One of the things I've learned with time is that the overwhelming "love" we feel for a wandering spouse, especially at the beginning when the bomb is first launched, is often more FEAR than LOVE.
When you have been in a committed relationship for sometime, one that you thought was relatively secure, and then suddenly find that your spouse wants out...well, that brings an emmense amount of fear into our lives.
In an effort to pull them back in, we convince ourselves that we were madly and truly in love with them.
Gosh, if we were really that madly and truly in love with them, we likely would have never got to the point that they wanted to leave, eh?
That fear/love makes the intial stages of DB'ing incredibly difficult. I see it in thread after thread, especially in Newcomer's. Fear drives us to focus on the spouse, instead of ourselves. Fear drives us to clingy, needy behaviors that only reinforce our spouse's desire to leave. Fear makes us angry and vindictive, and that comes out usually at the worst possible times.
You can almost always tell when someone has finally conquered that fear. Almost overnight you see them lighten up and remove the direct and indirect pressure they were always trying to place on their spouse. Their outlook changes and suddenly things are managable, because they have finally realized that LIFE GOES ON.
Blessings,
Bill
"Don't tell me the sky is the limit when there are footprints on the moon."
