Detachment

[Deep]

Some really interesting posts here of late, and for some reason, I've gotten a tad more philosophical too. I re-read Coach's opening post, many of the threads, including SP's last post - which was a great post, but one which I don't really agree with 100% ... they all had an impact on me - so forgive me if I'm rambling here with some random thoughts and musings.

Detachment, GAL ... all part of the DB philosophy and a near Holy Grail that promises a path, or at least a potential path out of the abyss of pain LBS types find ourselves in. At the end, how much more is it than a path of self-discovery, self-improvement, and self-validation that we should have been on without being forced to look this way by circumstances inlife?

It struck me, what Coach initially said in his first post about letting go of outcomes. I would say it's perhaps more like letting go of desired outcomes. It's fine to say one does not give up trying, believing, wanting, but accepting that one does not control what the WAS does. But the reality seems to be, and particularly for the typical LBS, that it is all too easy to totally give up responsibility for the desired goal (e.g. the continued M), and your own role in it. "Gee, I detached my ass off; ah, I gave it all up to the hands of God; gosh, my WAS is the stereotypical alien, nothing got through". I've posted recently about the fine lines that exist in all the unique sitches here and the choices made, and this is yet another one. Letting go of the impact of other's choices on you as a person, but not your own best efforts and responsibility in working with them through their fog, in areas that will impact your life nonetheless. Else, why all the angst and trauma, and the agony of the effects on the kids in the M?

From the wisdom of many posters here, it seems a simple basic point is detaching is not to be confused with detaching from others, it's detaching from yourself, your needs, your wants. It matters not what curveballs the WAS throws at you if you did not inherently have pre-conceptions of what his/her affections, approval, and attitude towards you mean to you. You take a couple of steps back from yourself. Your spouse formed a pretty big part of the world outside yourself and somehow you have to find a new(?) balance between yourself, that outside world, and the status of your spouse in that world.

A balance so delicate that it makes you think - is it any wonder some LBS waver towards WAS mode themselves as they find their feet in that new environment?

And it is accepted as a truism - reclaim the responsibility for your happiness for yourself, grow a pair, don't surrender your happiness to your spouse and his/her actions. Sure, but how many LBS really, TRULY want and are prepared to do that? We recoil from the hurt of betrayal and rejection, despite ourselves we pursue, beg and plead, until one way or another we are told to "DB". And then what? We start to remove or reduce the power we surrendered to our spouses. But how often is it that we still hold onto a need for something in that world outside ourselves? We switch our dependence from our spouse to something else.

How many really take on the burden of being happy in our own right - LBS trauma being an unwelcome addition notwithstanding? And because these other things are temporal too, sometimes we can backslide, lured by the memories of a time when we shared a shared permanency in life, with that spouse who is now living on planet Zork.

"I'm going to be happy and have a fantastic life anyway, no matter what he/she chooses". Sure, I believe that too, but what is that "anyway" to each individual? ***

And the thought occurred to me, that at the back of our LBS mind, whether we admit it or not, whether we "DB'ed successfully" or not, there is this need, and really, we have to detach from it, bury it deep once and for all. Analogous to what SP termed "SAR", and for want of better terms, I would call this a need for "justice" and "empathy". Whether you've just being hit by the bomb, wherever you may be on that long, hard journey of healing most of us are on, even if you're deemed to be close to "DB nirvana", I think these thoughts have a teeny, weeny clawhold in the dark recesses of your mental palace you would never visit willingly.

You want some recognition of the crap you went through. You want someone to truly, really know how every fibre, every cell was ripped apart, even the "humiliation" of DB-ing, detaching, having to accept the alien and nudge him/her back, the 2X4's you had to take on THAT forum . You may not necessarily want to hurt your spouse (although thoughts of revenge is a common enough unspoken reaction), but you want the world to make some sense, have some balance, offer some sense and fairness for God's sake! Justice.

And most of all, what would you give for your pre-WAS spouse to see this, to have been / be there now for you, to have that soulmate, that see-you-through-hell-or-high-water-life-partner somehow come back and see your journey - all of it. And finally, to say those words never to be said: "You put me on this journey." And it doesn't matter, and never will again, because that soulmate embraces what happened with you, and that journey means nothing because the loneliness is now gone. Empathy.

And it will never happen. Because that's life. Whether or not your spouse finally returns, whether or not that return is real, or willing, easy, or hard, remorseful or tentative. You could show every post you ever written, every journal you kept, become a WAS yourself and put your returned spouse on the rollercoaster. It'll never be the same. You're never going to get that "justice" and "empathy". It's for you alone, to accept, and yes, embrace.

*** I have to go back to that earlier sentence. SP's post really made me think. One point he made was that DB-ing is to stop the D-train, not to fix the M. True, but I feel only partly so. Sure, there will be desperate times when you have to do just about anything to derail the WAS in full runaway mode. But hey, if you truly think detaching is for YOU, what makes you think it stops when the D-train stops (or if it disappears into the horizon for that matter?). You're not manipulating your spouse right? You're offering a better you, a better M for them to return to, for real. Right? And this vision, it ain't pie in the sky, it starts from day 1 and it ain't going to end, coz the one thing you will have learnt is that r/s and Ms aren't ever static, and you're never going to take that for granted, ever again. Whether this is with hopefully-soon-to-return WAS or not.

Ok, this rambling took even longer than I thought - my apologies. I'm not sure it even makes sense, but I'm glad to have gotten it out, and of course, no offense to anyone. Take this as venting from someone struggling to learn.