I want him to be happy

[adinva]

I will date a new person or my H when I'm ready to move on, but I don't need my friends to constantly encourage me to do it.

Hi there. You get what you need from your friends by clearly asking for it. Ask them to stop with the winks and nudges and dating recommendations and tell them you'll let them know if and when you are interested in dating. The unhelpful help of friends and family is the subject of many many posts around here. People just want you to be happy, and they don't understand standing for your marriage. If you're getting advice here, from a therapist, and/or from a db coach, and it's advice that helps you achieve your goals, then turn off the friend-advice tap. Just say no to it, no thanks, it's not helping.

Your question about the meaning of happiness as a commodity and the purchase of large tvs is an effort to mindread, something else that is widely discouraged here, that people do anyway, and then tell here about the consequences they suffer because of it. Read other threads here and you'll start to see a lot of the same things you're going through.

Stop mindreading. Get out of his head, which is probably confusing enough, and stay in your own. Work on you, get a life, explore what you'd like to change about yourself, make good use of this space and time. If and when he wants to come back to you he will let you know, it won't be a hint or unclear.

You worry that he'll think you're not interested if you go dim. Have you expressed to him yet that you want to repair your marriage? If you were clear, then you don't need to keep repeating it. He knows. If you begged and pleaded and cried, he knows. If he asks and you tell him, you don't want this but you understand that he has to follow his journey, and if you look in the meantime very attractive and at peace, I don't think he'll assume you've changed your mind and don't want him.

DB is counter-intuitive, but it can work, you can read the thread s here, and the book, and the success stories. It's a lot more likely that you end your marriage faster by pursuing, and it's a lot more likely that you'll have a chance if you let go and let him feel like you really heard him. You don't control his journey, either way.

Good luck to you.