WW, My Addiction, Patience is HARD

[JGuy]

That's the dance I have been trying to do as well. Detach while not being cold. If you figure it out let me know! Haha

Exactly, me three. I'd love to hear some general advice on how to detach while not being cold. On job's detachment thread, the following is listed as one of the forms of irrational thinking that can lead to an inability to detach:

Being detached seems so cold and aloof. You can't be that way when you love and care for a person. It's either 100 percent all the way or no way at all.

Further down in the steps to detach, the following step is provided:

Step 3: Identify the irrational beliefs in the toxic relationship which prevent you from becoming detached. Address these beliefs and replace them with healthy, more rational ones.

So the question is, what healthy, rational belief would replace the belief that being detached equals being cold and aloof?

I'd love to hear the more experienced folks chime in here, but for starters I'll share my own thoughts about this. If I had a clear understanding of my sitch, my W and how her emotions work, what a higher form of love would look like, then perhaps I would be able to see how the way that I have been attached to trying to fix our M really can't ever work. If I could really see clearly how my W is the only one who can take responsibility for her choices and actions, then I imagine that I would have a natural instinct to detach with love out of this greater understanding of the big picture. If I could really see her for who she is now, and I could understand the path that she needs to walk alone, then perhaps I could step back in awe and just love her from a distance, wish her the best while I let go. The problem is, I only have small, incomplete glimpses of this big picture at best. Most of the time, I'm just not feeling in touch with the grace of understanding that I would need to truly detach in that way. Within my limited view of things, the only way I can fathom detaching without any greater understanding is to do so in a way that feels cold and aloof. During these times of darkness, I guess I can just try my best to trust that there is a big picture which I can't understand at the moment. It would take tremendous faith, but perhaps there's a way of detaching with love, even without being in touch with understanding the big picture. Anyhow, yeah, it's hard!!