That's a good question, and a fair one, so I'll try to give it a fair (if not necessarily good) answer.
The first part of the answer is, "time." When I went to Big Midwestern City in April, around the time @polly posted her missive reproduced just above your post, I was finally able to detach in the sense that I was dropping (as @puppy put it at the time) a thousand-pound rope. One of my biggest fears from February to April, in that initial post-bomb shock and early DB phase, was that I'd never be able to go home again -- WAW and I had met in my hometown, and I courted her there, and so I was afraid that there would be too many associations.
WAW called me while I was in the art museum there and wound up gnawing on my ear for nearly 2 hours, and as I walked up and down Magnificent Boulevard in the rain afterward, it dawned on me that I didn't know that person anymore. But more to the point, I didn't know MYSELF anymore.
Around that time, a couple Florence Nightengales came back into my life -- one I'd known in high school and one in college. These were purely platonic/electronic exchanges -- both of them were experienced in the damnable World O' D.
And so we mutually commiserated, and told stories about our kids, and about our lives, and groused about the Republicans, and the usual stuff you do with old friends. One thing they both did, independently of the other, was tell ME stories about who I was to them back when they knew me -- and it was like hearing stories about a total stranger. I couldn't remember that I'd been That Guy (see many, many posts around the boards by @robx and some recent posts about Monsoor Le Shmedlap by @aliveandkicking). It was like meeting myself for the first time again. And I realized just how much of myself I'd subordinated to my M, how much of "me" I'd buried -- quite unconsciously, mind you -- to the task of being a "married man" to WAW.
And that's the second part of the answer -- I've found me. Sitting on a bar stool, wet and happy with the local papers, in the Happiest Place on Earth in Big Midwestern City, with the trains a'rumbling just outside the window, sipping on an Irish Coffee and chatting up the Young Lovely next to me, I decided then and there to Return To The Source -- to be, once again, the guy I once was.
And since then, that's what I've been doing. Now this is all a very long answer to a short question, but it matters for the following reason -- That Guy was indefatigable. He didn't just walk. In some respects, it was his downfall in a number of situations, but he stuck. It was a lesson he'd taken from his childhood, where everything was topsy-turvy and higgeldy-piggedly and upside-down, with an abusive, alcoholic father, and a demanding, borderline-abusive, my-way-or-the-highway-mother, and a neighborhood full of bullies eager to give the Young Smiley's Person his daily whippin' whether he needed it or not.
But -- That Guy was also decisive. When he decided, tortured as the decision might be, he acted. He could burn bridges -- and did -- and never look back in regret.
So.
For the time-being, I'm sticking. I'm waiting. I'm evaluating. I...have....time. Time is my ally; time is my friend. But there will come a moment of decision -- just look at our friends @Thinker and @aliveandkicking. And when that time comes, I will act. I will decide. Ruthlessly, cleanly, on the basis of all available information, and with an eye not only to what is good for Themselves -- which would, even 2 months ago, have been my sole criterion -- but also to what is good for Me.
This was a lesson I learned from a very important person on the Great European Getaway. Selfless decision sounds wonderful, very Christian if you will, but there's a reason why The Christ did it and the rest of us can't -- he was, after all, The Christ. (And I say that in all respect, though I be the Grand Poobah and Head Mo-fo In Charge of the Loyal Order of Heathen.)
How does that square with the notion that "it's best for the kids"? Fairly well, I think. The fact is, I never bought into the "staying for the kids" argument -- I think that's the wrong prescription for the problem. If a Walkaway is going to walk, s/he's going to walk because of the spouse, not the kids. But the Good of the kids ought to be a criterion, and I think (based if only on the many, many dialogs on these boards) it seldom is -- Walkaway tends on average to be pretty self-focused.
At this stage, the kids are living the Spiers Doctrine. Doesn't mean they like it, or that they're happy about it -- and in some ways, now the shock is wearing off, they're acting out about it -- but they are adjusting in their kidly way. Which is sad, but encouraging, because it means that they're not doomed and I, should I fail at closing the DB Deal, will not have failed them.
I'm 47. I've been happily single, I've been happily married, I've been unhappily married, I've been to war, I've been Smiley's Person, recipient of the D-bomb. That was all then.
We don't live all that long in my family, so I'm well on my way along the downward side of the power curve. And I can see there's a lot of world out there. That is now.
GALing did that. If only I'd known how much fun there was to be had! No, that's wrong -- that sounds like regret. I knew there was a lot of fun to be had, I just didn't think much of it was mine for the taking -- I was too focused on being The Husband and Father. Because my father didn't stick, I would stick -- by dam, how I'd stick.
So why haven't I walked away? I might; I might. I might not. It depends on whether WAW has 180'd, doesn't it? This "save your marriage even if your spouse has one foot out the door" is a clever idea, but -- as we all learn -- it imposes a disproportionate share of the work on LBS. And I did it. I did The Work. I bore the load.
Now I see myself as an Equal. I did my Job. WAW has continued on her path throughout, and that path has only detoured because of the intervention (or withdrawal of intervention) of Signore Schmuckatelli -- had that not happened, there's no reason to believe WAW wouldn't still be full-speed-ahead. WAW's possible/potential/theoretical change of heart (or, at a minimum, change of evaluations) was -- I have to believe -- precipitated more by Signore's dumping her than by my DB'ing (mind-reading! -- true enough, correlation is not causation, but the temporal linkage is, shall we say, curious).
So I'm going to do what WASs seldom do -- I'm going to keep an open mind and give her a chance. Is she worthy of the SP she helped create? That's a seldom-noticed dynamic in, for example, the Saga of @Coach and @Greek -- to hear Coach tell it, The Greek proved herself to be so. And to hear her tell it, she had the self-awareness to appreciate what her task was. Those are unusual people, which is why they are who they are.
I'm not convinced WAW has that self-awareness; if I know her at all, there will be a limit to how much crow she will permit herself, in her POV, to eat. She's an obstinate and prideful woman, and pride goeth before the fall -- but I've never seen her yet swallow her pride in favor of taking a fall, and that's not mind-reading that's 22 years of experience.
And mind you, I wouldn't force her to take that fall, but I suspect we will define the point at which she would become Wile E. Coyote to be quite different. She's impatient and demanding -- we'll go to Fabulous MC#2 a couple more times and she'll start demanding a decision -- I can't wait around forever, she'll say.
But me. I am on my side. I'm looking out for me. I owe that to myself -- to be That Guy once again (decrepit, Middle-Aged version though I be).
And time. Time is on my side. So I stand there, on the precipice. The only move will be to jump. To jump, and to see.
