moving with confidence to success!

[cruiserrg]

RJ2,

Glad to see you over here, I have lurked through your thread a time or two in newcomers.

What would you say was the technique that worked the best for you in the long run in drawing them back?

Was it

your appearance of moving on with out them

not initiating much contact, letting him come to you

your warm, unconditional friend-like behavior during contacts

your validation or acceptance of their anti-M statements

all of the above?

For me above all was being warm, friendly, and show my W the unconditional love I have for her. See for me I had to really look back to what my W had expressed to me early in the marriage that she was dissatisfied with, and what I wanted to change even if she never told me.

For me, I was the typical guy, I would be kinda selfish, lazy, and not open up much to my W. Basically I had become comfortable with our M, while I was loosing her. I never saw this until the bomb.

I made all the changes I saw I needed to do and 180'd on myself to improve me. I became the man she always wanted to be married to. So for me showing her my unconiditional love and my inner feelings about myself and our M.

R talks for me came when I saw the opprotunity for the topic (either brought up by my W or what was happening at the time). When she brought up R talks, I worked very hard to LISTEN (old me would defend, and interupt, and try to fix everything), and then replied with my feelings. I made a point not to say the "you shoulds", but rather "I feel". This helped draw my W out.

I think all of your staments above are good techniques, but like everyone says the importance is monitor what works. I have also found to work with the dynamics of the sitch also. For example, when I finally went dark my W initiated contact and specifically said it was hard to not hear from me and when I had to contact is was only business and in voicemail. I realized that it worked to draw her out a bit, but I also told her that I did this to give her the space and time she wanted. I told her that I still wanted our M to work and I wasn't moving on. So monitoring works, but also realize that the dynamics will change as will your techniques. Its kinda like boundries with WAS, we also have to push ours a bit once and a while when the sitch becomes more comfortable (basically see how close our WAS will let us come to them before our radar says you hit the boundry). Its kinda like being a Walk Toward Spouse.

Take care.