KCB

First I want to say, from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for being with me through this. It really does make a huge difference to have other people advising and helping me. I just don't know where I'd be without you.

I have started to think more rationally about divorce, though I feel miserable and scared about it. I guess it's just the first stage of accepting the likelihood (I daren't say certainty) of separation.

What I don't know, and I would love it if you could help me with, is what I should do in the next therapy session, which is on Tuesday. 1aokgal you have been brutally honest but you are encouraging me to be braver and more strident than I feel I can be at the moment. I also don't want to risk driving her away.

Should I focus on talk about repairing our marriage? I feel, as you have all suggested, that I've said and promised enough about that and now it is time to "leave the ball in her court" on that one. I've said what I have to say about repairing our marriage and I obviously can't get her to believe in me by simply repeating the resolutions and changes I'm prepared to make.

Should I focus on talk about ending our marriage? I'm so scared that will drive her away. If she is starting to think about making amends, I don't want to seem so angry and cold that I extinguish any candle she may be holding.

Below is what I was thinking of bringing up on Tuesday.

We’ve talked a lot about me, and how the things I have brought to the marriage over eight years have ultimately made you unhappy. And I have expressed a commitment to address those problems of mine. But since that has, as yet, fallen on deaf – or at least unbelieving – ears, my thoughts have diversified to consider how I feel about what you’ve recently brought to the marriage and the damage which you are doing.

1. Your indifference. I have shown commitment to make necessary changes to my lifestyle so that we may both be happier. You’ve said that if I did make those changes, it might be too late, it might not make any difference to you.
I feel discarded and unloved. You don’t seem to want to give changes a chance.

2. Your mistrust. I have tried to be mature and adult about all this, rather than small and insecure. In what I’ve said I’ve tried to be logical and supportive. You misinterpret everything I say as ‘manipulative’ or ‘belittling’.
I feel that negative motives are being wrongly attributed to me. You don’t seem to want to give me a chance.

3. Your affair. I have tried to experiment with little meetings, to use the ‘strategies you can take back into your marriage’ as the therapist said. You now say ‘I am finding the space between therapy sessions helpful’. I fear that is because you now get to spend every day with the other man. Even your two days off, this week. You don’t seem to want to give this marriage a chance.

Don't worry, I'm not going to learn this by heart or take a piece of paper in there. I just like to have an idea beforehand of the things I want to have raised by the end of the session. Do you think these are the right sort of things to say at this stage?