My (29M) wife (28F) of 3 years has been distancing herself for the past month. Now she is excluding me from plans, wants me to leave for extended periods of time. I have no idea what is happening. Any advice for why this is happening and what I can do?

I would like to give some background. We have been married for almost 3 years, but for 1 year I was gone entirely (I’m in the military and was deployed for a year). She is the love of my life and I would sacrifice my life for her. We have always shown each other a lot of affection and emotional support. I felt like we were a great team and loved laughing and spending time together. Through it all, we’ve always been best friends, until about a month ago.

For 3 months now, I have been extremely busy at work. I work long hours in a Finance job and I am out of town for about 50% of the weekends for military training (I am still a reservist). I try to spend quality time with her when I am home, but there isn’t much time to work with. I recognized that I wasn’t giving her the attention she deserves so I expressed my regret by sending her flowers, calling her to check in, telling her that we should plan a trip together for when the work onslaught dies down (we used to love traveling together). She always responded with positivity, saying “it’s not your fault, I know you are trying, I love you.” I thought we were maintaining good communication and thought that we would get through a difficult period. I should mention that I wasn’t able to attend 2 weekends where she went to visit my in-laws, but I truly wanted to go. I just couldn’t make it work because of all my work obligations. I even called her mom to apologize, explain myself, and express regret that I couldn’t attend. She and her mom were both very understanding.

Fast forward a little bit. About one month ago, she began to seem a little more distant. While I was out of town for work one weekend, I asked her what was going on and the conversation devolved into an absolute mess. It took me completely off guard. She said that I had damaged her, that I didn’t like her family, and brought up some mean things that I had said in the past. I explained to her that she is the love of my life, that I had no idea what was fueling this resentment, that I LOVE her family, and that we had already worked through the mean things I had said in the past.

To give that backstory, about 10 months ago, I said some terrible things to her over text message because she chose to go have dinner with a guy who came into her life while I was deployed. I never really trusted the guy because he befriended my wife only after I had left the country. They were never friends before that. One day when I went to go give my dog a Furbo treat, I saw that there was this random dude sitting on our couch (it was him). Needless to say, I’ve been a little offput by him since I returned. When she went to have dinner with him, I unleashed a lot of pent up anger and said a lot of things that I don’t mean. The following day I apologized and she forgave me, but I think that is an important part of the story.

Anyways, back to what happened only a month ago. When I returned from training, she told me she needed space. I was, and still am, utterly baffled by the whole thing. She hasn’t communicated any issues to me at all. I know she has talked a lot with one of her best girlfriends who recently went through a divorce, so one theory is that possibly her friend is encouraging this. My wife is very loyal to her friend and would definitely take her input seriously. Another theory is that she is cheating on me. I asked her directly and she denied it, and I believe her. So, in the past month, she has completely emotionally isolated me:

-Makes me leave our house on the weekends or leaves herself

-Stopped sharing her location with me randomly

-Won’t make any plans with me

-Has planned several trips with her friend (the one I mentioned before) on the few weekends I am home

-Refuses to go to marriage therapy and is instead going to therapy herself because she “needs to heal.”

-Doesn’t text me back when I say “I love you” and doesn’t even let me know when she is home safely when she is away on all of these newly planned trips

-Dismisses me when I try to bring up the topic and say that this is not a productive or mature way to solve problems

Honestly, I have no idea what is going on and I need help. I feel completely abandoned by my spouse and best friend. One thing I need to stress is that this came OUT OF NOWHERE. I don’t know how much more I can take and I don’t think it’s fair for her to expect me to endure a month of this. Can someone please give me some advice on what might be going on and what I can do to repair my marriage? I miss her, but she seems to not care. I’m just very hurt.

Tl;dr My wife suddenly is distancing herself from me and I think someone else might be manipulating her, so I’m hoping to get your opinions on what might be going on and next steps I can take.

Submitted March 28, 2022 at 05:46PM by Confident-Plate7250 https://ift.tt/ai6lVNM