A book which I feel is becoming a must-read for the left-behind spouse is The Journey from Abandonment to Healing by Susan Anderson. There is a blog post that gives some examples of the techniques Anderson discusses for putting yourself and your life back together.

Another good book for you to look at is The Solo Partner by Phil Deluca; it discusses much of the same stuff as Divorce Busting and Divorce Remedy, and also covers topics like emotional reactivity (here is a good article by Scott Ginsberg on the subject) and detachment (here is a Livestrong.com article on detachment). If you can work on detaching and overcoming emotional reactivity, you have some useful tools for when the rebuilding begins.

Next, work on yourself. The easiest way to start this is to read, read, read. 1000ships collected a whole bunch of good articles by James J. Messina, the author of "Developing Detachment" above, in this thread.

Psychology Today has a good series of articles that may help, as well:



Here are some other books to look at:

  • Getting Back Together by Bettie Youngs and Masa Goetz
  • His Needs, Her Needs by Willard Harley
  • The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
  • For Men Only: A Straightforward Guide to the Inner Lives of Women by Shaunti and Jeff Feldhahn



Me: 44, Wife: 39
M: 17 years T: 20 years
Bomb on 08/25/09
1/13/10: MC started
1/28/10, 2/8/10: More bombs
8/28/10: Wife moved out
No talk of D, no movement

"Every day is another chance to get it right."