Is this the end of my marriage?

[P17]

This is what I don't get. My X is totally with the OW. So I am GALing, acting as if, acting cheerful around him-but we have almost no contact. So those are DB techniques, but as others have advised, while he is actively in the A, there is no R to work on.

GALing is not about the OP. It's about you. You GAL to make YOURSELF feel better. If it affects him then great, but it's nto for him.

Cutterbug seemed to be advocating moving on with a tiny little spark of love for your X locked in your heart--just in case. But this also seems to lead to emotional limbo land.

Moving on is not an emotional limbo land. Not at all. What you do is you stop the rollercoaster and say 'Im getting off'. You get off and you keep that little bit of love you had for your WAS locked away in your heart. You keep it there for you. You don't keep it there for them. The alternative to not having that love is indifference, apathy or hate. None of them you want in there. You are a good person. You had good times. You were in love.

You walk away with that love and those memories and you walk away with a heart that contains love, not hate.

If, one day, the WAS wants to talk then you can deal with them in a loving caring way as you still have a little bit of love for them.

The alternative is to get bitter, twisted and filled with hate and anger. And if one day the WAS comes back to talk, you explode that hate and anger all over them.

Hate and anger destroys you. Locking the love away keeps the hate and anger away.

So I am totally conflicted about dating. I don't want to lead anyone down any garden path, and if I am not ready to date, I shouldn't. I said a little bit about still being in an emotion ping-pong state, just putting myself out there to see what it's like--trying to give a gentle clue that I am not REALLY ready to start an R, but am trying to see what the world is like.

There is nothing wrong with seeing what is out there. Are you strong enough to resist temptation though?

Is that fair enough? I DO NOT want to be a jerk!

IMO, you shouldn't date until you are ready. The first thing a man wants to do when an R ends, is replace it with another one. It's the wrong thing to do. It's also one of the hardest things to resist (read some of my older posts and you will see).