I spoke with a DB coach who told me to not get in the way of the D and to even "partner" with her in the process. He told me that the marriage between my W and I is gone, and my best bet would basically be to work on things after the D by being her friend and see if she comes back around when she eventually realizes I can change and I am not a bad guy.
Sound advice. You'll generally hear the same on these forums- don't do anything to block the D, cooperate as far as signatures and providing info, but also don't try to "hurry it along" yourself (by doing the papers for your spouse or pressuring your spouse to get it done, etc.)
MWD mentions in DR that DB'ing is all about changing yourself and attracting your spouse back with thoughts of building a new R rather than resuming the old one, like you say, you have to picture your M as dead and gone, RIP.
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I never would have said this a few months ago, but you need to be supportive of her with whatever decision she is making
Correct, the idea is to remove all pressure. You don't have to AGREE with separation (or divorce or whatever the WAS is pushing), just "validate" their feelings on it (IE, "you want a divorce, I understand why you feel that way").
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I keep looking for data/threads on numbers of walk away wives who decide to come back and reconcile, and the timetables for this, and can't seem to find anything.
There is none. I've gathered a lot of info on this through reading old threads here and talking to people who have been through it. The impression I'm left with is that WAW's do often eventually express interest in reconciliation, but the timetable is much, much longer than most people think. 2 years is a number that seems to pop up a lot. I just mentioned this in another thread, but it seems that the LBS has usually moved on at around the 1 year mark, so when the WAS does come around it comes as a shock to the LBS. Often they're not willing to wreck their new life for a shot at reconciliation.
