Howdy Q! Your thread and posts reminds me of my wife and I a few years ago. If I may share our experience:
I left kicking and screaming and full of vitriolic anger in 1989. Nina stayed in. However, unlike your wife, she got very little sympathy. Mostly the congregation ignored her apparently feeling a woman without a man just doesn't matter.
She and I used to have arguments almost daily, usually with me ripping a Watchtower or throwing one of their books against the wall. But at our core, we were two people who loved each other deeply. I used to tell her we were two people holding on to each other while the storm winds howled around us.
After a year or so, we settled on this: I wasn't going back; I wouldn't try to get her out; she wouldn't try to get me back (although she broke that one several times!). We decided that we were more important than anything else and we would do nothing to hurt the other.
It stayed that way for 13 years. We even decided to start a family. My compromise was to let her take them to the Hall. It wasn't perfect and in retrospect I wish now I had stood up to her and the cult more. But again to us, our marriage was more important.
In 2002 our 6 year old son came down with viral arthritis. He was in screaming pain for 6 weeks. By this point, Nina was not very active but she missed meetings and service for 6 weeks because of his illness. Naturally no Witness called or came by and when she went back to the Sunday meeting she wheeled our son in the Hall in his wheelchair. No one commented on it, and the one elder that did come up to her only wanted to know what her service time was.
That did it for her and she left and never went back. We're both out now and our son is happy and healthy; the arthritis went away.
So I guess my advice to you is you first need to find out what's important to you. Now that you're out, (and still sane!), what do you want out of life? And is there anyway your wife can go along with you? Not physicaly leaving the organization, but can she stay with you as you grow and, ultimately, change? If she can't, then you've got some tough choices to make. In my case, Nina could not, so I did not celebrate holidays and so on. I wanted to wait for her as I believed deep down she would eventually see the light. Of course I didn't think it would take 13 years.
I'm not saying this is the only way, or the right way or any of that. This is what we went through and we came out intact because that was what was most important to us.
I would recommend patience at this point. You need to give yourself some time as well as your wife.
Hang in there.
Be well,
Chris
