Many women made their life & their goals based on what the life & goals of their husband & gave up everything of themselves for their husbands being totally unselfish. It sounds like this was the philosophy of your wife.....her goals were go make a good home & family life for the family but you saw those goals as trivial & unmeaningful & those goals she might not have been able to express because many women didn't even see them as goals but as just the direction life takes.

Some women depending on their background still have the old fashioned values.....interesting listinging to one of the Downton Abby shows, a comment hit me "Women don't have their own thoughts....they wait & have the thoughts their husbands tell them to have"......those were the old days, but many still hold those values especially if their main focus in life is to have kids & make a good home & family for them. You threw away her values because you trivialized them as being meaningless in your point of view & went in search of something that only served your own self & what you thought was meaningful in life, discounting your wife's values totally.

Your behavior was totally selfish....& I have a feeling from what you wrote that it's been haunting you over the years because what you moved onto wasn't all you thought it would be & the consequences of your behavior have been less than comfortable for you. I am honestly surprised that your wife is still willing to take you back after all of this but it just proves what her goals REALLY ARE even though you don't place any value in them.

You are the one that ultimately has to make your decisions on the direction you are taking your life & how it effects others who's lives you have touched by the decisions you have already made & the consequences that you are now experiencing. It's easy to make bad choices because they are usually the ones that only take our happiness into consideration......it's more difficult making the right decisions taking EVERYONE into consideration & choosing what is best for everyone, NOT JUST ourselves. We are all capable of doing this though we are not all willing.