I'm 37, she's 35, we have three kids aged between 3 and 8. About 8 months ago my partner told me out of the blue she wants to break up. It prompted much analysing of myself and a huge number of arguments and me working on improving myself and me spying on her stuff to realise she had been having what redditors appear to call an emotional affair with some guy and the thrust in that relationship seemed to be mainly from her. Though she says it wasn't an emotional affair, but it does seem to

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We talked a great deal, I get panic attacks whenever she says she's going to leave. She explains why she thinks she fell out of love with me. We had just moved to a new city, a boring one, I had kind of not really been engaged with her and the kids as much as I could have been. I'd finished work, come home, and play a few hours of video games. I'd let her handle the admin stuff of the house for years. I'd say I had some anxiety problems and to even make a call to get something done would result in me having an internal struggle and avoid doing it.

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When she told me she wanted to breakup everything changed in me. My anxiety vanished, I can call whatever whenever, lost interest in computer games, started trying to figure out how to improve myself, told her about my improvements, started being engaged with her and the kids, but I also would get all clingy and desperate and beg for her love and horrible crap like that

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It was some kind of break down.

We spent the past eight months having periods of quiet during which things would appear to improve, then I'd get triggered by her 'friendship' with the guy and then I'd go into the negative parts described above. Then every so often she would push the idea of us separating in some form or other and often I'd have some kind of panic attack. During that period she still let me touch her and we'd have sex maybe twice a month.

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Where am I now. We're still together, a few weeks ago we had another big argument when she floated her latest separation idea and I again had some kind of panic attack and also did a huge amount of moralising telling her what a terrible person I thought a person who would do that was, there was shouting and it was horrid.

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Since then she's stopped letting me touch her but things are still civil, she also seems to have built some distance with her guy friend. We went on a day drip the past weekend which resulted in some passionate sex and since then I've been able to touch her briefly but she's still quite cold towards touch.

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To be fair I've been searching for this subreddit for months now and I'm glad to have found it. I've started reading No more Mr Nice guy, I've bought and can't wait to get Married Man Sex life primer, and I have read a few other relationship books.

But I'm hanging on by a thread here.

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Definitely need the MAP but I can't find where to get started with making one, is there a make your MAP guide I'm missing or have I not worked my way through enough of the sidebar yet?