Hi Sue Have been reading your threads glad all is going well for you. I think you are actually in just the place you should be now. As Michelle says "The relationship should be the icing on your cake, not the cake itself". The detaching is not so you can stop loving them, but so you can stop needing them.
It's a different way of loving someone, and its not exactly what most people would call an ideal kind of love. The general idea is romeo and juliet, I can't live without you. But that is an immature kind of love based on your feelings. How they make YOU feel. The things you need should come from within, self validation or inner peace as they call it. You don't need him to be complete. You just like him because he is nice. Just like you don't need chocolate.
Now you are freer to be yourself you can tell him how you feel without worrying what he might do and that is the basis of good communication. The thing is that detaching isn't a technique to get your H back but how you should be living your life. Your r is better now because you both have the space to be yourselves. You want to keep that going.
I think you are right about him not moving back in yet living together in a small flat is not the best environment for an r. I remember the dreadful fights my H and I used to have when we lived together in a small room, and really we had no problems in our r. It was just so intense being cooped up together like that, little things got blown out of proportion. You couldn't walk off into the garden and calm down.
The way you feel about your H has changed. This is a time for the two of you to get to know each other again. Take it slow and keep detaching. A book I like is Life and How to survive it by John Cleese and Robin Skynner. It is based on the work of Robin who is a family therapist and looks at how the most healthy families behave. Guess what? They aren't dependant on each other they are there because they like each other.
BTW re your H MLC when I first met my H I was only 17 and I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. I kept changing my mind, often to rather silly ideas. He is 10 years older than me and it is his life's dream to stay in the same place doing the same job forever. He was very supportive to me though, let me do whatever I wanted, never laughed at my ideas however mad they were. Eventually I realised that I didn't want to go off somewhere exciting and achieve amazing things. I stopped feeling like I had to prove myself and realised I wanted to spend my life doing the things that make me happy. Ordinary every day things. A job which I like but isn't exactly a brilliant career. A nice little house. Spending time with friends and family. Most of all being with my H. It took me ages to realise this and I tried out quite a few things before I did. But now when I look back I always think how grateful I am to my H for being so nice about it all.
