I'm beginning to realize that this state of limbo just isn't going to work.

A while back I decided to just disregard the feelings I had about leaving, and to push it all aside and just go on like everything is fine. You know what? Everything isn't fine. It hasn't been fine for a long time, and it's not something that I can just decide to switch on and off.

The fact remains that something has to be done. A decision has to be made soon.

How did I figure this out? I was sitting on the couch, working on my laptop while my husband was watching TV. There was one of the Lord of the Rings movies on — I'm sure don't know which one it was because that's not really my cup of tea — and I glanced up just in time to see a scene where one of the guys returns home to his kids who leap into his arms and his wife who smiles, embraces him, and gives him a loving kiss.

It hit me like a ton of bricks: Married couples should be happy. I should want to kiss my husband when he comes home. I should smile when I see him walking toward me. I'm not saying that everything should be sunshine and roses 100% of the time, but how much longer can I wander around in the fog of "marital issues?"

When I saw that scene on the TV and had that reaction, I almost stood up and announced that I was packing my bags.

I'm trying to be practical about all this. I'm trying to give this situation as much effort as I can. I'm going to therapy. I'm trying to be a good wife. For goodness sake, we just booked a vacation for this summer!

I'm doing everything I can think of, and I have been doing it for months. I'm exhausted, and I'm starting to freak out a little.

I'm scaling way back on my obligations right now.

I think I loaded up my schedule with so many different things in an attempt to avoid facing the problems in my marriage head-on.

I'm not only working a lot, but I'm volunteering a bunch even beyond what I already do at my church. This is in addition to taking care of the kids and the house. In other words, I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

The other day I was rushing from one event to another, hoping nobody at the next meeting would notice that I didn't even get to take a shower that day because my schedule had been so hectic. I made it just in time to the meeting and while I was listening to the presenter I thought to myself, "Okay, enough is enough."

I've always liked to stay busy, but this has gotten way out of hand. There are too many people expecting too many things from me, and I'm feeling stretched way too thin.

This weekend I started telling a few people that although I had thought I would be able to help them with their projects, I just can't. I turned down a couple of writing jobs. I removed myself from some volunteering schedules.

I'm trying not to feel guilty about letting people down, but I think I'm quickly reaching a breaking point if I keep going at this pace, and that breaking point won't be pretty.

I don't know if this is going to help my relationship with my husband, but I can't see where it would hurt. If I'm a little less stressed — and not avoiding spending time with him — then maybe it will help us to face everything and figure out just what the heck we're doing.

I remember the exact moment I realized that things might not work out with my husband.

We had been married a couple of years. His job had moved us away from our family and friends, but we were back in town for his friend's wedding. The trip corresponded with my birthday and I was excited to celebrate it with all our old pals.

My husband and I had an agreement that he would get to spend a bunch of time with his friends and I would spend a bunch of time with mine. His friends preferred video games and drinking beer while my friends liked going out dancing and enjoying the nightlife. It's not that our friends didn't intermingle, but it was definitely a situation where the guys hung out with the guys, and the girls hung out with the girls.

The morning of my birthday my husband took off with his friends. He was gone all day long. I didn't have anyone to spend time with during the day because all my friends were at work so when I asked him to carve some time out of his day for me, he got really defensive.

"You said I could hang out with my friends as much as I wanted!" he argued.

Yes, I had encouraged him to spend time with his friends during the vacation, but I guess I figured that maybe my birthday might be cause for some time together. I didn't even care if he had invited me along with whatever they were all doing that day. I just didn't want to sit alone on my birthday.

Silly me.

Late that night he came back to the hotel with his friends and a cake from a grocery store bakery. They all stood around me and sang "Happy Birthday" in a way that tipped me off that all these guys knew I was mad at my husband, and they all thought I was a typical hysterical female. Have you ever heard "Happy Birthday" sung by five very unenthusiastic men who wanted to be somewhere else? It's not pretty.

A comment from previous post got me thinking about something that I need to clarify: If I ever gave the impression that I am without blame in the problems within my marriage, it was not intentional. If anything, I carry a huge burden on my shoulders and in my heart because of the things I did (or didn't do, but should have) that may have contributed to our problems.

I can be critical of my husband. Oftentimes I bring my experiences with my father into what I expect from my husband. My dad was often unemployed and relatively lazy, and sometimes I expect my husband to fall into similar patterns if he doesn't stay exactly on track.

I do not do well taking a backseat to things. I want to be involved in every major decision, and I think that sometimes this may make my husband feel as though I don't allow him to wear the metaphorical pants in the family.

When things started getting rough between my husband and me, I turned toward my work instead of forcing the issue. Maybe if I had persisted in aggressively fixing things, we wouldn't be in the spot we're in now.

I have a hard time forgiving him for the stuff he has put me through. If I could just get over it, I think we could just be a happy little family.

I readily admit all these things. There has never been a time when I considered myself blameless in this whole mess. I refuse to accept that it's all my fault, though. I think we're both to blame in one way or another, and that's why I was so adamant that we needed to be in therapy together.

In other words, we made this mess together, so we might as well try to solve it together.

If I ever made anyone think that every single bit of marital problems we have are all because of my husband, then I wasn't getting my point across very well.

Let me tell you what it's like to lay down for bed every night next to a man who you aren't sure you're supposed to still be with, although I'm sure there are plenty of you who already know what this experience is like.

I usually go to bed an hour or so after my husband because I work from home at night after the kids have gone to sleep. When I walk into the bedroom I walk quietly because I don't want to wake him. I slink into the bed as quietly as possible and don't move unless I have to. I try to settle into one position and I don't cough or fidget or roll over.

It's not that I'm such a nice wife that I don't want to wake him, although there's some of that there. The main reason I go through this ritual every night is because I don't want him waking up and thinking that we're going to indulge in some lovemaking. I don't want him rolling over and putting his arm around me. Some nights, his arm around me feels like I'm being smothered. I don't want him waking up and wanting to have some sort of deep conversation.

I'm exhausted, and I want to sleep.

It's impossible to not think about relationship issues when I'm lying in bed in silence, next to the man who has caused me so much grief. When he stirs and starts making the moves on me, I feel trapped. I want to cry. I want to push him away, pack my bags, and never come back.

As I experience these emotions I wonder if it's even possible for a relationship to bounce back when it has reached such a low point. How do you go from lying in bed, praying that your husband doesn't touch you, to one day looking forward to ending your evening with a nice snuggle?

Long story short: I don't know how to change how I feel.

There are a lot of men in my life who are telling me what to do.

I didn't realize it until recently. I was driving home from a session with my therapist and I started to wonder why I sought his approval so much. I mean, it's great that he's there for me to unload all my problems on, but it wasn't until that drive home that a light bulb came on in my head and I realized that just about everything my therapist says, I take to heart.

When he agrees with something I say, I'm pleased. When he disagrees with something I say, I start to wonder what I can do to fix my way of thinking.

I look for approval from my pastor a lot, too. We'll have conversations where a lot of the time my sentences end with, "...don't you think so?" or "...but what do you think?" Then when he tells me what he thinks, I mull it over for quite some time.

I look for approval from my husband. Even though he wholly ignores my writing I still mention some of my new jobs to him once in a while, hoping that he'll take a look on his own and tell me what he thinks. When something happens that I'm proud of — paying off a bill, getting a big project around the house finished, or whatever other good things I may do — I hope that my husband will give me a pat on the back for it.

How did I get so needy? It's not like I had an absent father growing up or anything like that. Is this something that most women just innately do?

When I was readying myself to leave my husband, all I really wanted was for someone to tell me it was the right decision. When my pastor told me he thought a trial separation might be a good idea, I felt empowered. When my therapist didn't like the idea, I began to rethink the whole thing. When my husband said that he didn't want to separate, it was like the wind was taken out of my sails.

What do I have to do to start thinking for myself?

If you would have taken a glimpse into my relationship with my husband a year ago and then had a look at it recently, you would probably notice something right away. A year ago my husband was a different guy. He didn't seem to care less if I was fighting a high fever, or if I had a deadline, or if the kids gave me a really trying day.

It didn't matter. He still wasn't going to lift a finger to help because keeping the house going was my job. Keeping the kids happy was my job. It just didn't seem to matter if I was wandering around in an exhausted stupor, because he was happy and had his video games to occupy him.

Cut to present day. Something about me trying to leave shook him up enough to where he does the things I always thought he should do be doing anyhow: he takes the kids when I have a lot of stuff to do, he'll make dinner once in a while if I'm running late getting home, and he'll encourage me to take a short nap if I'm not feeling well.

Those may sound like normal things a husband would do, but for me it's a 180 degree change from how things once were.

So what's the problem? Now that he's doing all the things I once wished he would do, why can't I just be happy? This is a question I have been struggling with for a while now. I think it all boils down to this: Why did it have to take me trying to leave for him to finally notice that something had to change?

For a couple of years I was obviously stressed out, exhausted and generally unhappy with the way things were. I told him things needed to change. I asked him to go to counseling with me. I begged him to cut back on his video game time. Really, if my bursting into tears at the drop of a hat wasn't a pretty good sign that things weren't working, what was?

My husband wants to go to a marriage retreat. It's for a full weekend, so we would have to leave the kids with someone else and then make the drive five hours to the retreat location. I don't like the idea of leaving my kids with someone else — especially since we don't have any family nearby — but as I keep saying, I'm willing to do whatever I need to in an attempt to save the marriage.

He's inquiring about availability now. I've talked to some couples who have gone to this same retreat and they all sing praises about the program. Apparently this particular program has saved many a marriage and lit sparks under others that weren't troubled but were bordering on stale. Could this be the thing that saves our marriage?

To be honest with you, the very first thought that entered my head when he brought up the idea was, "Damn it, he's going to want to have sex with me." I can see it now...we're away from the kids, away from work, and we're staying in a hotel room. He will think this translates into romance, while I automatically think about how great it will be to sleep without keeping one ear poised to listen for the kids. Ask me if a weekend in a hotel with my husband appeals to me right now, and I'll admit to you that no, it doesn't, not really.

Yes, we still have sex here at home, but it's usually him doing his business while I lay there and wait for him to finish. Take this to a hotel and he'll be expecting me to be all into the act, having a great time and really whooping it up.

It seems to me that a change in environment won't change the things that are stopping me from being truly intimate with my husband, but I know I'll feel compelled to oblige him with at least some physical intimacy.

Wouldn't it be great if these retreats offered separate rooms until other issues were resolved? I'd go to that one for sure.

I have been going to individual therapy once a week for a few months now. I'm not the kind of person who likes therapy, and in fact I pretty much loathe the entire process.

I don't really like chatting about my problems with someone else, let alone paying him to listen. Nonetheless, I keep going in every week because I'm trying to save my marriage. If there is something innately "wrong" with me that can be fixed through therapy and therefore make me want to stay married to my husband for the rest of my life, then I'm willing to give it a try.

In other words, if you look up "Lady willing to try just about everything to save her marriage" in the dictionary, there's a picture of me there, looking forlorn.

Okay, I know that's too long to look up in any dictionary, but still, I'm trying to paint a picture here.

Anyhow, I think therapy has helped me out in a few ways. I need to acknowledge that some of the things from my childhood affected me more than I thought. Okay. I need to stop taking responsibility for everyone else's emotions. Got it. I need to stop pushing my feelings away and deal with them before I explode. Sure.

I don't know if the individual counseling is helping my marriage. If anything, it's helping me to get a better understanding of who I am and why I make the decisions that I make.

I guess that's helpful, but I don't know what good it will do in my marriage to figure these things out except to clarify that I'm wholly incompatible with my husband. Unless, of course, his individual sessions reveal that he's compatible with women who need to figure out how to better express emotions and stop taking everything so personally. If that's the case, then maybe we have a match made in heaven.

The pastor of my church is a friend of mine. We don't hang out socially or anything, but "Ted" is fun to chat with and we work together splendidly on church projects. He has acted as The Voice of Reason for me a few times when I needed a man's perspective, and I like how we have a casual rapport.

A few weeks ago my husband told me that Ted had offered to start seeing us as a couple again for some counseling. Both my husband and I thought this was a good idea, so I ran the idea past my therapist.

"What potential problems do you think might arise from seeing Ted for marriage counseling?" my therapist asked.

"My husband might feel like we're ganging up on him because Ted and I have a good rapport, and I think that threatens my husband," I responded after thinking about it.

"Does your husband have a reason to feel threatened?" he prodded.

"No," I answered, not liking the direction this was going.

"What are the chances of you and Ted evolving into an inappropriate relationship?" he asked.

I was a little offended by this. "He's a married man, and the pastor of a church!" I blurted out, then realized this may not be the best defense since we've heard of scandals like this before, haven't we?

He continued. "Have you and Ted ever had a conversation about boundaries for your relationship?" My response was, "No, why would we? There has never been any reason to."

"I think it's a talk you should have," he concluded.

On my drive home my head was spinning. Can't a man and a woman have a good rapport without it turning into something scandalous? My therapist said that by going to Ted for advice, I was trying to get my needs met by another man instead of my husband, and that's a recipe for disaster. And there I thought this whole time that I was merely looking for advice from a person I trusted.