Everybody on here (especially men I've noticed) wants to try to fix their marriages WHILE their spouse is still wayward, and prove to them that "I GET IT! I'M A BETTER GUY NOW!" . . . but they are in NO mood to hear you. At worse, they won't notice, and at best they'll RESENT THE HELL OUT OF YOU for making these improvements NOW, after they've gone and done something foolish like having an affair.
Piecing is like an iceberg, and 95% of it comes AFTER they return to the marriage. It took the fetching Mrs. Puppy and I probably 2 - 2.5 years just to get back to a HEALTHY dynamic between us, and fully 3-5 before our marriage was one of those "stronger than ever" ones you hear about on here.
The gravel-shoveling comes later, IF you are fortunate to get a shot at it (by your wayward spouse deciding to end their affair and come back to the marriage). If you start shoveling your marital gravel WHILE they are wayward, they will perceive it as weakness and an alarming lack of personal boundaries that will actually make them feel LESS safe in the marriage, believe it or not.
I described my journal as one of PARALLEL PATHS . . . one was DBing, 180s, becoming the better option and "a person only a fool would leave" . . . while the other was pretty hard-core financial, legal and emotional boundary-setting and enforcing.
It wasn't really pure DBing, and doesn't fit with everyone's personality and stomach.
