Newby here, desperate for some advice (thread 3)

[lt0402]

I think walkaways/waywards stop seeing who is in front of them and only see what they saw back when they were falling out of love. They sort of close their eyes/mind/heart off at the point they check out, despite the improvements, work, etc. their now terrified spouse is putting in to stop being the spouse that contributed to the marital problems. Maybe they don't trust the changes; maybe they don't care because they're so far gone and down the emotional road. In any event, I get the sense that they see only the old us.

Honestly JR, I think they are so far into the fog by the time they BD that they just don't care anymore. It [censored], but seeing firsthand how cold, vindictive, and uncaring my WW has become has cemented that fact w/ me. There seems to be no inclination to see things through the LBS' eyes, which seems to drive all of us crazy.

It [censored], and getting to where I don't care, at least not nearly as much, has been completely mystifying. I read again and again from very well meaning folks here that "you need to detach". The how is what I still haven't gotten. There's no switch to hit and just make it happen. I think maybe you just finally get sick of not being valued or seen, and you just become a walkaway yourself, and you move on, like our spouses did to us. But then DBing would say to remain open to a R. Threading that needle seems impossible to me.

I'm by no means an expert on detaching, but I could see it naturally happening based upon how your WW treats you. If our Ws would stay as cold as they are now, I think it would just naturally push us to detachment. My fear is that as we start getting more detached, our Ws pull back on the coldness and it counters any progress we've made. I too am curious to get feedback from folks on if the detachment process had starts/stops/setbacks. It almost seems like detachment is never a binary thing, but most likely a sliding scale that is ever changing. Not there yet, so take it w/ a grain of salt!

albac -- my W is very fit, petite (5'3", 110 lbs, maybe), and I think she is beautiful, but she's not a classic "beauty". I think she feels time is slipping away before her looks go (I disagree), and she's antsy to use that time to her advantage. Hence the 2 year slow ride into D. That gives her cover w/r/t any suggestion she didn't have the kids' best interest at heart, and she's probably figuring she'll still be sufficiently alluring to attract the next guy(s) at 46 or so whenever she moves out/on.

I know what you mean. My W is not a model, but is a petite, intelligent redhead w/ a quirky sense of humor, great eyes, and great smile. After we had our D9 she had a thyroid issue and gained a bunch of weight, but she was still the same beautiful woman she's always been. She's shaken off that weight over the past 1.5yrs and now is back to looking like she did when we first started dating. I too think she sees the clock ticking and wants to see if there's better out there before heading into her 40s. My problem is that I've never wavered on seeing her as my beautiful W and I think she leverages that against me immensely. Recently though, I see that beauty being shaken by the things going on inside her. There's an immense ugliness currently that's helping me to at least minimize some of the feelings I get when looking at her.

Long story short, I don't think the hotness has anything to do w/ it. It's more the feelings that you've established for her over the years driving the beauty/non-beauty question. Those feelings are much more difficult to detach from apparently.