Feeling lost

[Accuray]

I understand the point of detaching, but it's obviously tougher to do with kids, as I think the basic point is I'm not meant to care what my W chooses and not to be bothered by what she does, but am I meant to be "distant" or "cold" when talking with her? Or have I misinterpreted it?

You should not be distant or cold. There are two concepts at play here and they can be confusing. There is "The Last Resort Technique" mentioned in the book where you just "go dark" or stop communicating entirely and just withdraw all your emotional investment from the person 100%. Obviously with kids you can't go totally dark so that presents a challenge how you balance that. The point of that technique is not to punish the other person, but rather to give them the space they want entirely while at the same time establishing that you're not just going to sit on the shelf while they deal with their stuff. The thought is that (1) this will give them the emotional space to process their anger and move beyond it, which they won't do if you're constantly pursuing them, and (2) this will establish that you value yourself, and are someone to be valued, such that the wayward spouse will need to take some action to re-engage with you -- it's not a freebie. People value that what they have to work for and do not value that which is freely acquired.

Detaching, on the other hand, is just separating your emotional well-being from your wife's influence. That doesn't require you to be distant or cold -- just unaffected.

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day about this -- if you are texting with a friend of yours and they suddenly stop responding, it doesn't turn your day upside down. You don't spend the next hour wondering why they stopped responding. You just go on with your day and probably forget about it pretty quickly, and the next time you engage with them you probably don't even remember that happened. You are detached, your friend's failure to respond really didn't impact you at all.

That's what you're going for. Your wife is happy around you? Great. Your wife is a raving lunatic spewing hate at you? Too bad for her, your toes are still tapping. You wake up with a plan for how you want to feel today, what you want to do, where you want to be, and you do it and you stick to it, and it doesn't matter if she's at her place knitting or running through the streets of the town naked -- it just doesn't impact your state of mind.

She'll get the sense that she's not influencing your moods and that will be very freeing to her as she's not being pursued, and at the same time will be unsettling because you're no longer an insurance policy sitting on the shelf.

I don't necessarily believe you can just "will yourself to detach", it's something that will happen with the passage of time, but it's something you have to work towards and as Michelle says "act as if"