Al, First I want to thank you for the incredible amount of time, work, and dedication that you have put into this site, and then to put it up for free for everyone to use. Truly amazing. I would like to put out my situation and see if it might be of interest to you and/or other readers, and perhaps get some advice for myself and for anyone else who might be in a similar position. I think (whew, almost said “I feel”) that I might be a somewhat unusual case, as I am the partner who had an (emotional) affair, I am usually (90%+) in the role of avoider/slave in my marriage, I am the one who, for lack of a better way of saying it, “wants out”, yet I am the one who is here to try and figure out a course of action. Excuse me if I use an obscene amount of Slave (and maybe some Master) speak, I am still working as best I can on all of this. My extremely short story of what I think my main issues are this: my mother was/is an extremely controlling person, was extraordinarily adept at being a passive master, used strict religious views to support her . . . you probably know the type. I have discovered that this has left me to deal with very strong tendencies to flee, freeze, and submit in relationships. For all of my 31 years I have been convinced that there is a right answer to everything, some pre-ordained and absolute mold that I and everyone else must fit into. When I didn’t fit into that I was belittled, punished, rejected, invalidated – I wasn’t allowed to develop any sense of self. When faced with adversity, especially of the relationship sort, I have always froze and/or submitted, thinking that that was the right thing to do. The monster problem that I have gotten myself into now though is that many decisions have been made (because of my inability to assert myself, thinking that it was wrong to do so) that are causing me extreme unhappiness. Decisions such as moving away from a place that I loved to a place that I hate because my wife felt she needed to, and the monster that I hate to admit – having kids. My question I guess is this – how can I, as the slave/avoider/person who had the affair/partner who wants out, effectively lead us to somewhere better, to where I want us to be? My wife is too wrapped up in caring for the kids/church activities/family things/whatever to spend much time working on things, and she flat out told me that she feels that pretty much all of our problems are my fault and that she is waiting for me to “get better” because then the relationship will be all good. I am quite certain that that is not the case, but I am finding it nearly impossible to overcome my intense fear cycles in order to try and lead us. Any suggestions on what I can try? I just get very worried when you and M. Scott Peck in The Road Less Traveled say basically the same thing: that the avoider, someone with my upbringing, someone with my traits – will have a very very difficult, if not impossible time in trying to lead us anywhere. Not to mention trying to overcome the immense amount of invalidation I experienced in childhood all by myself.