Oh, yeah. Probably much more so. Letters, tears, rational arguments, pleading . . . I did it all. I'd still be doing it had I not stumbled upon this place. And, truthfully, I spend lots of times still doing all of those things in my head. WHich keeps me from detaching.
Honestly, while there's a tendency to catastrophize each DB slip up, there's nothing we do, right now (positive or negative), that really matters all that much. They are where they are, and it's a million miles from us. It's cumulative if its anything, and probably a years-long effort of mostly succeeding at DB. And that's if we have the energy to fight that fight, which I'm coming to doubt for myself personally. I've already been fighting for 2+ years, made lots of positive changes, and I'm further away from my W, right now, than I was when I was still clueless.
I was really struck by your posts in your thread about the unilateral nature of what our Ws are doing. There are in their minds only two ways: stay married and suffer a martyr's life, or D and have hope of something better. But there's a third way. The way I'm pretty sure we promised we'd exhaust fully before blowing up our family. A collaborative effort aimed at resetting a relationship I've fully admitted needing resetting. I've had exactly 0.0 seconds of marriage counseling with this woman. I can't come to grips with the idea I'm going to lose half of my children's remaining childhood, and we won't ever have set foot in a single marriage counselor's office. I realize we're not in a place, right now, where MC would be anything other than a failure that my W would use as validation that there isn't a third way. But there was certainly a time, long before I had any clue she was so unhappy, where we could have done something. It's this kind of stuff that tears at my brain.
Me: 46 W: 44 Married: 17 Together 21 D13; S10 BD: 03.03.15 (Not attracted to you) Almost 2 years trying, alone, to save marriage Status now: Divorced (effective 06.13.17)
