I don't love you anymore but we can be friends 3

[Accuray]

I am trying to look at her as a roommate and treat her accordingly because I think being detached from her would back fire since I was "detached" for a good period of time in our marriage.

Usually the wrong conclusion -- it's a timing problem. She needed you to be engaged with her THEN. You can't make up for that by pursuing her NOW. Pursuing her now will often just make her angrier, because if you can do it so easily now, why did you put her through so much hell then?

It's a fine line to walk, you need to demonstrate that you're willing and capable to engage, but you can't demonstrate that through pursuit. You have to wait for opportunities that SHE provides to demonstrate your 180's -- you can't create them.

SIW, generally when the bomb drops WAS (in their mind) is done. They think they know all there is to know about you, what you're capable of, and how you're going to act, and they've decided they are better off without you. Pursuing them is just trying to pull them back into a cold pool after they've decided to get out and dry off. You can't convince them that's going to be fun.

That's why detach DOES work -- it makes them reconsider what they think they know. It makes them wonder WHY you're able to detach. Your GAL and "act as if" intrigues them. If you're happy, they want to share in that happiness. If you demonstrate good parenting, they want to parent with you.

The WAS needs to see a future with you as a NEW destination, not a return to an old one. Pursuit feels, to them, like you are trying to manipulate, con, convince them BACK to where you were before. DETACH puts an opportunity before them to re-engage with you because it's something that THEY want to do, not something you're begging them to do.

DETACH takes all kinds of pressure off of them. They no longer need to concern themselves with your fragile emotions. They can be free to live their life and make their own decisions.

You will find no one on this board who reconciled through pursuit -- not one example. You will find cases where people went dark, detached, started living their own life, and WAS came back. Usually not on their timetable, and usually after a longer period of time than they would have expected. The less you care if they come back, the easier it is for them to return, because it puts you on equal footing.

Accuray