I am a little confused and grant it I have only read the last few posts. I was on this site DBing my husband as he is the one that kept saying marriage wasn't for him and that he doesn't feel married, was in EA with another women. I finally left due to all of this and I couldn't take his lack of affection (yes we ML almost everyday but I am talking about hugs, kisses, little things), his coming and going when he felt like it, and his lack of commitment to the marriage. So I guess I am now a WAW. It seems as you (BeTheMan) ignoring your wife's response when she says "this is not final" is not what will bring her back which I am assuming is what you want. If my husband continues to not contact me, GAL, etc. I will assume that he really doesn't want the marriage since he is not pursuing me. Does this make sense?
What is the end goal? It seems like one person has to be willing to wave the flag to get on the road to reconciliation. What if both people are DBing...
BTM's wife has moved out and gotten herself an apartment. She wouldn't need an apartment to live by herself if she was starting a new career, getting a new education, etc. She wouldn't need an apartment to live by herself if she wanted to work on the marriage. She would need an apartment to pursue a "single" life.
I even remember reading that BTM wrote that she went out with a male friend just as friends to a movie or to a restaurant or something like that. Seriously this can not be construed as "working on the marriage".
Does BTM want to fix his marriage and reconcile? Probably, but he won't fix his marriage by pursuing her and telling her that he wants her to come back. He'll get there by detaching, not starting relationship talking, limiting relationship talk and moving on with his life. If it was easy enough for her to move out and leave her family to pursue a bachelor's pad, she currently doesn't associate a whole lot of value with BTM and he's working on proving to himself (not her) that not only is he high value, that when the BTM train leaves the station, it will be her loss, not his. He's been pursuing her for so long trying to get her to change her mind about the marriage and the commitment to each other and that process didn't work.
Moving in the other direction works, detaching works, dropping the rope work, GAL'ing works, acting as if everything is awesome and moving on with your life works, pursuing DOESN'T WORK. He's doing ok. In fact, if I had to venture a guess, I'm sure his wife offered those kisses to him, I'm sure he didn't go up to her and pursue her for a kiss. She did this because he stopped pursuing and she naturally filled the void of space in between them.
