A new thread, a new outlook.....

[Can it work]

That's the thing Mark. It's always easier to give advice than to take it.

Right now I'm in a position where I do feel quite good in myself and I'm successfully GAL as much as I can. I've accepted the fact that I can't change my wife but with that acceptance there's still frustration. In a way, if you're getting the outbursts and the mood swings you can gauge your progress in DBing. If you're only getting indifference it's often impossible to tell if any of your efforts are working or not.

You've not worried me about it as I was already fully aware of the meaning of my wife being indifferent. Hopefully, it is just a phase that will eventually play itself out. I'm not ready to throw in the towel just yet anyway.

Even though you suspect your wife is with OM that doesn't mean that it's all over for you either. Some of the self-help material I read even saw it as a good thing in certain respects. I'll quote what it says:

"Someone on the rebound rarely mates for life with the next person they date. This probably won’t last long. In fact studies show that 90% of rebound relationships do not work out. So, if you play the odds and keep your cool while they are dating, you can position yourself very well for a reunion. On the other hand, if you freak out and make a ton of mistakes because you are in panic mode, then you are that much further from getting back together."

One of the other issues I have with my sitch is that I'm fairly sure there's not anyone else involved. That means the problem isn't that she's moved on to something fresh and exciting, it just means she doesn't want to be with me. That's a hard pill to swallow.

Still, I persevere in the hope that in improving myself my wife will once again come to see me as an attractive option. I'm still hurting inside about the separation at times but the pain has dulled considerably over time. That's definitely down to me GAL. I also now know that I no longer need my wife. I do still want her though. That's the main place you need to be in my opinion. I know can live a happy life without her but I'd prefer to have my family whole.

So, in a nutshell, I'm DBing as much as I can from day to day even though I have no indication if whether what I'm doing is working. I know in the early stages that what I was doing definitely wasn't working but now I have no idea. That's where I'm struggling at the moment.

Kev