It's Done... in Book Six: Trying to Hold On 2019

… but it has only just begun.

I made it to the Couple’s Counselor about 6 minutes before the session was supposed to start. Time for session came and went. Therapist asked if Wife was still in the car, and I said that we were coming separately today as I stayed with my parents last night. The counselor asked, “Was that by design?” knowingly. I quietly said yes. I had sent her last week (so, yes… even before anything with “Emily” was on the radar) my thoughts and feelings about everything. And they were pretty self-explanatory. I have been waiting and waiting for SOME sign that my relationship could actually be a marriage sometime this decade. Well, decade is almost up! And the Never Sex and Seldom “I Love You” are UNACCEPTABLE after this much time.

Wife got to the Counselor’s Office about 10 minutes after the session was supposed to start.

We opened it up to what was planned. How the relationship was able to grow without the pressure of sex. Did kissing increase? Did emotional connection increase? Was an agreed period of No Sex in any way able to increase any element of the relationship at all?

No. Wife was unable to build or work on any form of connection during the period. So… “pressure” of sex wasn’t the problem. The problem, as discussed last year, is that we have a Just Friends Marriage. And so, I told her that while she was a friend and roommate, she wasn’t my wife. And that we needed to start transitioning to Separated or Divorced.

The rest of the session was mostly her crying. Me crying every once in a while. And the counselor and I trying to get Wife to say… something… anything. After an hour… was she going to call her parents? Was she going to go back to IF or stay with her parents? Was she going to feel safe today? She… as one would expect… had no idea. So obviously I am worried about her. But… this is how life is going to need to be. She is going to need to make some decisions. And while those decisions WILL affect me, and my life, and my property, and my finances, and my dog… I am no longer in a position to make those decisions for her and she needs to learn how to make these really hard choices.

But as it is right now? I don’t know where I am sleeping tonight. Or how the next few days or weeks or months are going to go. All I know is that… it won’t be easy.