Is it too soon to give up hope?

[2ndtimearoundCA]

As I work on me, I have been seeking many ways to be more attractive in general and have kind of found an imaginary mentor in the form of Ryan Gosling’s character from “Crazy, Stupid, Love”. Oddly some of the best resources out there come from the “pick-up artist” community. Please don’t dismiss these ideas as being entirely manipulative and temporary fixes. The stuff these guys do is backed by psychological research and most of it focusses on how we can make ourselves better communicators. A lot of what is taught has to do with taking away things that are unattractive about us. When we do this, what is left is a more attractive person that was already there before. I do understand that my other 180s may be more important for a long-term relationship to work and I will continue to work on those relentlessly

Following other threads, I see that many of us are in that place where we are separated, working on ourselves (our 180s and GAL), spending time with our kids, developing new friendships. But we have little to no contact with our spouses.

Because W and I don’t share kids we hardly need to interact except for the occasional bill. I had very little hope after we initially separated simply because I thought I would never get a chance to show my wife the “new me”.

Still, while working on myself and finding resources on the internet I came across this idea of sending texts to my wife and sparking some emotions in her that would lead her to be interested in me again. I have been working on taking all negativity out of my communication and texting is a great way to communicate because it is easier to think before reacting. So finally here was a proactive thing that I could do.

And I’ll be damned if it didn’t work almost perfectly right up until she canceled on our trip to Vegas. I didn’t post most of our exchanges here, but all the text exchanges were pretty positive.

Here is an example of an extremely positive text exchange between w and me (keep in mind that I initially sent much milder texts and took a lot of time to build up to what I sent below):

Me: Was cleaning and I came across that photo of us on our night out on Kauai when you wore your black dress. Wow (her name), you are so gorgeous in that dress!

Her: Good times in Hawaii... Love that dress!!!

Me: The dress just brings out the beauty in the person. Your wedding dress did that too. When I think of Hawaii, I think of you. Our marriage license experience; swimming in the pool at the Hyatt our first night on Kauai; our endless hike; snorkeling; zip-lining with the manager...

Her: Wow... If only we could turn back the clock and relive our happiest moments. I will always love you, (my name). These moments in time will never be forgotten

Her: Wanna workout in the morn?

We did meet for drinks a few weeks after that and she sent mixed messages, but ultimately she told me that she loves me but is not in love with me.

Still we kept texting with more great exchanges. Things escalated to the point that we had agreed to take a trip to Las Vegas together. I already posted that exchange here. And then she canceled two days before the trip.

I’ll admit that trip was probably too much too soon. And I am now back at square 1 with very few ideas of what to do next. I don’t think that she will respond to my texts now as she did before. I would love to hear other’s ideas, and if anyone wants to try the texting thing, I am happy to help out.

There are a handful of threads that I have been following of people in similar situations to mine and ultimately we are all almost in the same place. We are doing our 180s and GAL but ultimately we are waiting and trying to detach… It felt good to be proactive for a while