Look, Don - I've gone through the same thing for the last couple of years. Now, my four kids are older (21 through 14, the oldest now out of the house), but still, I can identify with your profound feelings of rejection.

It's important that you regroup, and learn to take back your self-view. If you're like me, then being married to someone with severe self-esteem / bipolar / emotion regulation issues has caused you, over the years, to route your own feelings about yourself through her eyes. So, when she valued and adored you, you felt valued, but if she emotionally withdrew and isolated herself, or took her emotions elsewhere, your first kneejerk reaction is to self-assess and identify what you did wrong. Even if it was something small, you probably pegged it as "the issue," and then worked overtime to correct it. I do believe that the technical term would be "walking on eggshells."

I was talking to one of my friends about this the other day - my point was that one of the biggest gifts these spouses gave to us, aside from a sense of purpose, was the luxury of not having to deal with our own crap - we were too busy living a life as a responder to their actions. You almost have to live like that if you don't know any better, because the weather can change so dramatically even within a single day.

I don't know if your wife is (as my counselor puts it) "emotionally disabled," but it sounds like it. You need to understand that part of loving someone like that is understanding that artifice plays a huge role. They have such a hard time (or critical inability) dealing with the human experience as fallible and imperfect that they need to have everything be a certain way in order to function - but of course, the only constant in life is change, so long-term relationships are rare for someone like that who does not learn healthy coping strategies. And, because you are fallible and imperfect, my friend, it's just too easy to point out your flaws. It's also part of one of my favorite side-effects of self-esteem issues: transferrence. You mention that she was talking about what a horrible person she is. Let me guess - there were other times when she could not take any responsibility at all for her actions, and instead she dumped them all on you, for you to own. It's a coping mechanism that doesn't work - that's why they go back and forth between blaming you, and blaming themselves.

So - it's time for you to stop blaming yourself for not providing something that you should never have tried to provide.

When you love someone as deeply as we loved our wives, you want to be able to fix them. You want to believe that your love is so strong, so true, that surely. . . .that one day will come when the sheer force of your devotion will knock enough bricks out of the wall that the sunlight will do the rest. It doesn't work like that, though. Self-love is not something that you can provide to another person. You can, however, show your children (and your wife) what it looks like.

Have you ever wondered what lessons you teach your children when you actively receive the role of enabler? I didn't get this realization until my wife left. I thought I was teaching them how to stay the course, not give up, be there for the family, etc. Now, I might have taught them that, but in sacrificing my sense of who I was, I was teaching them another lesson - that when they grow up and have a family of their own. . . . .their lives will no longer matter. The only thing they have to look forward to, as a source of fulfillment, is to be a support vehicle for other people. I want more for my children than that. So, I have to show them. I have to show them what it means to embrace myself as a worthy and valuable complete person, if I want them to do the same.

Besides that - if they've dealt with these things from their mother, you need to pay attention to how that will affect them when they are older. You don't get to choose their path, but you can influence them by showing what it looks like to walk confident and strong, with love as your guide and a song in your heart.