She left - 4

[gogofo]

It's good that you're "getting it", just take care not to use it as a tactic and drop it as things possibly improve in your M. When you do things in her love language you are touching her soul.

It's important.

I don't plan on dropping this action, but who does. I guess if the goal was to win her back then the likely hood that I would stop would be pretty high. Especially based on my past performance of settling back into the same old me.

This revelation, that I had not planned things in the past, came about naturally. It wasn't a targeted 180, but I basically stumbled upon it when it hit me in the face this week.

In the very beginning, before I started DBing, I thought we just needed to spend more time as a couple. This was correct, but I thought it was the only issue, boy was I wrong.

During this time I started a list of date ideas and it is now at least 26 different ideas. I started the list because I felt I was never creative enough to think of date ideas. This was incorrect. I was smart enough, my trouble was that I would try to think of what to do on Friday afternoon and by this time it was too late and I was too tired and pressured to be creative. Terrible planning on my part. Unfortunately my actions showed my wife that I did not care, and I understand how she would feel this way. I really did love her, but from her point of view I did not love her enough to care about planning time or dates with her.

I plan to add to the list of date ideas. Another thing that I learned from John Gray's books was that one big grand gesture does not equal 10 small gestures. For example a dozens roses is not as good as twelve individual roses at different times. Quantity of actions trumps size of actions.

I know when I got depressed at the during the end of our living together I had stopped dreaming or planning for the future. I had goals of what I thought I wanted in 5 years, but not a plan for the next week, month, year. I was just in a reactionary mode. I know she likes spontaneity, but I couldn't even do that. I was just depressed and hating myself.

I used to plan these things and we used to plan them together in the beginning of our R and M. I am feeling this motivation again and it has come about naturally which makes me feel it could lead to a permanent change. Permanent that is with regular maintenance.

I no longer assume that our marriage can sustain without actively working on it.