New to this Community seeking advice

[MichelleLT]

It's not the time since she left that matters.

As you said, it's the time since you stopped pursuing, started working on yourself, that has made the impact on her.

The time she's had to see your changes.

You left things in a very different place this year. And that's probably a very good thing.

I think you have been pretty successful in reducing the negative emotions between you and your W. But have you rebuilt a friendship? I wouldn't say so.

What are your goals right now??? And I don't mean staying M, R. What are the small goals? To talk X times a week? To talk about something other than the kids?

R talk will be detrimental. It will probably force her to air her continued doubts - to justify why she is still S from you. Maybe it will even push her to file D again (since she probably has some guilt over dragging things out this long). Your lunch invitations were probably okay, but they were pursuit in a way, so you don't want to follow up your return home with something much more openly pressuring.

Any "R" talk you have with her might need to be an apology. A letter perhaps. Apologizing for your part in the M difficulties, expressing understanding/empathy of why she felt she had to leave, expressing how much you miss her and the kids, and expressing a desire to work on the M, but also saying that you want her to be happy.

I can only imagine how hard it must be to be home again. To miss your kids. To want them back to badly. To want to do something NOW to move things along. But understand, if you rush the timeline, you probably will rush into D. Probably, not certainly. You know your W better than the rest of us.

She may need/want to hear that you still want to work on the M. Or it could completely backfire. And none of us are very good at mind reading.

Think about it for a couple days.

You will not be D in 48 hrs. So sit on it, mull it over, and think about what will get you the best results.