DB'ing but it's a daily struggle - need support.

[Denver_2010]

Hey Scared. Just want to give you a couple of thoughts on your convo with your W last night. First, let me say that it sounds like you are doing a really good job of working towards detachment. Better than me in that area I suspect.

Now maybe a little criticism? I think that Habit is right. I think that much of what you are doing in the past few days is pursuing. This convo last night included. It's not pursuing bc you are telling them that you miss them, or that you want to have sex with them... it IS pursuing bc you are putting pressure on them. What kind of pressure? Every time you ask them how they feel about you, do they miss being physical in M, do they love you, has it been hard to be distant or cold towards you, you REMIND THEM how they don't want to be with you.

Look at your convo last night. You asked her if it had been hard for her to treat you the way that she has. What did she say? She sometimes but not usually bc she doesn't want to be M to you. You asked her about sex with you, and how did she respond? She told you that she doesn't want to be physical with you and hasn't for a while. You questioning her on these things isn't going to change how she feels. You are looking for validation for YOURSELF when you ask these questions. You want a particular answer. You wanted her to say "yes of course it's been hard to treat you the way that I have". You wanted her to say, "of course I miss the hugging, the kissing, the ML". All you did was let her mind organize her present thoughts about how she feels about you to be able to vocalize an answer to you. Remember, the more that we think and say things, the more we begin to believe them. So we don't want to remind our W's how they feel about us right now. They are doing plenty of that themselves. We want to give our W's something else to think about so that those thoughts fade away. Thus 180's and GAL.

Also, I'm not sure that your answer to your W's question about whether you had gone on a date was good or not. In all honesty, I'm pretty sure that I would have answered it exactly the same way that you did. Especially if I hadn't planned my answer ahead of time. In fact, I think that I did answer a similar question in a similar fashion with my W right before xmas.

But thinking about it, I MAY have answered it a bit differently though. Mainly to throw a little fuel on what is clearly her curiosity. I may have considered telling W that bc we are separated and bc we are not working on our M, that I don't feel comfortable answering those types of questions from her right now. If she pressed, I might have elaborated by saying that "I am behaving like a married man, which I am." and left it at that.

Maybe others can weigh in here on how the question that Scared's wife posed to him last night after he went out?