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You know what? I do love myself, I know I do. But I don't think I know myself anymore. I think I was so grateful that H came back last time that I flushed the baby down with the bath water in terms of who I am and what my boundaries are. I wanted to save the M so much that I did things that were ultimately destructive to me in many ways

Hi, friend.

This sounds very much like something I heard recently in my now 3-going-on-4-month-long email chain with Foreign Female Friend, whom I've written about on my sitch (short story: went to HS together, she materialized in the alt in April, 1st time we'd spoken in nearly 30 years, now nearly every day -- she's 20+months into this craziness w/MLC+WAS).

What she's found most important -- most essential -- is rediscovering her sense of Self. We've been talking lately about the familiar "words and actions" dichotomy -- she'd said she was waiting "action" from her Wayward and would no longer pay attention to the words. It's like in Schnarch's Passionate Marriage where he says you don't have to believe something until you experience it.

I replied to her that "action" seemed too impersonal to me, because "action" often happens without thought. For me what has become important is "deeds" -- a "deed" requires what pointy-heads like Smiley's Person call 'agency,' IOW active human intervention, thought, decision, purpose.

So we've been chewing this over lately -- what should one count as a "deed," and -- more importantly for both her and for me -- what does one do, as the Left-Behind, when one sees a deed? FFF then had a conversation -- in her alt -- with the wife of one of her Walkaway's friends, who'd also experienced life with an MLC'er. Here's a bit of what FFF wrote to me recently:
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I'm glad in retrospect that she said that because it helped me to just know: he's gone til he comes back. I think anyone living with someone in MLC should have that piece of information because you stop engaging the 'now' with THAT person so much (because THAT now is not meaningful for YOU) and start working on figuring out who YOU are now and going forward. When I see some deeds and some vision for "us," I will know more whether that is something I want to re-engage. Because I've been gone and out seeing the world in as non-harming and genuine way as I could.

Of course what she means by that last sentence is that she finally figured out she couldn't remain Point A, Home Plate, Go + $200. She had to start moving along the colored path to see if she could reach Candy Land, too. Who he is right now is irrelevant at this point -- what matters is finding out who she is.

So when WAH returns, if WAH returns, he's going to have to cope with the fact that he's returning to someplace he's never been before -- to a "new" her, who happens to look an awful lot like the "old" her before she pushed all of her autonomy and independence of mind down to accommodate him.

Which, FWIW, I happen to think is pretty dam cool. Because until you know you, no one else can either -- not even H. But Smiley's Person suspects knows that you're more, much more, than what you see reflected in Monsoor's mirror.