I thought of something else that makes me angry. We are admonished in DBing to look coldly at ourselves and our role in the D. What was Walkaway asking for / needing / looking for that we didn't provide? "Do you hear what Walkaway is saying? Are you speaking Walkaway's love language?"
But there's relatively little said about looking at the underlying dynamic there; why did LBS begin (for example) to shut down? What was Walkaway failing to provide?
This struck me today while thinking about @Kettricken's posts (and no, we're not 5 but there are some words that we can finesse in the interest of public discussion). WAW didn't even get me a card on our anniversary, which was 3 months before D-Day, or for any number of my recent birthdays or even Valentine's Days - while I never forgot. Now that sounds trivial, and perhaps it is, but the fact is she was withdrawing her affection over time and simply sat around (apparently) waiting for me to figure it out. Now perhaps I ought to have been able to do so, but how do you do that - just let someone soldier along in blissful ignorance while simultaneously getting angrier and angrier that the person doesn't get it? If it mattered, if you wanted it, wouldn't you say something? The most I got from WAW was "things need to change or something's going away" - and to this day she insists it should have been "obvious" that she meant "divorce." In hindsight, maybe, but she said it in this casual way (sorting laundry) - how was I supposed to know "this was it"? No, she just let me meander down the primrose path while she pulled all affection (and sex) from me. And the one time she decided to m/l before the Bomb (and the first time in 4 months at that), she stopped me in mid-foreplay and said "ugh, this is boring."
So WTF? When do I get to assess what I wasn't getting out of the M and when do I get to give that equal due, equal respect, to what I take to be my own shortcomings in the R?
As for when you get to assess what you weren't getting out of the marriage... NOW. This is your time to determine every single thing you didn't get out of the marriage. You're in the unique situation of being the LBS who is now becoming the WAS, the dynamic is changing, your wife is showing subtle signs of pursuit, nothing major but let's admit that she wasn't pursuing at all for a long period of time, any movement in this direction when she was going in the opposite direction originally would be considering her pursuing you.
As for the WAS and their lack of communication. When you start to hear things like "things better change or something is going away" or something to that effect, the decision has been made already at their end, they're just counting the tick tocks on the clock at that point when to make their move. They've been keeping a mental scorecard of everything the LBS does inadequately. Women have a portion of the brain that is more developed for emotional intuition and communication, that's why they are great at communication with with their girl friends: they read each other and talk to each other quite easily, the conversations flow. However men don't have the same development in this area and NO we're not idiots, it's just an area that we're not created equally and that's just a plain scientific fact. We have other "gifts", we have more testosterone, we grow more muscle, we're physically stronger, we're better suited at hunting, physically fighting (well that was before classes like TAE-BO and before UFC became popular with women). Women have better abilities at performing tasks, organizing, etc. There are differences between the sexes. Getting back to my point, women & men, the communication struggle will always be there until men get an education in this area - I'm seriously believing that our education systems need to involve this in the curriculum at one point. We're not emotionally intuitive (at least not to same level, I can't actually say we're NOT), we can't read women's body language as well as we should be able to, it's possible this ability was phased over so many generations - who knows. We're not emotionally intuitive, our communication skills aren't as developed as women (I'm not talking reading/writing, I'm talking conversation communication, listening and replying back & forth, etc.). If we had these sames skills, we would pick up on these issues with women alot earlier. Once you have an education in this area, it isn't a magic trick anymore, it is possible to see the signs, anticipate the issues, read the body language, respond accordingly, and all the while still being the masculine man that these women need for their security, to keep their attraction ramped, to keep them giving back as much as they're receiving in the relationship, etc.
No it's not fair, it sucks having to learn all of this after the fact but then again, no one said life is fair and if you hadn't gone through this process SP, you wouldn't be anywhere near the man you are today and the skills you have picked up thus far have got your wife at least looking in your direction - she is the fish that has seen this hook before but the bait has changed and she is very cautious as to whether she wants to bite that hook again because she expects the same results as the last time and that's not what she wants. Your advantage here is that plain & simple... you don't want those same results either, or the same relationship, the old one is dead (by your own account), the new one has to be something different otherwise why bother?
