The crack in my perfect life...

[Accuray]

Sweetbriar,

AnotherStander has it exactly right. He is not happy, he does not have all he wants. He is tortured. He is putting on an act for you -- don't believe it.

I think Im just having a hard time thinking that if I give him all this space, he has all this freedom, he gets to see his kids, and he has OW, why would he ever consider coming back to me. He has it all...everything he wants..why would he even consider me?

I hope what you took from Labug's question is that you need to look at this differently. He is going to take the space whether you give it to him or not. If you make it harder for him to have this "freedom" he wants, he will resent you for it and fight you even harder.

You have three options here:

(1) Threaten and play hard ball: Be really nasty, make threats, shame him, set deadlines, try to make his life as hard as you can. Punish him at every turn. What kind of reconciliation do you think that will lead to? How will he feel about you?

(2) Pursue him: Beg, plead, buy him gifts, be extra nice to him, tell him anything you think he wants to hear. Demonstrate your love every way you can think to do so. This *never* works, because by the time they move out, it is far beyond too late. I challenge you to find one instance here or elsewhere where pursuing a walkaway spouse lead to reconciliation. Ironically, this is what *everyone* first tries to do -- it's a natural place to go. You assume this person loves you and that they're just mad so you just need to go overboard to mend fences. It doesn't work.

(3) Give him space: Lovingly detach, do not shame or blame. Forgive him and feel badly for the fact that he is in crisis. Let him pursue his path and you live your life. Work on being the best person you can be. Check items off your bucket list. Do what makes you feel good. Make new friends, engage in fun activities, pick up a new hobby. "Act as if" you are happy.

Those are your options. The first two have a zero percent chance of success. The third works sometimes -- but is the most effective if you have *truly* dropped the rope. They seem to come back the most frequently when you no longer care.

I've used this analogy before -- pretend there is a line painted on the ground and you are each standing on one side of it next to each other. That is the baseline of your marriage when you were both in it together. Now your H has moved away and wants 20 feet of space between the two of you, so he moves 20 feet away from the line. If you chase him and stand next to him again, he now runs another 20 feet away from you. He now has 40 feet to come back to be with you again instead of just 20. If you chase him again, now there is 60 feet! If you keep chasing, it CAN become a problem that the distance is too great to reclaim.

Now instead, if your H moved 20 feet away, and you move 10 feet in the other direction away from your baseline, now there are 30 feet between you. That makes it safe for him to move 10 feet back toward you while preserving his 20 foot distance. Now there are only 10 feet to reclaim to get to the baseline. That's what we mean when we say to detach "lovingly" and to keep the road home paved smooth. Move in the OPPOSITE direction and make it safe for him to approach you. That doesn't mean you should be cold or stand-offish. You should be pleasant and disinterested. Apply a "friendly co-worker standard" -- treat him as you would someone from work who you don't know that well. Offer the same courtesy, but hold back your intimacy as you would in that situation.

In my sitch, my W came back too soon. She was not done grieving OM, and was mainly there because it was the path of least resistance. That made reconciling very challenging, because she wasn't really invested. Initially I was so relieved that she said she wanted to reconcile that I was tempted to rush in. It took me several months to realize that nothing would get better unless I gave her space and went the other way -- it was too early to "work on the marriage", I still had to give space. If I had not done that, I have no doubt she would have left again. Space is key, even if it does not bring him back, it takes you forward.

Accuray