[Gardener]

I mean, what's the basic mantra in the DB community -- figure out what you did 'wrong' to contribute to this outcome: "I think I wasn't supportive, but of course that's just my perspective, so it doesn't really matter."

This is a fascinating observation, and many (Gucci, for one) have posted about it: the natural tendency in DBing to start with the assumption that the betrayed/left-behind spouse is somehow deficient, has done something "wrong," and therefore needs to be "fixed" in order to attract back the wayward/walkaway spouse.

In The Journey From Abandonment To Healing, author Susan Anderson lists the third of the Five Stages Of Abandonment as "Internalizing the Rejection," which includes

Idealizing the Abandoner
Impotent Rage (victim)
Isolation and Shame
Indictment (of self)

"Why do we indict ourselves? As painful and potentially destructive as these thoughts are, they serve a temporary purpose. They provide a sense of control over what has happened. By holding ourselves culpable, we feel we have the power to change the things that brought the relationship to an end. All we have to do, we reason, is correct our faults and we can get our lost partners back...
But accepting all of the responsibility of the failure of your relationship leads to further self-injury. As you look inside for deficiencies to correct, you come to believe that there is something inherently unacceptable about you."

all of this is exactly why I think the NIH ought to sink some bucks into a comprehensive study that will examine the walkaway syndrome...with the ultimate denouement of having its own listing in the DSM-IV.

The author agrees with you, hm. Abandonment has enough similarities to - yet is in many ways different from - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (and Bereavement, for that matter) that she believes they should be a sub-types of this diagnostic category.

And as an aside, I think it's interesting - and telling - that the second sentence of the book contains the common DB term,
"...it happened out of the blue."

Also, the first chapter contains a short, concise, dead-on definition of WHAT IS AN ABANDONER?

Peace,