Regarding the odd behaviour of our WAS, I remind myself that they would be odd even if we were still together. What upsets me (us?) is that I no longer have any power over it. No way to lecture her, to make her feel bad about it, etc. In a way, it's a lesson for me. I've had lots of arguments with WW and for most of them nothing's changed anyway. Now I learn to be zen about it and just move on. It's something I hope to carry into my next relationship, or at least to test it.
One of the things that brought me to the conclusion that I no longer want to R is that I don't trust that it will work the next time. Getting together with her again would be like getting in line to go through the grinder again. My circumstances are special as my WW cheated on me with a colleague 5 years into our relationship and 5 years before leaving me for another colleague she just met. She has other personality traits that make D inevitable in my opinion. Perhaps if I saw the D as a mistake, as out of character, I'd be more inclined to want to reconcile. I miss my kids too. Oh, I'm sure there are circumstances where I would fall for it, but I really hope she won't go there.
By the way, like stacey9, Maybell, claire.... my next thread will be in Surviving the Big D. I'm embarrassed to be posting in the Newcomers section because I know I'm not the kind of story that they want to hear. I remember clearly wanting to hear R stories at the time (hence the compilation of success stories) and not wanting to "save myself" as much.
Because of the language barrier, I'm not sure what "my picker is busted" means, but there's no rush in dating again. More important might be to know why you don't want to. In my case, I realized that it was, at the root, the same reason that fueled my reaction to my D: I was very insecure about seduction. Dating was one way for me to gain confidence that WW was not the only worthy woman that would be interested in me. What's important is to make sure that you don't hold back for the wrong reasons and sometimes it's hard to acknowledge the right reasons because it confronts us to our fears.
I'm glad you gave us an update.
M39 D6 D3 (at S) S 2014-09 D 2016-09
"You can't start a fire sitting around, crying over a broken heart" - Bruce Springsteen.
