Long Rant...Any thoughts?

I hardly know where to begin. To bring someone up to speed on everything that has led me to my current place, emotionally and otherwise, is a pretty long story. But I suppose it's necessary to tell if there's going to be any sort of cathartic revelation here. I chose this forum based on the outside hope that someone here could possibly help shed some light on what I might do to change some of the emotional ways I react to things that happen in my life. Perhaps the best way to tell the story is to start with where I am now and work backwards... I am a 40 year old man, married nearly 18 years, with two amazing daughters-8 and 10 years old. I have a relatively new, fairly successful business in which I get the opportunity to help lots of people. By trade, I specialize in helping people with cognitive disabilities who experience serious behavior problems. I've always found it to be challenging and very satisfying work. My career has been a bit of a whirlwind, with lots of different jobs, but always related to working with people who had behavior problems. I am now focused on being a trainer and presenter for agencies and schools that serve that population. I love my work. I get to stand up in front of hundreds of people, present myself in a highly articulate, funny, and meaningful way, and then sit back and have all sorts of people tell me how what I've said has touched them in some way. The end result is often that people with real problems get the help that they need, and that feels great. Plus, it pays pretty darn well, too!! I really like my life circumstances. I love my family so much. I really feel like I SHOULD be totally healthy from an emotional perspective, but I'm just not. It's not that I'm unhappy all the time. It's just that there are circumstances that arise every once in a while that send me spiraling downward, and I don't know how to handle them. They're the reason for posting here..... I was given up for adoption at birth, back in 1966. I know very little about my bmom and bdad, other than their ages, ethnic orgins, that sort of stuff. I was officially adoped just two months later in December of that year by my amom and adad, and I've been an only child since. Dad was in the Navy, and was gone for extended periods of time during my very early years, including one trip of nearly a full year, and others for more than six months at a time. All of this was, obviously, during the war in Vietnam. Some of my first memories are of going to the Naval base to greet my Dad as he returned home. Mom was/is an overbearing, judgmental, angry woman who had absolutely no idea how her anger and judmental nature could negatively affect a child. She was demanding, rude, and generally is not a nice person-although she sees herself as a wonderful, kind and generous individual. She's not. Just ask my wife. I was only in Kindergarten when my Dad retired from the Navy, and we all returned to their home town, a small community of about 14000 people, and I was enrolled in the local Catholic school. As I grew, I found myself moving through the Catholic and Public school systems, never really making any strong friendships-but never being freindless-all through the years. It wasn't until High School that I started to recognize that I had some emotions that I didn't feel equipped to deal with. I was angry as a teenager, and the source of that anger was always my amom. We fought bitterly through most of my teen years. She never liked anyone that I ever dated. My friends weren't really good enough unless they played golf at the country club, etc. Kind of pathetic. When I was a sophomore in High School, I met a girl that I would date for a number of years, on and off until just before my Senior year of college. She was absolutely gorgeous, and was head over heels for her. I truly was like a little puppy dog who would have done anything she ever asked. I can't help but wince when I think of how easily steamrolled I was during that time. But this is where I start to be able to identify some of the issues that I find myself dealing with today. I was absolutely petrified of having her "break up" with me. I was scared to death to experience that kind of rejection. Heck, that fear of rejection had prevented me from asking other girls out before, even when I really wanted to. If I thought there was even the slightest chance that they'd say no, I wouldn't do it. Rejection was so painful, and I just didn't (still don't) know how to handle it. Anyway, to make a long story one hair shorter, between my junior and senior years of high school, my girlfriend informed me that she had "cheated" on me with one of my childhood friends who I had always liked a lot. She just said that he was a guy she had always wanted to be with, and it "just happened." I remember acting pretty cool about it to her face, but then returning home that night to literally fall on the floor of my bedroom and just curl up in the fetal position for hours. I had literally no idea how to cope with the kind of pain that I felt, and it absolutely overwhelmed me. Even to this day, some 25 years later-and this is embarrassing to admit-it remains one of the most painful memories of my life. I know that it scared me off of girls for a few years, particularly at the beginning of college. I attended a major university, about 90 miles away from her. She came to visit me one weekend after we had been at school for about a month, and during her stay, she told me that she had been on dates with five different guys. I still hadn't recovered from the previous problem, and obviously, this was a huge blow. No fetal position this time, just a lot of burying of lots of feelings of anger, pain, and abandonment. I acted like it didn't hurt, but it sure as hell did. College continued. I dated some-maybe seven or eight girls during the next few years, but never anything serious. At the end of my junior year, I met the woman who would become my wife. Over the course of a few months, our relationship developed, and to put it succinctly, it has never actually stopped. We basically lived together during my senior year of college, and then more formally moved in together right after graduation. We married about two years later. During the early part of our relationship, we were absolutely tied at the hip. I didn't want to go anywhere without her, and she seemed 100% happy with that! We really didn't socialize with other people. We remained pretty solitary, and only developed friendships with some of my family members that were about the same age. Things felt really good to me, and there were never any "curve balls" thrown my way. Until something seemingly very innocent happened. My wife is a very talented musician-singer. Her education is in musical theater, but she stopped pursuing her degree when we moved in together. Once we had moved back to my hometown, one summer she decided that she wanted to participate in a local community theater production. It required her to be gone a lot-rehearsals were four or five nights week, and I was left alone at home a great deal. It just hadn't happened before, and I felt really lonely and to be honest, abandoned. I didn't know why she would want to give up so much time out of our relationship, and I was hurt by it. It was wierd. I knew that what I was feeling wasn't "right" in some sort of ethical way. I knew that I "should" have been supportive of her and her desire to do something that she really enjoyed. But I couldn't make myself actually feel those things. There was just too much pain, anger, resentment, and lonliness. And I made her life during the play miserable. I laid out every single guilt trip I could come up with. We got through the first play or two that she did. I didn't like it. I made her miserable, but something inside me told me that I "should" tell her to do what she wanted because I didn't want to be some control freak of a husband with self-esteem and abandonment issues! But then came the play where she had to play a romantic lead, and had to kiss another guy a bunch of times during the show. I had tried to become involved in things so that I could be more supportive. I even produced that stupid show. And there I was in the middle of this, watching my wife on stage doing something that was ripping my heart out. The fact that it was on stage meant absolutely nothing to me. It didn't matter. I just knew that it was absolutely killing me. I tried so hard to tell her what I was feeling, and she just couldn't understand. She really thought I was just being silly-and controlling. And maybe I was. But all I know is that even as I sit here and write this, I can still feel the extraordinary pain, embarrassment, anger, sadness, and same old familiar sense of abandonment that had felt all those years before in high school. That whole episode ranks right up there with the most painful experiences I've ever had. Many years have passed, and there have been more plays, and more situations like this. She's gone away with her friends a couple of times, but one time, her sisters asked her and the kids to go away with them for a week. I wanted to fall over and die. I felt totally rejected simply because she was willing to even consider the possibility. About three years ago, and I feel ashamed to have to talk about this, but it's part of the bigger picture, I became emotionally involved with someone that I worked with. I allowed myself to believe that because I wasn't crossing some sort of physical barrier, I wasn't "cheating" on my wife. It got out of hand, and let to me declaring that I no longer loved my wife, which was never the truth. As I look back on it, I think I was trying to pay her back for hurting me so deeply, and then denying that what occured was enough justification for the pain that I felt. I was so very angry, and I simply found someone else who would listen to me, and seemed to be able to relate to me without being judgmental. That other relationship is the most significant regret of my life, and I will likely never forgive myself for it, despite the fact that I understand why it occurred. I am grateful that my wife, who found out the entire extent of that relationship, has found a way to forgive me and we've been able to move forward together. So now we're at the beginning of another play, and there is also the possibility of her going on a trip with her friends to celebrate her 40th birthday. I thought the trip was for a couple of nights, but it was actually supposed to be for 5 nights/6 days. We've never been apart that long since we've been married-not even close. In the heart of the play, I am finding myself experiencing many of the old feelings again. Anger, resentment, abandonment. And I am embarrassed to admit that I still have no idea how to cope with them. I sit here, and as I type, the pressure that I feel on my chest is immense. Not some heart-attack inducing pain, but an awful, familiar sense that the person I love and care about the most just doesn't feel the same way about me. Or doesn't care enough to not do the things that I find so hurtful. I feel selfish. But I'm also hurting a lot. I feel controlling. But I also feel desperate for her to recognize how serious this kind of pain is. I want her to do the things that she loves. But I don't know how to handle the pain that it brings. I feel embarrassed over the fact that something so little as a play or a weekend trip can trigger such emotions. But I also know that there have been things in my life that have occurred that have led me to this place. We went to counseling before, and I've reached this point with some help. The problem is that I still don't know what to DO-to actually DO-when I'm confronted with these feelings. I don't know how to make them go away. The last counselor I saw simply told me that he couldn't tell me what to do-that I had to figure it out for myself. Well, that was over a year ago, and I'm still **** clueless.... Thanks for listening to the rant...........