Haven't decided yet. Posting helps but if I spread around I probably won't be fair to my "helpers" in that I won't be attentive enough. If I feel I need the perspective I'll do it!
CV, I don't know if I'd read "Passionate Marriage" in your sitch. For me, it was very educational / instructive, but it also painted a vision of how good things can be and that's not something I can attain with my current partner, so in some ways it made things worse for me.
WRT your web research, those are stereotypes like "men are taller than women". MC said that the behaviors you describe are often reversed, and can "change sides" over the course of a long term relationship. You can also have reversal on some attributes and not others. He said it's more useful to say "emotional pursuers like to..." than "women like to..." because it's a more useful perspective. If you reject that, then just call me a woman because I'm the emotional pursuer in our relationship
In terms of how we match up, one thing I read is that we tend to choose people who abuse us in patterns in which we are used to being abused. Our ability to cope in that situation is a "comfortable place", so as odd as it sounds being abused in that way makes us feel ourselves because we know how to deal with it.
i.e. if you're used to having to work very hard to be acknowledged, then dating someone who worships you and is very attentive feels very odd and unnatural, you don't know what you did to deserve it, and you don't know what to do with it. Someone who was doted on as a child may not feel that way at all, for them it may feel natural. We choose to be with people who abuse us in familiar ways.
The other thing that happens is that we change. I admit that I wanted an independent person who would not rely upon me for their happiness when I got married. I chose that. What's happened over the course of our marriage is that I have moved to wanting more engagement, and W has moved to wanting less. We've both moved, it's just that our moves were not in sync.
Accuray
Married 18, Together 20, Now Divorced M: 48, W: 50, D: 18, S: 16, D: 12 Bomb Dropped (EA, D): 7/13/11 Start Reconcile: 8/15/11 Bomb Dropped (EA, D): 5/1/2014 (Divorced) In a New Relationship: 3/2015
