation and we both realized some things about our marriage.  There had been some behaviors that I was responsible for that were frustrating to her over the course of our marriage; there was also a lack of communication of how she was truly feeling about my behaviors.  I also came to realize that there are some insecurities on both sides that resulted in some of my behaviors, and insecurities on her end also resulted in her needing to be noticed by this other person. My wife is a very emotionally closed-off person, so it took the past few months and many conversation to really get a somewhat-accurate picture of what was really going on.

She had believed that I was aware of these things that upset her and was intentionally doing things to her with no regard for her feelings.  That created a "wedge" in our relationship that continued to push her further and further from me.  She believed that she was communicating her feelings to me, but when we would talk about these things the conversations never got to the root of the issue.  She would allow these things to build up and build up and eventually would snap and it would be a heated discussion (which I took as an attack and immediately became defensive).  I would try to diffuse the situation and would try to understand what was wrong.  She would say things like "I am overwhelmed" and when I would talk with her about it and ask what I could do to help, she would say "I don't know".  So I was left to try to figure out why she was overwhelmed, and because it was so infrequent, to me it seemed like an temporary/isolated thing.  We have three kids, so I just assumed she was overwhelmed with our chaotic life.  So I would try to help her out more around the house, with kids activities, etc. with the hope of giving her some relief in order to allow her time to herself.  Unfortunately, the issues that she was feeling were more deeply-rooted and I was of course missing the mark in my efforts to address her concerns.  So in her mind, I wasn't fixing the underlying problems and things continued to get worse unbeknownced to me ...

Through our discussions, she came to understand that I was not aware of the the things that were causing her to feel this way because we were not communicating well.  I assured her that, if I had known how my behaviors were making her feel, I would have taken action to change them.  She also thought I was not happy with the relationship and I wanted out too.  I told her that I never felt that way and that I loved her and had always loved her.  But unfortunately the damage has already been done.  She says that she still loves me, but the feelings of being in love have gone away.

Our relationship has been a bit of a rollercoaster for the past few months.  She agreed to end the affair, but I had found out about continued conversations with the other person for a couple of months after I had found out.  I eventually gever her an ultimatum and told her that if she wanted to continue talking with him, that I was done and we should go our separate ways.  She thought about that for a few hours and told me that I was the best thing that ever happened to her, she didn't want to lose me and that we needed to fix things between us.  As part of that, she agreed to end things once and for all (and up until today, she is adamant that they have not had any interactions).

I have been trying to show her my feelings and have been very affectionate, complementary, and invested in working on the things about me that were making her feel the way that caused the distance.  I will admit that I have been a bit over the top, but I have told her that is because I should have been doing these things all along and I do not want her to ever forget how I feel. 

She has been up and down ... there are some days that she is affectionate and I believe that she wants things to work.  But there are other days that she seemingly doesn't want to be bothered.  She has been very emotionally distant and getting her to talk about her feelings is impossible.  She says that feels numb and doesn't know what she wants or how she feels. 

We did couples therapy for a couple of months, but she got burnt out on that because we weren't talking about anything in the sessions that we hadn't already talked about at home.  I suggested finding a different counselor or marriage coach, but she was lukewarm with the idea because of it being one more thing in our already hectic lives and investing any more energy right now is too much because she is emotionally drained.

Recently, she has suggested that we spend some time apart so that she can figure things out.  I asked her if her need for space was to see if she still had feelings for me and would miss being together, or if that was her "test" to see if she could do things on her own.  She said that she hoped that it would affirm that she does love me and wants to make this work.  Logistically, this would be a very difficult thing for either of us to do as we do not have any close-by housing options and we both want to be there for the kids.  So we are living under the same roof while we try to figure things out.

I am so confused as to what to do or how to approach things at this point.  I have been trying to focus on me and work on my healing, but I am having trouble understanding what is going on in her mind and where things are headed.  I want to believe that now that we know where our issues are, we can work on them and make the marriage even better going forward.  I think in theory she agrees with that, but she is having trouble seeing how we get there and is getting overwhelmed at the thought of having to work so hard for it (her normal reaction when she has a serious problem is to walk away).  I told her that for us to have a chance she needs to want this, and if she does the "work" it will pay dividends in the future as our marriage improves and hopefully becomes everything we ever wanted it to be.

I am hoping that some of you have been through a similar set of circumstances (from wither side) and can offer some advice.  Thank you!