My wife (28F) and I (27M) have been together for about 8 years and married for a little over a year. Up until about a month ago, our relationship was honestly very loving. We worked out together, spent a lot of time together, and she was affectionate. Then seemingly out of nowhere she told me she wasn’t sure about us anymore.
Since then, I’ve been trying to understand what is going on and whether I should keep fighting for the marriage or start accepting that it may be over.
Some context:
She told me she feels like I became complacent in the relationship.
She said I didn’t help enough with wedding planning, the house-buying process, and that I became too comfortable staying home all the time.
She said she feels like I retreated into a shell and stopped being the person she originally fell in love with.
I agree with a lot of that and have owned my mistakes.
Since then I’ve:
Started getting out more.
Recommitted to my softball league.
Started looking at joining a men’s group.
Been exercising more.
Been going to marriage counseling with her.
Planned dates and a beach trip.
Tried to be more engaged and present.
The problem is that I feel like I’m doing all the work while she sits in uncertainty.
The biggest issue for me is a male coworker.
I found search history that included searches along the lines of:
“I’ve been in love with my friend for months and my feelings haven’t changed and I’m married.”
Other searches about first loves and relationships.
When I confronted her, she initially denied making the searches. Later she admitted she had searched them but said she wasn’t talking about herself and just searches random things. She has repeatedly promised that she is not in love with anyone and specifically says she is not in love with this coworker.
This coworker:
Works with her.
Was invited to our wedding.
Has been someone she talks to regularly.
Has been at the center of a lot of my concerns.
I have never found proof of cheating. What I have found are things that don’t add up, deleted messages, changing explanations, and a lot of defensiveness around the topic.
What makes this so confusing is that her actions and words don’t match.
Examples:
She agreed to a beach trip with me.
We had sex multiple times.
She cries during some of our conversations.
She sends me selfies while traveling.
She FaceTimed me at 1:30 AM from a work trip and talked to me about her day.
She still talks about future plans occasionally.
But then she also says:
She doesn’t know if she wants the marriage.
She wants to see how the next couple months go.
Nothing has changed for her emotionally over the last month.
She still doesn’t know what she wants.
Last night I directly asked if anything had changed after a month of counseling, conversations, dates, and effort.
She said no.
That honestly crushed me.
I don’t want a divorce. I love my wife. But I also can’t keep spending every day with a pit in my stomach wondering if she’s deciding between me and a different life.
What I struggle with most is that she seems willing to stay in this uncertainty for months while I’m the one living with the anxiety.
So my questions are:
How long is it reasonable to stay in this kind of limbo?
At what point does “I don’t know” become unfair to the spouse who is trying?
Am I reading too much into the coworker situation, or would most people be concerned by the searches, deleted messages, and inconsistent explanations?
Has anyone actually recovered from a situation where one spouse said they weren’t sure they wanted the marriage anymore?
I am genuinely trying to save my marriage, but I feel exhausted, confused, and like I’m waiting for someone else to decide whether I’m worth choosing.