Just read your first post to get an idea of where you're coming from...sorry that you have to go through this. My sitch was different but in many ways the same.
I told my H about a year before I left that I wasn't happy and things weren't working anymore. And then again about 7 months later, when things hadn't changed, I bought a car and was ready to leave (H calls it my getaway car!). We worked through that but things went back to same old again just 3 months later - so 3 months after that, I found myself not being able to see a future with my H, so I decided I needed a "break".
I couldn't think anymore - I found myself being mean and disrespectful. I didn't like the person I was becoming. I told him that I wasn't saying it was over, but maybe he would be better off without me. He insisted that we go to MC but the C couldn't find anything for us to work on, that's when I started to think it was over.
H didn't believe that it was only a break because I found an apartment, bought a bunch of new stuff and started the process of a legal separation (after the advice from my lawyer).
I said all those things and worse - but didn't really mean them. At the time, I thought it would make it easier for him to accept - that he would move on and "believe" me if I said all those things. There was a lot of projection - trying to take my feelings/fears and make him believe they were his.
From what I can tell, there are some standard lines that are pretty common for the WAS. And there's no manual (that I know of) but it's like there could be.
Not sure if there are any tells - but any inconsistency would be something to keep an eye out for.
