When is it time?

[workinghardguy]

Well, time for the second fundamental reality here on the boards...

You don't need a victory. Frankly, until you are able to process this concept you're going to have a hard time DBing well and making any progress.

You need air, you need water, you want your M. They are different. For things we need we will do just about anything including, sometimes, short-circuiting our value systems and betraying our own selves. We will plead, beg, demand, and be desperate for the things we need. We don't do that level of desperation for things we want.

I need air. I want my pilot's license. Therefore I will do almost anything for air, but if I can't have my pilot's license life will go on.

You need lots of things... you don't need your marriage. This is not saying you don't want your M or that it is unimportant; only that you don't need it to live. You can live, quite happily eventually, without your W and your M. Your kids can and will survive. So no, you don't "need a victory here".

WAW's can smell the desperation on you and it turns them off. So there's one reason to detach and let go. Second, you are still connected to your W. This means that as she goes through her rollercoaster you ride along with her. Trust me... this will get old very fast. It means you do not get to be the master of your own emotions - she does.

You're early in this process so all of this will sound wrong, counterintuitive, and painful. That's ok and normal, but read through sitch after sitch and you will see the successful ones come about once the LBS realizes they don't need their WAS anymore.

I'm just about there. It's taken months to get here, but I can see how life will continue to exist without my W. I don't like it as much as I like life with my W, but again, I don't get to control that. So therefore if I NEED her I'm going to be in a bad way should she execute the rights she has to terminate our M. Ergo, I can't need her. And frankly, as I'm growing and changing I'm finding that, unless she starts to grow too, I don't know that I even want her anymore.

I'm sitting here with a sick stepdaughter who's been up since 3am. She wants her mom. Her mom is god knows where. Her mom just texted me that she think she'll be home by 6:30am. Awesome. This is who I want? A woman who sets this type of example for her children? Who can't find a way to get home to care for HER daughter when she's ill? Who can't respect that I have to work tomorrow, that now I had to send an email saying I'd be late because I need to get some sleep once "I get some relief"?

No. I don't need or even want that. This doesn't mean I use my right to "drop the rope" right now, but it does mean that things will change before anything ever gets better. It means I've seen my W for who she is, not the idolized, magnificent person I had constructed in my head early on where all this was my fault and none hers. No... it means I don't need her and may not even want her anymore. That is a sad, yet empowering feeling all at the same time.

Until you get there... at least to the not needing her or your M part, this is going to be very, very hard.