From my little stash of archived quotes, one of my fave posts ever. It's by RobX.
I can't count how many situations I've read in these various forum posts where the LBS is making real progress, their WAS is warming up to them again, calling them, interacting, communicating, smiling, spending more time, doing things together, emailing, texting, etc. And after 1 or 2 days/weeks, the LBS figures it's time to press the WAS for marriage counselling or talking about the relationship and reconciliation. It took a few years to damage your relationship but you figure after a few weeks of peaceful interactions with your WAS that it's time to force them to make a decision about reconciling with you. You are all very "unique" in this respect. You all do this or will do this in your own "unique" ways.
Here's a novel idea.... the WAS that left you because they didn't want to be with you is suddenly spending more time with you, suddenly communicating with you more often, doing things with you, smiling with you, is comfortable with you. Keep doing what you're doing! Don't bring up relationship talk, talks of reconciling, enjoy the moment! Stop worrying about the future, you don't know what tomorrow will bring so stop worry about tomorrow, enjoy today if today is the day your WAS wants to talk with you and share a drink or a meal with you or wants to do something with you & the kids. Be humble and appreciate the time you have with them, don't hasten the process and demand that things have to change and that you need to reconcile at this moment. Consider this a form of dating even if it isn't officially labeled as such. Stop forcing your spouses to have to be with you. If you have to force someone to love you and be with you, do you really want to be with those people? If those same WAS's make moves towards you, to communicate, to spend time with you & your children, to come over, to share a meal, etc. Enjoy that time you have with them, celebrate a success internally with yourself that you were able to accomplish something of such a grand nature when this WAS originally left you and never wanted to interact with you anymore. Stop asking for more, start appreciating what you have and stop believing that you deserve more than what you have - truth be told no one deserves anything, you get what you get in life because you placed yourself on that path to get the results you received. Stop believing you are entitled to something, entitlement breeds resentment and that will lead you down a path of anger & disappointment and poor results.
Rebuild yourself, change yourself for you first. Become a better person for you. Reclaim your individuality. You were an individual before you were a part of this relationship with your WAS. It was your individuality that made you attractive, learn what it is to become you again, enjoy being you, continue pressing forward, personal development is a lifelong process, don't be lazy with yourself, be the best you that you can be.
The repair process is slow, anyone preaching a quick fix does not know what they're talking about.
There are also many methods to possibly accomplish the herculean task of repairing your marriage, "busting your divorce". Many of us will have many ideas on what you can do to accomplish this task. None are guaranteed to work, remember there are no guarantees. But if you fail to act, you are acting to fail and will achieve those results. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over & over again and expecting different results. So one piece of advice that will be common to all of you, do things differently from what you are doing now and please stop whining and saying "I can't do this", "I can't do that", it's that same attitude that got you into this mess to begin with - you can do it, you just don't want to do it and it's that same attitude that prompted your WAS to leave you.
