Thanks for all the support everyone. I genuinely appreciate it and it all really, really helps.
Its interesting reading my first post as it was over a year ago. So much has happened since then.
At that time, my wife had stopped wanting to have sex, but this escalated to her not sleeping in our bed. She's slept with our 8year old daughter in her twin bed for over 9 months now. It's very strange. What's really strange is that a big part of her childhood trauma happened when she was 8. That's when her parents divorced. I can't help but think (along with my therapist) that our daughter being 8 years old is partially triggering a lot of this apparent PTSD from childhood.
Last April all of our communication around her myriad of issues (about how horrible I am) stopped. The conversations were becoming escalated and we were boiling over way too much. She started saying things about how our marriage isn't secure and that I needed to fix it. This really struck a cord of insecurity in me that just wasn't good and triggered all of my anxiety. That's when I reached out for therapy.
I found a great therapist, who has over 45 years experience and was the head of the Phd Psychology program at our local college. I reached out to him with total humility, taking the blame for all the problems and asking him to help me fix myself so our marriage can heal. He sniffed things out pretty quick and could tell almost immediately that I was not the source of the problems with my wife. He was amazed that there was no evidence at all of an affair since she was showing all the signs of being completely done with our marriage as someone would who was having an affair. I told him that we're around each other 24/7 as we have a work from home business, so if she's having an affair, it must be a quickie with the gas station attendant, LOL. I'm pretty certain that she hasn't had an affair.
She won't get therapy, or couples therapy. Her answer is "Why would I go get therapy for YOUR problems?" SMH...
A little bit of background. My wife grew up poor, they lived in a shack in the woods and had an outhouse for a bathroom. She slept in the bathtub as she had no bed. Her real dad was a drug addict and her mom left with her and her brother when she was 8. She never saw her dad again. Her stepdad is an okay guy, but they were still poor all growing up. They never had heat in their house. Her parents gave her no rules whatsoever and they moved to another state when she was 16, leaving her behind to live with her boyfriend who was 10 years older than her. There's a LOT of issues there that got stuffed away.
We married when she was 19. I grew up in a normal, stable Christian home with 2 parents that loved me. I was religious and she gravitated to all of the normal aspects of me and my life. We've had a good marriage for 23 years until this happened. I'm a normal guy, who gets upset (in a normal way) at normal life problems. I'm wired a bit anxious, but nothing beyond normal. I've loved and faithfully taken care of my wife and family. But, apparently, according to my wife, I haven't. I'm supposedly a continuation of all the bad patterns in her life and I don't make her feel safe. Her complaints about me are in my opinion, really pretty minimal, nothing we can work through, but she's blown them up so big and twisted everything into something totally other than what it really was.
Me and my kids have told her that she needs to be able to forgive. She said "I've forgiven dad... For myself". And also has told them (and me) "If someone murders your child, you can forgive them, but you don't need to be around them". The logic here is totally broken. No one was murdered, and I'm her husband... It's all so retarded...
We've had a couple of blowups in front of our kids which is never healthy. This happens because she's shut down all communication, so her crappy behavior towards me will trigger an argument. During one of the blowups she said in front of the whole family "If you were physically removed from my life, all of my problems would go away." Unbelievable, and just a little bit creepy... My therapist was concerned about this comment, along with the very lucid dream that she had about me being dead (which happened at the start of all this).
She talks to the kids (and her parents) behind my back about me. Complaining about how I don't make her feel safe, I don't really care about her, and how I don't care about our property. I do, but for the last 1.5 years I haven't been as on the ball as I've been emotionally drained by all of this. Our business has also suffered a LOT since then due to all of this, which we both own, but of course its ALL my fault. I told her that this is causing a lot of unnecessary wear and tare on all of us and she's partly responsible for it's affects. She's told the kids that I'm a coward, and that that I'm a "covert narcissist", LOL. My therapist confirmed that I'm not, with a chuckle. Any slight, tiny thing that I do that she doesn't like she's now dumping on the kids behind my back.
She tells the kids that I've been an abusive dad because I'll occasionally raise my voice when I get really upset. I can raise my voice, but for her, any escalation of emotion in my voice is "yelling". Also, I believe in spanking our kids when necessary, but she's never liked it. So of course NOW I'm an abusive father. As my oldest son pointed out, she never had a father, so any masculine form of correction she has a HUGE problem with.
The strangest thing is her complete lack of empathy for what she's doing and her complete stubbornness and inability to see herself AT ALL or take any responsibility for anything. It's truly amazing.
Shockingly, she told me that living with me has been far more traumatic than anything she went through as a child. My therapist was very concerned about this comment as she doesn't seem to be connected to reality.
She was fully immersed in the whole Qanon conspiracy. That sort of good guy / bad guy, conspiratorial thinking has seemed to permeate everything. Of course I'm a bad guy and she has this enlightened intuition now. It's all a bunch of BS. This also really concerned my therapist. Again, not connected to reality.
I was really not doing well after my last post, over a year ago... But I've discovered a very rich and deep place of prayer that has been enormously healing. I'm staying there and will continue. My kids and I are going to church together as we hadn't been involved in church life in 5 years or so. My wife wants nothing to do with religion. Religion is now "low minded" now that she's become so enlightened. Her "self love" seems to be more self destruction than anything, and isn't producing the best of fruit.