Please help me to not give up............

[GFI]

I just wonder if I'm missing an important part of the DB thing, about showing strength and dignity.

Hi there Grant - I should say, from your posts, that you are showing an enormous amount of strength and dignity - you may feel like you're not showing it directly to your W, but you certainly are here - and I would venture that that must come through - leak if you will to your W - if not perhaps you might consider if you feel differently when you articulate your feelings on this board to when you interact with your W and think of ways of levelling things out a bit.

On this board, your posts come across with an incredible amount of insight, love and respect for you W.

How is it that she sees you? Do you think?

I can relate to your feelings of despair and frustration resulting from taking the friendship route - in many respects, given the pain we're in its far easier to simply adopt an antagonistic and hateful attitude - this panders to our raw emotion and offers a salve to it. IMO, to try to position ourselves as friends is counter to our primeval instincts and so wonder we are conflicted - up and down... However, there are plenty of people in favour of this route, myself included at the present time.

KBO - GFI