Confused and not sure where to go from here......Sorry for being so long!

Honestly I'm just at a complete loss at this point. Before I get into all the details I want to preface a few things. Firstly at no point do I feel that I am not to blame for some part of the state of our marriage. Also there are just so many moving parts and variables to where we are and I guess how we got here, I’m not positive I can get everything out that I want, so I guess I'll just start with the things that are driving me crazy at this point. I'm going to say things in this post that may offend some, just please take a moment and try to realize I am not intending to piss anyone off I'm just speaking my mind and wrong or right this is how I’m seeing things. If I were doing everything right and had all the correct answers, most likely I would not be here.

My wife and I have been together for a bit over 5 years now, and we have most certainly had our fair share of ups and downs. We have had two wonderful kids together and been through loss of a baby by miscarriage. We have lived through having her mom move in with us due to being diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, we have move at least 4 times in the past 5 years due to my job. We have struggled through living in a small apartment with our two kids and her mom for over a year with only one car to go between us. There is more, so much more but I'll just move on, I feel that you got the point. We have worked through some hard times, and we joke around from time to time that the hardest of times seem to be the easiest for us to get through. Sometimes it seems that the easy times where nothing is really going wrong, we struggle the most.

We lived in FL for a few years and those years were really trying at times, my wife worked through some of the toughest depression that I have ever seen. It took many months for all of us (family) to get her willing to go for medication and help. Even after that it was really hard, but we kept working through it. I knew that she wasn’t happy in FL, so even though that I hated (and still do) VA with a passion, a position with my company opened up and I took it, It was located in VA. It was a hard move and I still really miss it, it seems that we have reversed roles almost. In my defense I feel that I have come down with depression due to how our relationship still is. She is happier and seems to have blossomed, and I'm super excited about that. Even with her being happy with herself and loving the area we still have major issues in my opinion.

One issue that we have is that she is always saying that she wishes that I were more dominate in "all" aspects. This really has stumped me for years really...and not for the reasons you may think. I have never in my life have ever ran across a girl that I was in a relationship with have an issue like this. Typically in all my relationships I have really never thought about it, but when looking back was the more dominate one, I guess by default. Now in reality she is a dominate person and I kind of feel that the reason we get into the fights we do stems from the fact that we are both either fighting for control in some regards. Then you factor in that I really am a laid back kind of guy, yea if something comes up that needs my attention I have no qualms taking care of it, but I don’t actively seek them out. I'll go further into detail on that if anyone needs me too; I’m just not sure what else to say.

Secondly, we are just totally different people in the bedroom. I'm not sure how else to explain it. Her style is to just lay there or be "taken advantage of" or "forced" and yea that’s a turn on at times, but if I'm not actively making thigs happen she will literally just lay there and she likes that....I have no idea. I on the other hand like for her to be or at least pretend to show interest in me, and from time to time she does...but oddly enough she only does it to get me started then she's back out. I don’t know what to do with this at all.

Lastly, I do kind of link the last two to this one. She gets in these moods, typically during her time of the month right after she gets me to the point to where I just want to leave...(I’ll get to that in a bit) where she talks about swinging, and recently she has brought up the idea of DWM (Dating While Married). Now when she brought this up at first it was all I could do not to just explode, but I knew that if I let that happen then there was no way that I could get that entire she was thinking out and in the open. So instead I decided to ask questions, not really pretend to be excited at the idea but intrigued enough to ask questions. It only got worse, she then proceeded to tell me that it would just be going out to movies and dinner, just the idea of "newness" is what she missed from us and that would be how she would get that feeling back. On that note I can understand, I get it, that feeling is nice and I as well miss it but I don’t know if seeing other people would really make me want to be with her more? Well it really doesn’t matter due to the fact that she said that she really wouldn’t like for me to do it, she would get too jalousie and couldn’t stand the idea of if I were talking or even remotely liked someone else......At this point I'm speechless, no words. I honestly don’t remember much else after that; I think I just ended up casually ending the conversation.

That was a few days ago, and honestly our life has been so crazy that it just hit me today what all we had talked about. It’s been driving me crazy, because the last thing I want is to have this not work out, I may be to the point at times that I can’t stand her, but I also know that she feels the same about me for good reasons at times. I still love her, although I question her sanity a decent amount. I'm just lost and confused and hoping someone somewhere has some idea of what I can do.

Your marriage is pretty typical, there will always be conflicts, differences, and struggles when a marriage runs long enough. In the end it comes down how you communicate, compromise, and resolve your issues assuming both people still love each other, and from what you wrote it seems like there are a lot of open ended issues. If you cannot resolve issues together you need a 3rd party to mediate and teach you how to, yes, the ugly marriage counseling suggestion. If both of you want it to work you will both agree to it, if someone doesn't, well you already know where things are headed.

The counseling will be very hard and upsetting at first, you will hear things the other person has kept bottled up, but remember the reason why, they love you and did not want to hurt you, but you both need to let out the hurt before you can heal. Tough it out and work through it, because let me tell you, divorce was the single most painful thing I have ever experienced and I didn't even have kids.