hi everyone! newbie here....could this be a MLC?

[Accuray]

Mncwng (and ptcrussell),

First the easier stuff:

i'd kinda been having trouble with detaching and also doing my 180s, since a few of my 180s involved addressing the issues h had with me. for example, ive been going out of my way to show h i appreciate him and also by doing a lot more of the chores & keeping things extra tidy around the house. unless im mistaken, aren't these typically considered pursuing behaviors? as a result of my efforts, things with h seem to be getting a lot friendlier lately (good sign), but the fact that he hasn't budged or slowed down at all with the divorce has me kind of questioning if my approach is correct. one thing i should note is that h has mentioned that down the line, if he realizes that he made a mistake, he will come back.

If things are getting better between you, that's good. The challenge is to manage your own expectations for how quickly this can or should turn around. This is a marathon, not a sprint, and your impatience will work against you.

WRT 180's, those are great, but the "give space" right now is more important. Your H is telling you exactly what he needs:

"he just needs to see if being alone will provide him the peace/fulfillment he is searching for."

He's saying it, but you're having a hard time accepting it (which is normal). The best thing you can do right now is to give him the space he is asking for. Concentrate on that first, the 180's second.

Here's what's tricky about the 180's -- if you're doing it "for them", then they can't believe you'll continue doing it if they come back. If you're a messy person, but start cleaning up and being tidy now, H is convinced that if he comes back, you'll be messy again. If you commit to a life change to eliminate the clutter, and start living that way when no one is watching, and are able to maintain it over several months, that's when the 180 becomes believable. That's why it's important to do it for yourself, because YOU believe it's a change worth making. It's a lifelong commitment, not just a tactic to get H back. He'll see through that just like anyone else would.

The difference between a "pursuing 180" and a real 180, is that you're going to do it even when no one is looking, even if H leaves and never comes back, you're still going to do it because you think it's worth doing. That doesn't mean you have to respond to all his complaints, nor should you. Remember to believe nothing they say and only half of what they do. You have to look at the longer term issues in your relationship and address those, not H's "exit complaints" which may or may not be real or meaningful.

Now the deeper stuff on shaming and pursuit and distance

First my reading list for you:

1) "The Five Love Languages" -- read it right away, understand yours and understand his. Don't discuss it with him now, just read it and arm yourself with the knowledge.

2) "How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It" -- this talks about nagging, shaming and the importance of being a good provider. Once again, don't discuss it, but arm yourself with the knowledge.

3) "The Passion Trap" -- This book talks about the one-up, one-down dynamic. It's important to understand. The prescriptions are for people who are struggling in their relationship -- once the bomb has dropped the prescriptions won't work.

4) "The Solo Partner" -- This book is out of print, so you have to order it from a used book seller. If you Google "The Solo Partner Book Review", the chapter on "Pursuit and Distance" has been posted online, start by reading that, but the whole book is good.

Pursuer:

Here's what happens with the pursuer -- you want a certain level of intimacy and affection in your marriage. Your partner doesn't deliver it, so you're always initiating, always trying to get things going. Sometimes your partner will reciprocate, sometimes they won't, but it's never to the level you want. You try to demonstrate or model the behavior you want by doing the things for your partner that you want for yourself, but they never (or rarely) come. If you want to hear "I love you" every day, then you're always the one to say it first, etc.

When you're partner doesn't reciprocate, or doesn't seem to learn, you both get frustrated and start to complain, nag, get passive aggressive, etc. AND you will work even harder on initiating, demonstrating, etc. It's hard to understand what's going on in your partner's head, it just looks like not caring, or not being invested.

Distancer:

For the distancer, they feel they are being smothered. The pursuer is setting a high bar with their demonstrations and initiations, and it looks like it will be exhausting to match or try to out-do what the pursuer is bringing. It feels like the pursuer always will want "more, more, more", so they try to manage expectations by delivering the minimum allowable.

In addition, people like to pursue. You know the expression "nothing that's free is worth having?" People like to work for what they value. The distancer doesn't have to work for the pursuer, they're being pursued, and that isn't that interesting or exciting. When you were dating they were pursuing you, and felt a certain way about you, but once they had you, that feeling diminished because they no longer had to chase, or were given the opportunity to do so.

As the pursuer, you need to learn to back off, and you need to learn that it's OK to back off. Backing off for the pursuer is very nerve wracking, because you're convinced that if you don't keep this stuff going it's not going to happen at all.

The fact is, if you give the distancer enough room, they will step up. You will get the "I love you", you just need to wait for it. The next challenge is that as soon as the pursuer gets a little pursuit, they think everything is solved and come running back in with their pursuit, effectively chasing the distancer off again.

When you (the pursuer) do things for the distancer, and they're not doing anything for you, they feel badly. The pursuit that's designed to make them feel good actually makes them feel inadequate by comparison.

When the pursuer starts to back off, it makes things worse. Here's a quote from the book:

"When we face important life changes we must usually go through periods in which we feel worse before we feel better, since we are creatures of habit who instinctively struggle against change. Unfortunately, this is as true for those actively making changes as for those around them, and there is no way to bypass this obstacle...when one partner begins to make constructive changes, the two will usually get along worse for a while before things get better. When this occurs, people frequently conclude that the changes are creating problems rather than solving them, and so the actively changing partner ceases the endeavor in the interest of avoiding discomfort."

There are also two excellent chapters on pursuit and distance, how how to stop pursuing.

"If your partner is a master of elusiveness and will not discuss or deal with issues under any circumstance, or if your partner avoids closeness and intimacy in spite of all your efforts, your relationship might be one of pursuit and distance. This dynamic overshadows everything else that occurs in a relationship."

It says if you can stop pursuing, you'll have to deal with the distancer's response:

"Under the calm, unemotional, unexpressive, and seemingly distant and uncaring exterior of a distancer is a desperate person. And this desparation is also generated by self-deception -- the expectation that the distancer can get more out of a relationship than he puts into it.

The distancer is about to face the cost of that deception, which has been avoided for so long. But first the distancer will mount a no-holds-barred campaign to get the pursuer to pursue again. The stakes are high. If successful, the distancer will not have to change, and can continue to be the focus of the pursuer's attention.

If unsuccessful, the distancer, in the absence of pursuit, will no longer be able to focus on running away from the pursuer, so will begin to experience a deep emptiness. At this point the self-deception begins to crumble. First, as the pursuer pulls back, the distancer usually feels relief, lasting from a few days to several weeks. This is followed by a sense of missing the disengaged partner. If this longing has not begun within two months, the pursuer has either not stopped pursuing completely or has been inconsistent -- pursuing one day, not pursuing the next day.

It is also possible that there is no real interest left in the relationship. In my experience, the only way to truly determine how much, if any, caring a distancer has for his pursuing partner is for her to stop pursuing. If he cares for her, after the initial reaction against the nonpursuit, he will start pursuing her. If he does not care enough, he will move on to something or someone else. The question of whether or not their partner cares for them haunts pursuers unceasingly. They may dread finding the answer, which will be evident when the pursuer has successfully stopped pursuing and the distancer doesn't pursue her. It is extremely painful for a pursuer to find out, after all that time, that her partner really doesn't love her after all. However, after the initial shock, it can be very liberating to finally know the reality and be able to make decisions based on that knowledge."

It doesn't touch on OM/OW. In my opinion, the presence of OM/OW clouds the issue as the distancer is getting the void filled elsewhere. I would only expect this book to hold true if OM/OW are not present.

The problem I see with MC is that MC will encourage the pursuer to put their cards on the table and expose their pursuing feelings. This allows the distancer to keep getting what they're getting from pursuit, it undermines your efforts at distance and detaching.

Hopefully this helps you understand why detaching and giving space are so very critical. Otherwise you get engaged in a dance where one of you keeps pursuing and the other keeps distancing, it's a self-feeding push-pull that cycles around and around until one of you break it.

Hope that helps

Accuray