I am a big fan of your outlook and opinions on WAS/MLCer's. I agree with you when you say stop accomodation and kissing their a$$. When my W show me disrespect now, I call her on it immediately and tell her she is being rude and disrespectful. I tell her in a firm tone but I dont yell.
When I first started doing this, it caught her off gaurd. She was expecting me to just take it and when I didnt, I gained a small amount of my self-respect back and she has taken notice (I believe).
One of my problems, Maritimer, is that I didnt have a good grasp on what they call "acting AsIf". I started to act "AsIf" I was moving forward with my life. When I didnt get the results I wanted, I started to cycle down and became frustrated. What that taught me was that I wasnt detaching like I should. I think I am starting on an up cycle now.
I am not saying I am fully detached but, by not putting up with her acting disrespectful to me and actually not caring how she reacts when I choose to live my life "my way", it has help me to move forward.
Set your boundaries and be firm with them. You cannot control what she does but she cannot control you, (as long as you dont let her). Keep GAL and DBing. Dont be disrespectful to her and more importantly, dont take the disrespectful behavior from her.
It is hard to find the fine line between lovingly detaching and being an a$$, for me at least. I went to the extreme side of accommodating her at first and trust me, you will gain very little in the way of respect from her.
I am not saying that this will help mend your R but it will help mend your self-respect. And, as said previously, someone with no self-respect or confidence is not very attractive to person of the opposite sex.
Get those two character traits back and she will notice. She may still not come back but I can assure you, others will be attracted to you because off it. I think that is what they mean when they say you need to start moving forward AsIf you are not affected by their negativity toward the LBS.
WAS have very strong feelings and most of them are negative towards the LBS. You cant change their feelings no matter how hard you try. What you can do is change yourself and let them notice. Your positive changes are 100% in your control and when I started to change for the better, I noticed that it frustrated my W. By GAL, detaching and becoming a spouse they would be a fool to leave, you are taking their ammunition from them. It puts the decision of leaving squarely on their shoulders where it has been all the time. It makes it harder for the WAS to rationalize that leaving is the best choice.
