but as you know they will be back and forth up and down many times...
That's very true, it's been a tough lesson for me to learn. I've overreacted in the past in both directions to W's swings. When she swung up I tried to rush her into reconciliation and when she swung down I saw it as the end of the M. Accuray posted this a while back:
Quote:
Another thing to expect is that your wife will run "hot and cold" -- she'll be nice to you one minute and the next will shut down hard. This is extremely confusing. Here's what's going on -- your wife will "try on" being nice to you to see how it feels, or if she gets comfortable may slide back into a familiar partner role. At some point she'll catch herself, will worry that you'll get the impression that everything is now "okay" when for her it is not, and will then make sure to demonstrate to you that everything is NOT okay by shutting you out and pushing you away. That's all an inner dialog so to you it just looks completely confusing. If you expect it, you'll enjoy when she warms up and won't worry too much when she goes cold.
It's tempting to get into a mode of catastrophic thinking -- that each time your wife goes cold you worry it will stay like that forever, or "oh boy, this is it, she's gone!" That leads you to panic and overreact. This is a roller coaster, and there will be very dramatic highs and lows. The best thing you can do is try to stay near an emotional baseline. If the WAS bounces between 10 feet up and 10 feet down, the LBS tends to go 25 feet up and 25 feet down in response. Your goal is to go 5 feet up and 5 feet down instead. Take the long term view. Easy to say, hard to do, but if you know what to expect things get easier.
I try to keep this in mind now and not overreact to W's swings. This latest swing down has me wondering is she's emotionally distancing to prepare herself for filing the D papers (she said she would file when school lets out, and that's this week), but of course that's just a bunch of mind-reading. So I just keep on keepin' on
