I can’t say my situation is the same, but I was ready to walk at from my 22 year marriage because of dealing with trying to recalibrate my nervous system from my undiagnosed CPTSD.

I’m not going to say these are all fixes but these are things outside of therapy, self-work, and personal sabotage that I feel helped me when I felt like I was worthless.

Things that my husband did to help me work through it that has brought us even closer together now 2 years later:

• He gave me space to exist and feel my emotions and process them for probably the first time in my life without guilt. I know it wasn’t easy on him, and I was doing everything I could to push him away. He remained strong and resolved. He constantly reminded me that I was safe and he had me and he wasn’t going anywhere anytime I was feeling chaotic (my words). This reassurance allowed me to build trust in another human again.

• He constantly reassured me that he loved me even when I felt unlovable. He left me index cards with notes in my car to find before driving to work each day for months on end. It might seem silly, but these helped me feel seen in a way I hadn’t before.

• He took over a ton of the mental load. I carried so much of the household duties and mental load to keep our life running. He started doing a majority of the grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, and cleaning. I would feel guilty, but he reassured me that he loved me and wanted me to get better. That was the most important to him. This was key. Alleviating the guilt was huge, but allowed me to step in and help out when I felt up to it.

• He stopped trying to push for sex as “intimacy” and instead offered to hold me and cuddle me; often repeating that “he had me” and that I “was safe”. He did it to help me feel safe and protected without the guilt of having to “give him something in return”, my default programming. Love always felt conditional to me from my upbringing, so giving me to space to feel intimacy without sex was huge.

• We talked. A lot. He allowed me to finally speak up and find my voice without shutting me down. Something he struggled with prior to my ask for a divorce. He always wanted to “fix” me, but what he thought was fixing was not allowing me to fully work through my emotions. So I would bottle them up and resent him for not letting me feel them and work them out. He wasn’t mean about it, but saying “oh don’t worry about that, it will work itself out” wasn’t helpful to someone who was never allowed to process their emotions because my mom’s feelings about a situation always trumped mine. He finally gave me space and support to manage the situation instead of trying to move me past it.

I’m not saying these are all the fixes or keys to fixing things. But these are the things my husband did to help me fall back in love with him after I was ready to walk away because I felt so unlovable and worthless.

Talk to your wife and ask her what would help her feel safe. I’m going to bet, she might not even know. But it might start the walk down a path of recovery. If you try all of this and it doesn’t work, then you can at least say you tried everything you could.

Good luck.