Newbie. First time post. My story & questions

[asitis]

Actually seems like distancing is working, not that you are backtracking on progress. If her initiating more affection is a goal, then that seems to be working. She will need to keep it up of course. She also is likely reacting and testing to see if she still has you where she wants you (maybe consciously, maybe not). If you change course and start pursuing, you can pretty much guarantee that she will back off and start distancing again. That is not what you want.

If she truly has changed, time and her actions will tell. As everyone here will keep reminding you, patience, and if it is showing signs of achieving your baby step goals, don't mess with it. If you stick to the distancing and she stops the increased initiation of affection then you know that either it wasn't genuine or the distancing may not have been what was making a difference. You can re-evaluate then. The one thing I have had to learn about distancing--and it has been a hard lesson--moving to more distance and individuation seems like it is a short-run step and that once things improve you go back to closeness. Likely you were too enmeshed and not individuated enough to be healthy in a relationship, and you need to get used to being more of an individual to be good to yourself, be good in a relationship, and to be attractive to your W. That takes time and adjustment. It doesn't mean that closeness and bonding and affection can't come, but it is only from that healthier place that the distancing allows you to build that it can come in a healthy, loving way. Again, a hard lesson to learn, and one that doesn't come with any guarantees for improvement in the R. It will start feeling better, and you will feel better about yourself in the not too distant future sticking to your guns. If not, you can always reverse gears after really giving it a try with no loss (so don't respond to fear that you'll make things worse, a couple weeks won't matter in the long haul of saving your M).

Good luck!