I'm just going to say this, even though I'm not sure that you are in the place yet where you can truly "get" it.
Cliche's are sometimes cliches simply because people use the expression too much. Other times they are cliches because there is a fundamental truth to them.
If you truly love someone(thing) set it free. If he does not return, he was never truly yours. If he does, you will know it is because he wants to be there.
I honestly believe that you will never see your husband truly move back in your direction until you finally reach the point where you have given up and let him go - FOR REAL. Until you reach the point where you have finally chosen to live life for you and give up existing on the scraps that are sent your way...until you value yourself as a person more than yourself as a spouse to this man...until you reach the point that you believe, truly believe that TOH can and will have an extraordinary life with or without your husband...I see little chance for movement.
Whether consciously or not, this man KNOWS that you are his. He KNOWS that you are going nowhere, that you are CAPABLE of going nowhere without him. And it is THIS knowledge that allows him to continue wandering, bouncing from here to there, trying this and that, with little concern that he is perhaps giving up something that will turn out to have been of great value to him.
We all loved our spouses deeply. We all cherished our married life and intended/expected it to last forever. And each of us learned through our own experiences and those of others on this board, that sometimes a person walks away from those promises.
Sometimes forever.
Sometimes for a season.
Your life MUST go on without him. You shortchange yourself by continuing to believe that you CANNOT live without him. You devalue your own worth as a person by believing that without him your life is somehow permanently disabled.
No one should allow another person to have that kind of weight in their life.
Once again, we ALL loved our spouses deeply. But eventually we came to realize that remaining static, trying to continue our lives like they were before our spouse checked out, that this kind of life is not really a life at all.
It is being stuck.
You succeed at this DB'ing stuff NOT only by restoring your marriage. You succeed when you find yourself and begin traveling down the road of becoming the person you once knew you were capable of becoming, with or without your spouse.
The door does not have to close.
You can choose to leave it open a crack. But you don't have to spend your days staring at the crack, waiting to see if he is finally going to emerge from it.
But you can't PLAY this get a life stuff. You have to actually do it. Make plans. Make decisions. Stop involving yourself in HIS things and start finding your OWN things.
Money is not an excuse. Neither is probation. Because this is NOT a material thing. It's an attitude and a life choice. One that you are capable of making if you so choose.
How amazed would your husband be to one day realize that he never hears from you anymore. How amazed would he be to find that you no longer invite him to dinner, that you no longer ask to be involved in the things he is doing. Wouldn't that at least carry the potential to make him think for a minute.
And again, if he never comes back even with all that, he was never yours to begin with.
Blessings,
Bill
"Don't tell me the sky is the limit when there are footprints on the moon."
