Oh, whine away--whining helps to keep those expectations from getting too high!
Dday, it looks as though you were lucky that your wife was an anomaly, because everything that Michele WD, our MC, and other piecers here wrote, indicated that spouses generally feel an addiction to their OW comparable to, say, heroin addiction, and require a similar kind of withdrawal. In fact, I trusted more that my H was getting over OW (and that it was an addiction, not genuine love) because I could actually watch his symptoms diminishing.
Kissak, I'm glad you're past that part, and agree that OW sounds like history. But it's really only after your S has no crutches/self-medication left that he's able to do the hard work of owning up to the pain he caused, and acknowledging what he needs to change in himself. As long as you can see him making progress in these areas, it's worth it to hang in.
The best way to be able to strike a balance between remaining detached and letting the walls down sometimes, is to be happy with yourself, and your life, independent of your H. Are you keeping up you GAL activities? Do you do 180's for yourself--trying new foods and activities, new ways of interacting with others--to keep from falling into a rut or taking yourself for granted?
It's a good start that you can feel your H's love. Before my H started saying "ILY," he started calling me by all my pet names again, and holding me lovingly again (as opposed to during his MLC, when he might have been hugging a fencepost). And he'd reminisce a lot about our early days together. Again, any positives like this are signs he's continuing to progress. I don't notice that you're doing MC--any chance of doing that? I felt it speeded up the whole process.
