Here is my question. Are all these WAS's just living a pipe dream, or can they truly find happiness so quickly after leaving a long term relationship?
I had lunch with my fellow LBS buddy. His W left him in 2008. She was going through perimenopause, had 3 relatives die in a short span, etc. My buddy became the lightning rod for everything wrong in her life. He was evil, he was mean, he did everything wrong. She left him and shortly after moved in with OM. She filed for D. Then she retracted it. Then she filed again. Then she retracted it again. They barely spoke for a year, then started talking again, then going out as friends, then became intimate, and now are back together. She now says he is the greatest person she's ever known, she's madly in love, can't get enough of him. Here's the thing, he basically did nothing. He didn't do 180's, he didn't change anything about himself. But he DID give her time and space. He left her alone, didn't pursue at all. SHE is the one that changed. Twice. She changed into someone that didn't love him, then changed into someone that loves him more than ever.
To me the lesson is that many WAS's are unhappy inside and blame the LBS. Once the LBS is removed from the picture they may fool themselves for a while into thinking they're happy, but eventually they realize they're still unhappy and that it's not the LBS's fault. My buddy said that his W came to realize that HE was what made her happy when everything else was falling apart. But it took her years to get there.
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How can they detach so completely, that they are totally happy in their new lives?
WAS's are masters of acting "as if". I'm sure some find happiness after S or D, but I bet most are just putting on a show so that the LBS and all their friends and relatives will think "oh yes, he/ she was right to leave their spouse, look at how happy they are now!" Because happiness comes from within, and if the WAS were truly happy within then they never would have left their spouse to begin with. Granted that may not be true in the case of abuse, but there are few cases of that here. I think most cases here involve a WAS that is unhappy and doesn't know why, so decides to heap the blame on their spouse.
