I was thinking about something you had written in a previous post before I read your lastest. It was to do with your wanting to be divorced. I felt that you are still reacting to your husband rather than responding, because of course the emotional links are still there, the hooks are still in, for both of you.
This latest post confirmed to me what is true of so many of us here. These guys have had issues for a long time, and in living with them we became, as you have noted before, co-dependent. But because we are basically OK, in spite of having adapted, often beyond comfort, to accommodate these people we are enmeshed in their lives in a way that is really difficult to disentangle. A simple act of will won't do it. Time, therapy and the practice of detachment [all of which you are working positively on] will do this.
What I suspect happened with your h, and it certainly happened with mine because he told me himself [now he is less befogged he can recognise certain things] is that we weren't needy enough for them. We were actually too mentally OK, and so they found someone with real issues, issues probably bigger than their own.
The thing is with most issues is that if you don't do something about them they get bigger - as true with psychological problems as a hole in the roof. They denied, suppressed and externalised their inner problems, and there came a point at which we were no longer adaptive enough. This is just my take on it.
I suspect it will take a long time to fully emotionally disengage, and I think it is hard to completely stop loving someone, if not impossible. A good friend of mine whose h left her and who has a successful second marriage, said that even after nearly 20 years there is a bit of her that still cares. But she has a great second husband and wonderful life.
