Hi PM, So I found your thread and tried to get caught up on where you were and where you find yourself now - and it seems like you're doing fine...it might not feel like it - hell, how could it, but you are doing fine - since I can hear the strength and the right kinds of questions coming through your words.
My wife (whom I just refer to as B - not for any couched insult - just based on a nickname I had for her) moved out of our home in November...just in time for the holidays...and it was the most painful experience of my entire life - but also turned out to be very necessary. It's only been in the months since she moved out that I've come to understand a lot more about myself - and about why our marriage hit such a crisis point.
One of the big, and I mean BIG problems I had was in learning to detach - and I think it was partly because I learned the lingo here so quickly - that I just started to echo it effectively enough to convince people that I had detached...even when I hadn't....and that's part of the reason that I now say (and repeat a lot) that detachment may not be an act/action so much as a point that we reach...I read above that you want to detach more...and that's the right idea...but I truly believe that the only way to achieve detachment - and for it to be healthy - is to GAL and find a way to feel and then sustain a PMA.
Of course, it may not be that way for everyone...but when I read the threads it seems to follow often enough that people who find themselves, get healthier and then detach - often end up with the healthiest outlook on their R/M...sometimes it means reconciliation makes sense and they rediscover the resolve to work toward it...other times, as was the case for me, the detachment yields enough space and peace to see things that were surprising...particularly as one find a new level of honesty with oneself through detachment...and for me, it was painful...very painful...like mourning a death...but it healed a lot of issues I had been struggling with - and which I had been afraid to face...Fear...that's something that I see differently now - never as an obstacle, always as a signpost to me of something that I need to address - face, tackle, process and overcome.
