I really appreciate your input on this. I am detached from my wife but that has been a deliberate (and a very hard) choice that I have made. I'm not sure if you have read the rest of my thread but when the bomb exploded she moved out, left a note saying she was in "two minds about us", took off to another country and got herself an OM. Also, we are far from our families and each other and have no kids - therefore we're not obliged to stay in contact with each other. So far we have only done so because we want to. Without doing a complete 180 and becoming the kind of person that someone would WANT to stay in touch with, I doubt that this could have been achieved.
The only contact we had for the first 6 weeks of separation was through email and one phonecall. The transition from a full-on, loving and passionate relationship complete with active sex life to intermittent email contact was very heartbreaking and very abrupt.
Therefore, once I got into DBing I reasoned that the only technique I had available to me was the LRT. There was literally nothing else I could do. I called a DB coach (Jodie) and followed her advice to the letter, got the books, read, and applied. Loving detachment is not an easy thing to accomplish - not at all but I had to do it for my own sanity and to give myself the best chance of saving my marriage. Seriously, the pain was searing at times but I had to get a grip of myself.
Since the bomb I have been working on handling my anger, selfishness and abandonment/rootlessness issues which has been wonderful. I have agreed with my wife that the separation was necessary as no other circuit-breaker would have forced me to take a good, long hard look at myself.
It's the decisions that she has made subsequent to the separation that has made me ambivalent about taking her back; the lies and hypocrisy. For example we agreed that we wouldn't date others, then she went ahead and did it. She said a whole lot of things and then did the opposite, then she put expenses on my credit card without telling me.
And, since the separation I have had several lovely girls show an interest in me and whilst I would much prefer to work things out with my wife, this gives me confidence that if it is all over I will probably find someone to love again once my psyche is sufficently healed. I know I sound really indifferent - years of working in sales and being at boarding school have made me cultivate an indifferent demeanour but I mean it when I say it that I really want to reconcile with my wife and create an even more wonderful marriage than we had before.
We had 2 miscarriages last year and that really tears both of us up. We never really were able to give each other any comfort about it and I think this contributed in some way to our marital meltdown.
Great to hear a woman's input on my situation!
Have a great Easter guys! GH31
Me: 46 W: 46 T: 23 M: 20 DS12 DD11 DS5
W left: 01/28/08 Discovered OM: 02/26/08 W back for 9 days: 04/08 W returned 05/21/08 EA/PA - 01/08-07/09 W's MLC 2008-2014 (realised this much later)
