Please recognize that you're in a very difficult position. A lot of the advice will be like people telling you not to eat when you feel very hungry -- it just feels wrong to follow it and takes a LOT of discipline.
If you could DB perfectly here's what it would look like:
You would just "do your own thing", pursue your own happiness, and be the best "you" you can be.
If your W offered to do things as a family you would go if you wanted to, and not go if you didn't, and you would make that decision based on how you were feeling and what you thought was best for the kids. The impact it might have or not have on her wouldn't even be on the radar.
When you are together with your W, what she says or does wouldn't impact you at all, you wouldn't be looking to her for anything, and she wouldn't feel like she has any impact on your state of mind. If she's funny you laugh, if she's mean you shrug.
Why would that be your best bet?
Because virtually anything else you will do will push her away. Any "strategy", any attempts to win her back, persuading, pursuing, demonstrating, explaining, none of it will work.
Most people learn that lesson painfully and slowly.
The problem with learning that lesson the hard way is that all these things you feel like you should try actually push her farther away and do more damage.
She wants space right now? Respect her wishes and give it to her -- it's the best thing you can do.
I've had a couple friends from this board for several years, and know their exes. One guy continues to try to "get his wife back", writes her cards, sends her letters, is *convinced* that if she just understood how much he loves her and how different things would be, she would come back. She avoids him because his constant pursuit and attention is stifling and she doesn't feel like he's hearing that she wants space, so she keeps running. Her perception of him is not able to change because she just keeps focusing on getting away.
In the other case, after the guy discovered his wife's affair, he just went the other direction. He was polite, but dropped contact completely unless it was about necessary logistics or about the kids. He went out and pursued his interests and she felt more or less cut off.
In that situation, she was initially still angry at him for whatever had happened over the course of their marriage, but the space he gave her gave her the opportunity to process that anger and move beyond it. After the anger was processed, which took several months, she started to remember the good times and what brought them together to begin with, and then began to feel like she *might* have made a mistake in straying instead of trying to work through things.
There is *no way* she would have gotten to that mental state if he had continued to pursue her. Instead she would have stayed angry and stayed focused on escaping.
What you need to do right now is give her the space she wants and take care of yourself. Do not measure the impact of your every decision based on what she will do in response. Live your life, find yourself, learn how to smile and have fun again. It is literally all you can do.
Acc
Married 18, Together 20, Now Divorced M: 48, W: 50, D: 18, S: 16, D: 12 Bomb Dropped (EA, D): 7/13/11 Start Reconcile: 8/15/11 Bomb Dropped (EA, D): 5/1/2014 (Divorced) In a New Relationship: 3/2015
