The most important part of this is if you look at all of the success stories on this board, they all have one thing in common, the LBS detached and GAL and stopped worrying about what was going on. Their spouse saw this in them and noticed the change and realized their spouse was no longer doing the chasing, in fact if anything, they were doing the walking or it appears this way in their eyes as there are no more R talks and no more asking questions.
We all want what we can't have, or at least many of us do. This goes for almost everything in life, not just relationships. I will put this in golf terms for you.
Golf is one of the most played sports in the world, why? Because it is the hardest sport ever invented. Those that play golf have the mindset of being a scratch player someday so what do they do, they hit numerous buckets of balls, they stay on the practice green for hours at a time, they spend numerous amounts of money on lessons, they buy the most up to date equipment out on the market as they feel this will make them better. In most cases, these same golfers will never break par in their life. In fact I believe the %'s for scratch golfers in the world is 2-3%. Does this make the golfer stop playing, NO, they continue to try and reach their goal. This is something they may never achieve but they continue to play to their later years in life hoping someday for that miracle round.
Now let's move to something that we all achieve for the most part, we will keep this simple, do you remember how excited you were when you got your driver's license, you couldn't wait to drive, you had so much excitement and nothing could go wrong. Well this phases out after a while, it is no longer a challenge for you, in fact if your like many, you would rather someone else drive whenever you go somewhere. The excitement is gone.
Now let's talk about how this role applys to our M. Right now, we are the golfer searching for the perfect swing, spending all of the money trying to accomplish our goals, we won't give up and the local Pros love us because we are paying their salary, this is who we are. This is not who our WAS is.
Our WAS are driving the car with a driver's license that has gone stale, no more excitement to drive anymore, they have lost the urge to drive anymore.
What we have to do is turn the tables here, we are pushing for the perfect swing while our spouses are in a stale state that they just live with. How do we turn this around. This goes for saying, we want what we can't have. We have to become the driver now and not be excited about our license anymore, we go with the flow, let others drive us around or we take turns when we go somewhere. What this will do is show our spouse that we are fine where we are now, we no longer want that perfect "swing" anymore, we can live without it. This is what I have found where the success stories come from, the WAS suddenly becomes the golfer wondering how to get their "perfect swing". This does not happen if we remain in the golfer mindset about our M, it only happens when we move on and are not tempted to "drive" everywhere for our spouse. Our spouse sees we are no longer reaching out to them and trying to perfect our golf swings, this is what it takes to reverse the role.
I hope this makes sense for you, it all boils down to letting your WAS know you no longer need them, not by words but by actions, this will get their attention if there is any hope. I have found that many of the sitch seem to turn between 8-10 months after S. We all go through a learning curve, some may R earlier, some later.
So for us going through this tough time in our lives, stop reaching for the PGA status, it will not help our M, think more along the lines of doing everyday things that go hand and hand with driving your car.
