Recently Separated, and Want to Reconcile

[Guest]

This is gonna be a very, very long post. Please, only serious answers.

 

I'll start off with some background info. My wife and I married young, and have been married for almost three years. We met online, she's English and I'm an American. I went to visit her, we hit it off, she eventually came to the States and moved in with me, and we were married fairly quickly (within 6 months of her moving to the States). Immigration process caused no real problems other than the usual governmental bull****.

 

I have to admit I'm particulary anti-social, and as such, I don't get out often or have a lot of friends. This isn't to say that I'm incapable of making friends, I'm actually a very friendly guy. I'm just content without them for the most part. My wife is pretty much the opposite... she likes having, making and keeping lots of friends. However, she really doesn't have a whole lot here in the States (mainly, one best friend).

 

We've had our ups and our downs. Among the problems we've had:

 

I've been pretty into an online MMO that consumes a lot of my time for the duration of our marriage, and admittedly, it is an addiction, and I am not proud of it. I'm sure that its the #1 cause for our current strife.

 

After a year and a half into the marriage, she started going to the chat site that where we first met more often. I caught her having a relationship with a guy online, and she was pretty into it at the time. At the same time I noticed she started talking to this guy (who is English), she kept talking about wanting to go home to England... but by herself. This sent up a red flag for me. I had my suspicions for a short while about it her true intentions, and I managed to collect some evidence of her relationship using the auto-logger on the chat program she used, and confronted her with it. We had a big heart-to-heart about things that were wrong with the relationship, especially about how she felt like the third wheel compared to the game I was currently obsessed with. As it eventually turned out, the other guy was simultaneously wooing another woman, which hurt her coupled with the guilt of how she hurt me. We made up, and I came to trust her again.

 

Now, to the problem at hand:

 

Unfortunately, months after the above incident, I fell back into my old ways of playing the game more than I paid attention to her. Fast forward to a month ago, on the day before Valentine's of this year. To try and be more involved with me, she started playing the same MMO (and of course, she got to dress up her character as much as she wanted). She made some friends on her own through the game, and one guy in particular was a massive flirt. Now my wife likes to flirt herself, and that's fine, people do that. However, this is one of those guys who liked to push his limits, and would do certain inappropriate things when I was around. I told him I didn't like it, and when my wife found out that I had done this, she flew off the handle about me going behind her back and talking **** to her friends. Up again goes the red flag.

 

In my paranoia that something might hurt me again, I stumbled upon an MSN conversation with her best friend that I was not meant to see. I found out nothing was between them... but my wife wanted something to be there, and she had confided in her friend this information. Again, I confronted her, and this time, she really railed into me about how unhappy she was with me. She said she felt like I was weighing her down, and that she wanted excitement in her life, and that she had felt the past three years had been wasted. We talked and agreed to give the marriage another few months to make things between us better.

 

A few days ago, we got in an argument because I asked her about her MSN conversations. I'm not sure why, I think it was out of paranoia again - that I just didn't know what was going on, and that I had to. She told me that I can't trust her, and that she didn't see how things were going to work out between us. She got some clothes, and is now staying at her best friend's house.

 

The thing with all of this is that I know I want to reconcile with her and give her the perfect marriage she always wanted. I concede that I'm not the perfect husband, nor is my wife perfect either, and through both of our flaws I want to make this work. I concede, again, that the game is a problem, and with the events of this latest episode, logging onto it makes me literally feel sick. I've decided that I'm going to go cold turkey.

 

She says she needs to spend some time away from me. I'm not entirely sure this is best for either of us. In doing this, she has tried to build walls up around herself and try to become emotionally detached from me. I know that without prolonged contact with me, her feelings towards me will dull over and I'll have 0% chance of making this work again.

 

I've decided that contact with her needs to be almost forced... and either I'll bring her closer to me or push her away. I've decided this risk is worth taking for various reasons, but mostly because I know she still feels for me, but her head is making up excuses for her to be apart. So far it has worked. She has agreed to see me often, for at least an hour per day. We even have a dinner date tonight.

 

She is not happy at her friend's house, and feels liek a burden to them. She decided to look at apartments and was considering putting down a deposit for one in a bad neighborhood, but I've managed to convince her against this course of action. Entering into a new lease would not only put stress on both of our finances (she says she can afford it, I know she can't), and more stress in her life will likely make her break down. I've managed to convince her to stay at our place, and I'll move out since I have relatives in the area.

 

This is going to sound almost manipulative, but its more along the lines of trying to keep her within a kind of circle of my influence. That's a really bad way of putting it, but I can't think of any better analogy at the moment. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a controlling guy at all and I certainly mean her absolutely no harm at all. I am simply trying to make this work so I can prove to be a better husband and have her remember why she fell in love with me in the first place, and I think keeping her in familar surroundings (at our place, with our furniture that we bought together, along with our two cats) will help that.

 

I guess I'm not entirely sure what I am asking exactly. I suppose I want to know if I'm going about all this the right way into trying to make this work. I realize she will need some time to heal from the hurt I have personally caused her, and she really has put a lot more effort into this relationship than I have before her indiscretions, but we can't wait forever on this.

 

Please, any flames/questions/suggestions/comments/tips are welcome.