I promised I would look at your thread and I am sorry I have been a little absent I have been dealing with some drama this week. However it has taken me a few days to read your sitch so that I can get a good perspective on what is going on and a person with such a cool screen name deserves a double take. Most sitch are pretty similar in nature but it is in the details that we really get to know the posters and the sitch.
How sad as I read your sitch, so much time spent together and it is good that you have acknowledged some of your contributing factors so early on, be careful because there is a very real difference between an honest self assessment and taking on entirely too much blame.
Us LBS have a tendency to take the lions shares of the blame and for sometime it remains the case but as time passes and you start to lift the guilt goggles and see more clearly you realize your true actions and start to eliminate the guilt over things that you had little control over or were just another attempt by our spouses to rewrite history.
I don't believe for the majority of us you need to do a complete overhaul of who we are, some changes need to be made surely but who you are at the core should remain the same.
If my car has dirty oil I don't buy a new car, I get it changed. It is the same thing with us. If we contributed certain things to our M demise then we address the areas that have become a problem area but you maintain those things that made you who you are and bring back that person who your husband fell in love with. I had a hard time with this after only 10yrs I can imagine it will take some time for you.
I would recommend to not be so quick to jump to conclusions about your H, things are rarely what they appear. Now do trust your gut and sometimes our intuition is right, however, in times like this we have a hard time finding the difference between our gut and our emotional desperation.
I have tried almost every DB "tool" you can think off.
180
No R talk
No pressure
GAL
Act as If
You name it I have done it. Some worked for me and some did not. I will say this. There is not one blanket approach to this stuff every sitch is different in detail but the same fundamentally.
Find your independence and do it quick. There is nothing more attractive to a man, especially one that has been with a woman for a long time, than to be independent and to give the impression that you are moving on without him just fine.
As a man........it drives us nuts.
Find a hobby and concentrate on that.
Start to get busy. Find things that you like to do and go out and do them.
I know some of these things seem like I am asking you to climb Mount Everest when you are in a world of constant pain and suffering BUT I promise you that the sooner you muscle through these things the sooner you will be on the road to recovery.
Think of it this way.........
What you have done up till now has not worked to well for you......
How about trying something different? Worst case scenario it does not work and you change your strategy and do something that does work.
Where most people fail is that they struggle with the concepts because they are so emotionally wrapped up that they don't make much progress. Simple things the spouse does tends to unravel all the progress we think we have made.
Detach is important not just for you but for the M itself because the more detach you become the sooner he is going to wonder WTH is going on. Wondering is good.
Please don't fall into the trap that you think detaching works on Mondays but not on Tuesdays. You will know when you have really started to detach.
You know how?
When they give you hope and it does not affect you.
When you go a full day, don't talk to him and did not even notice.
Stay strong and stay with us.
25MLC is a great poster and a successful DBer so you are in good hands.
I will be checking in with you from time to time to see how you are doing.
