I was thinking about the topic SP has been bringing up about (paraphrasing) "What if WAS does not change - can there be a recondiliation into an R that is good for both parties INCLUDING LBS?"
My answer: YES
Reasoning: Both parties contributed to a dynamic in the R. If one party changes, the R will be different.
With all due respect, my brother, this is simply a restatement of the basic principle MWD lays out at the beginning of DR, right? If YOU change, then you PRODUCE change -- it's a kind of high school physics model of relationshipping.
And I bought into that for a long time, because it passes the common-sense test.
However, I would submit that you are begging the question when you impart "goodness" to the resulting, post-reconciliation R. It doesn't follow that, simply by one person's changing and improving, the R will change AND improve -- that's a joint probability. It strikes me as being just as likely -- perhaps more likely, given the relative percentages of divorces busted/not-busted, that the R could change but NOT improve. Or that the post-reconciliation R could prove unsatisfying to former LBS who subsequently becomes Walkaway.
It seems to me that if there is to be success in the mode of @Coach and @Greek, BOTH sides have to change -- it has to be a 100% new relationship, not a 50% new (+ some externality) relationship.
One thing we don't talk about a lot around here is the subject of expectations.
FFF and I were chatting about this on-line. She was telling me about a friend of hers who is a borderline Walkaway because, at the age of 50, she's decided that she deserves / wants / needs more sex and her H is unwilling / unable to provide it. This started me on the MWD Sex-Starved Marriage thing, and it struck both of us that we know a lot of people in SSMs.
And then I asked -- as is my wont -- why we assume a marriage is sex-starved. Is it the case that, in Days of Yore, people had more in-couple sex? Or is this an artifact of social expectations? The comparison I used was adolescent girls with body-image problems -- the media creates an ideal type, and we fail (inevitably) to live up to it, and then we look for someone blameworthy. In the case of the eating-disorder victim, she looks at herself; in the case of the SSM, we look (typically) at the spouse.
But is that fair? Is it right? Upon which expectations do we base our evaluations -- our evaluations of ourselves-in-marriage ("change, ye LBS!, for ye failed to live up to expectations!") and our evaluations of what we expect from couple-hood?
Define your N.U.T.S., says that irritating book, which echoes in your comment, "You need to make it clear to her that those things are important to you and reinforce that if she does not."
But isn't it possible that I -- and WAW -- have already defined that N.U.T.? Isn't it indeed within the realm of possibility that Walkaway, before walking-away, has already defined a N.U.T. and LBS just doesn't make the cut? So what is divorce-busting but an attempt to get around Walkaway's pre-existing N.U.T.?
I've defined my absolute N.U.T. -- I will not be a second-choice. Not now. Not at age 47. Not having survived war. It will be incumbent upon WAW to prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I would not be the Number Two Man, some kind of Kohai to Signore's Senpai. More to the point, I won't be Number Two to her. Whatever happens -- if anything happens -- beyond simple Friendyness, has to be based on absolute equality. And right now I don't see her treating me as an equal and, increasingly, I'm not sure she's interested in being my equal. We still appear to be in the table-scraps-to-the-dog mode.
