I don't believe there is a blanket approach to all this. While all the principles are the same I think they are added as the situation dictates. I believe that is what they mean by doing what works.
habit,
I understand your frustration; I feel it also with my W. I briefly spoke to a MC who I couldn't afford but gave some very good advice. If your W is on one side of a room and you are on the other imagine the M as the door between you. The more you want to open that door the more, at this time, she is resistant. If you stop pushing on the door all together there is no tension therefore no reason for her to apply pressure. That could be called pursuing.
Also the object of validating as he explained it was also using an analogy. The more my W complained about me the more I agreed. This sounds crazy, and to tell you the truth it still sounds crazy sometimes but I have tried it. You know what happens? Exactly what he said would happen. The more she attacked and the less I resisted the more she began to come to my defense, After all you can't shoot an unarmed man. She would complain I would agree then she would say something along the line "I made mistakes also it wasn't all you" I was like what the hell?
It isn't fair that we make all the adjustments but in reality we aren't. We can only control what we do and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. At the end of the day regardless of the outcome we must prevail if nothing else at least for our sake. Don't make it easy on them by proving they are right make it hard by being the guy/gal we want to be. Right now none of us have much bargaining power with our W, but if you think they aren't hurting inside then you are missing the mark. I got a very out of character text from my W today completely out of the blue.
As for success stories, I would like to see some more also.
Coach if you are a success story I would love for you to check out my thread and give me an honest assessment of where you think I am in my M.
