That is a very good question! I guess the first thing that comes to my mind is DB’ing works! Obviously it goes deeper than that. I guess I look at all of this as trying to accomplish 2 high level goals. 1 is save our M, the other is improving ourselves. The 2 are related, but also independent. We cannot save our marriages if we first don’t improve ourselves, but, even if we do not accomplish #1, we are setting ourselves up to be better people regardless. We are now the type of people that can be happy in our lives regardless the outcome.
If I look at what has changed, I see it as very positive. If I look at why things have changed, it gets more complicated. I don’t know the answer, but I can try to understand. When I pressured and begged, all I did was give her the perfect person to leave. Why would anyone want to stay with someone like that? OM was looking much better. He was happy! Fun to be with!
Now I give her space, I become happy as well. I improve myself and become someone who is harder to leave. Now that she doesn’t have a “villain” to focus on, she is left to reflect more on the choices she is making. While all of this happening, she realizes things are even more complicated now. There are financial issues, she has a crazy OW threatening her, she doesn’t have a H around to watch D while she goes to the gym. Problems in her life have not gone away like she thought they would.
Conclusion, conclusion, conclusion…..
I think the book does a good job describing this. We CANNOT control another person, BUT, accepting that, controlling what we can, ourselves, we can influence another person’s behavior. I like the part where she asks, if you were out to dinner and you wanted to make things go south quickly, would you know what to do? Of course you would. You would know exactly what you could do or say to make your W unhappy. But for some reason the answer is harder when the question is how to improve things. I guess what we are learning through all of this, how do we influence our spouses positively?
BITS
Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.
