Maybe not too complicated to understand

[Michael Mc C]

your heart might not thank you for it...

So true...

Well, I've really been trying to dig into this detachment. I found the following on the web (hope there's no copyright). Maybe it could help others - it's helped me put some clarity around detachment and also has served as a checklist of sorts.

In order to become detached from a person you need to:

• Establish emotional boundaries between you and the person with whom you have become overly enmeshed or dependent on.
• Take back power over your feelings from people to whom in the past you have given power to affect your emotional well-being.
• "Hand over" to your Higher Power the persons which you would like to see changed but which you cannot change on your own.
• Make a commitment to your personal recovery and self-health by admitting to yourself and your Higher Power that there is only one person you can change and that is yourself and that for your serenity you need to let go of the "need" to fix, change, rescue, or heal other people.
• Recognize that it is "sick" and "unhealthy" to believe that you have the power or control enough to fix, correct, change, heal, or rescue another person if they do not want to get better nor see a need to change.
• Recognize that you need to be healthy yourself and be "squeaky clean" and a "role model" of health in order for another to recognize that there is something "wrong" with them that needs changing.
• Continue to own your feelings as your responsibility and not blame others for the way you feel.
• Accept personal responsibility for your own unhealthy actions, feelings, and thinking and cease looking for the person you can blame for your unhealthiness.
• Accept that addicted fixing, rescuing, enabling are "sick" behaviors and strive to extinguish these behaviors in your relationship to the person.
• Accept that many people in your past and current life are "irrational", "unhealthy", and "toxic" influences in your life, label them honestly for what they truly are, and stop minimizing their negative impact in your life.
• Reduce the impact of guilt and other irrational beliefs which impede your ability to develop detachment in your life.
• Practice "letting go" of the need to correct, fix, or make better the people in life over which you have no control or power to change.

Regarding my wife's on-line 'addiction', the red statement above is right where she's at.

The item in blue is one that I find to be a key point for me. In order for my wife to see what she's missing by losing me, I need to be "healthier" myself, i.e., I need to continue getting a life!

I still struggle with my feelings of sadness for HER due to her constant need to be online in one way or another. It could be that this isn't really a detachment issue if I truly own my feelings:

"Continue to own your feelings as your responsibility and not blame others for the way you feel."

I don't blame her for my 'sadness'. Maybe it's just love getting in the way.