Advice Welcome, separating and W moving out soon..

[jedi]

And since no one has said this yet may the force be with you.

Ha ha I like that.

Good question, how do I work on these things. This has been a struggle for me.

One is easy, I just dont go back to smoking. I genuinely feel that my quitting smoking easily fixes all of the romance and SL issues we had. I had started to engage more romantically after I quit during the initial giving space trial, but by that point W had no romantic feelings to reciprocate. This however will help with any R down the road, be it with W or someone new.

Overall, my main 180 with interaction with W is to really listen, ask questions, engage with how she is handling things all without offering up any of my own fix-it solutions. Basically, take the interest in her and her life like I should have been doing all along. Since I'm not sure how frequently I will be able to do this with W going forward, I'm practicing this with my friends and family, and even with ancilary people in my life.

For the rest, I've read several books (Mindset right now), started IC, and am focused now on learning why I'm a fixer, why I'm afraid of change, and how to alter that part of me. As this book would phrase it, I am looking to move from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset.

I need to learn to embrace change, work through tough situations, and in the end learn from them and better myself. I need to learn that trying and failing is better than not trying for fear of failure.

While I feel I'm already making some progress, I know this road is a long one. And that's something else I need to work on (instant gratification).