The advice of "work on you for you" is given to many here while they're going through all this.
I was trying to figure out why some, including myself, cant seem to grasp or follow through on this. Then it occurred to me:
To work on onesself, one first has to own up to things that need working on. That in and of itself is a hard pill to swallow when one is feeling so emotional and betrayed by someone leaving. Mainly because the initial reaction is if they left, there must be something wrong with them, not the one who was left.
To do this for onesself, one has to admit to things that they dont like about themselves. If one is more or less content with him/herself, one is likely not to be interested in changing anything for themselves, but for the purpose of attracting their spouse back...because their spouse is the one who didnt like something about them.
Another possibility is that people in such a state as they are when they come here, feeling the way they do about their spouse, arent interested in putting forth a lot of effort into something if it isnt likely to bring their spouse back to them. The attitude is why should I work on X and make myself a better person if I'm not going to be a better person with my spouse.
I fear that this third possibility is where I may have gone wrong. I could(am) work(working) on myself...and end up winning a Nobel peace prize...but if I dont have my ex to share it with it doesnt seem worth it.
After saying that, I'm convinced that that is my problem. My ex was a huge...huge...motivator in my life. She was my reason for getting out of bed in the morning...and I'm starting to believe she was my reason for taking care of D3 and the house as well as I did.
So it would stand to reason that doing anything now, as before, I am motivated by her and de-motivated by the lack of her.
I'm guessing that this is the co-dependency that keeps coming up.
So what that says to me is...if I can tackle the codependency first, then maybe I can start working on me for me without regards to my ex.
