Newby here, desperate for some advice (thread 2)

[JRuss]

Dinner last night with W went well, seemingly. It was a lot like a date. We talked a ton (she had a phone call earlier in the day with her previously-estranged brother that went well and made her pretty happy), eye contact throughout, no checking her phone at all, had good food, went home happy. I was even thinking maybe she might want to get busy (who needs detachment??), but didn't happen. I was upbeat, positive, outwardly calm. Inside I was fairly confused and a little anxious throughout, honestly. You slip right back into those feelings and wonder why is she putting us through all of this. If such a pleasant evening is possible, then why isn't she willing to work on our relationship? Definitely a head scratcher.

ForGump -- I'm still pretty convinced my W's "core" issue is her unhappiness with her life and some of the choices she made (to move back to hometown, take a supporting job at the expense of her career, etc.) that she's projected onto me. I was a depressed guy after our S9 was born and stopped living my life in anything other than basic survival mode, and she definitely got frustrated with me, lost respect for me and, finally, lost attraction to me. But I haven't been that guy for 2+ years now, have addressed and significantly improved everything she's ever told me was a problem, but the problems continue. I think it's inside her, and it doesn't really matter beyond a certain point what I do.

Which is sobering. She's very likely not going to have any sort of epiphany, so it's pretty much me just trying to live for me and the kids at this point. The essence of DBing, right? Still no idea how to detach. Maybe I shouldn't have agreed to go out to eat with her; but it felt like maybe some progress had happened to be asked. Probably just her cake eating. It's hard not to hope that these sorts of things are first shoots of regenerating a relationship, but then also hard not to get really down when/if you start concluding/guessing that it means nothing.

Who knows. Just going to try to take things hour by hour, stay healthy, keep doing 180s as I can spot them, keep trying to detach (not much success yet) and see where things go. Sometimes I feel like there is a giant clock hovering over my life, inexorably ticking down, down, down, with 0:00 being the divorce. It gets my anxiety going, which really is just a terrible feeling as I'm sure you're aware. Sort of saps your motivation to DB, GAL, etc. when you're in midst of an anxiety surge.