Fighting For Your Marriage

For three years, we’ve had a beautiful marriage. Hardly any fighting. We agree on most everything. We laugh, watch T.V. and movies, make dinner together, go out, read to each other, snuggle in bed, talk in bed until late at night, share dreams. The works. I thought everything was perfect. We’d end every conversation with “I love you!” Good or bad.

She is 22 yrs old, I am 23. We got married young. But we’re both mature and have made it this far without any problems.

In May, she graduated college. I started noticing very subtle changes in her attitude towards me at that point, but nothing that couldn’t be chocked up to standard moodyness. In June, she went to Costa Rica as a chaperone for a High School Spanish trip. She was gone for 2 weeks. When she came back, she was a completely different person.

cont.
She came back on our 3 yr anniversary and starting crying in a fancy restaurant saying she was feeling an overwhelming loss upon returning. I understand she had a good time. But it was our anniversary! I reacted poorly.

For the rest of that week, we barely talked. A few days later, we had a small fight and at the end of the fight she said she “doesn’t think we’re working”, “it doesn’t feel right anymore”, and “we’re just not on the same path”. But she still loves me.

I was devastated. Never in a million years did I think this would happen. I love her more than life itself.

But here is where the weirdness begins. I left for a few days and then came back when it happened, at her request. Since that time, we’ve been living together, just like normal. Everything is a little askew, but mostly normal. We talk, do everything the same, have ***.
Her kisses are a little more apathetic than usual, but it’s not the worst thing in the world.

Finally, after 2 months of this. I broke down.
We talked about our situation. And she still doesn’t know that she wants to spend the rest of her life with me. She doesn’t know if I’m the right one.

Well, she MARRIED me. So she must have thought so then, because it was HER idea.

Now she wants a separation. I said fine, as long as we can go to counseling, which she is fighting. But we have agreed. I’ll leave and then we’ll go to counseling.

The kicker is that she never asks me to leave. I keep asking her if I should leave now, and she says NO, she doesn’t want me to go.

So I don’t know what to do.

In the 2+ months that this has been going for. I have gotten the following reasons for this collapse in relationship.

1) I am too controlling. Because I have had a problem with her hanging with ONE of her guy friends.

2) I am too disrepectful. Because 4 years ago, I SUGGESTED that she might think about changing her major.

3) I don’t put her in front of myself. I put her through school and was home each and every night to listen.
Every time I ask her what the problem in our relationship is, she says something different.

So apparently, I can just do no right. I feel like this is just a phase for her, but it has gone on so long. I don’t know how to handle it anymore.

Should I leave and let her realize what she’ll be missing. She doesn’t even have a job. We only have one car.

But I can’t stand her treating my feelings and hurt like dirt while she makes up her mind about wanting to be with me.

She loves me, so she says. So how can she both want me gone and around?

Jack