Help Me Act AS IF, Part 5

[newnamenewlife]

I know I do need to let him go. I haven't actually been forcing him to stay, though. Several times I have told him that if he's so eager to leave, he should go live with his parents, 12 miles away. He responds to that by saying it would be inconvenient in terms of seeing the kids. Well, tough! That's not my problem. I haven't stopped him from finding an apt either. He's been stalling, and what irks me now (as I believe I have mentioned 80 or 90 times!) is that he's kind of tossing the ball in my court, saying if I don't go to a L or mediator with him, he can't move out. WHY? The few people I know who are S dealt with the basics between themselves and later went to a L for a D.

Plus, from all that I've read here about how to DB, you're not supposed to be an active, willing participant in the S or D.

I was being very strong, very good at DBing, very GAL and all that and I guess I've hit the wall again. Friends and family seem so shocked by what my H is doing, given what they've known of us, and they all say it's MLC, a phase, that he'll snap out of it--so then I think of course he will.

All my friends keep telling me how impressed they are with how well I'm handling this, that they'd fall apart, etc. I do fall apart, and I share my most neurotic thoughts/behaviors/struggles here--so that's the side the board sees mostly.

In fact, I have been a lot stronger and more self-reliant in many little ways. H noticed that I took the initiative and drove out to see a friend's new apt yesterday. I am not a second-nature driver at all (grew up in a city, no car) and normally I'd have waited til H was around to drive there since I'd never been to that area. I was also in the car with him recently and I insisted on filling the gas tank--which he always does. Is this enough to get him to come back to me, though? I doubt it.