I guess my opinion is somewhere in the middle of our friends Mike and AJM. I think the trick is to "lovingly detach". I think I have finally gotten there after over a year... To me, it feels like unconditional love for my W (like mike said). And by unconditional I mean that I will be loving even if she's not returning love. I will not let her moods and words affect how I feel about her. I also do not rely on her to make me happy, I know I did and that was a huge problem. That is how it feels to me at the moment. I think the difficult part is to detach and still keep the door cracked. The WAS needs to be able to peek in and see all the fun you're having! If you close the door completely, then how does the WAS know if they want back in?
I think you have made a EXCELLENT first step by just going out and having fun. It's good to be unavailable sometimes. If it makes you feel better, just pretend that your phone was on the charger in the car or something else completely plausible. Then when you get back to the car, you see the missed call and you can call back.
The thing to keep in mind with the advice/opinions you're getting here is that everybody's sitch is different and for someone whose WAS is having an affair, like JDOllie for example, you have to push the unavailability almost to ignoring the calls for the WAS to notice. (Read his thread and see how that is working the last couple of weeks). But in my case (and I think yours too), completely ignoring your spouse would be going too far. You are the only one that knows how far you need to go for them to notice. The point is to make them realize that your life does not revolve COMPLETELY around theirs. You have to show them a life that they want in on! And you will be making yourself happy in the process.
