180man Thread 4

[180Man]

Pursuit/Distance Thread for anyone looking for it.

Welcome back from vacation 180. Glad it well.

I'm with Cadet on reaching out to your W. Keep doing what you're doing.

Question for you. When you were on vacation, how often did you think about your W?

Thanks LITB. When I got back I felt a conflict between two emotions. On one hand I felt a little better because I felt slightly more detached from her. On the other hand, I was scared that I was detaching from her, that we were losing our connection more and more each day. I understand the detachment theory, it just seems like there may be a threshold which you cross that may make it near impossible to ever cross back over again. Not sure if that makes sense.

To answer your question, it was on and off. I suppose I went several hours at a time before thinking about her, and then she would be on my mind for a while before I was able to distract myself with another activity.

Not to point fingers 180, but something I've noticed a few peeps on the board say. They say things like I was emotionally distant in the relationship so my 180 would be to pursue, etc. Things along those lines. I do recall seeing one line in DR about that, but seriously, these people all want space. Please listen to your gentlemen guides on this and let her be.

OwnIt, I've seen those same statements and I remember the line or two in DR regarding that. The bold text above really stuck out at me, I suppose I hadn't thought of it in that way. I'll have to let that tumble around in my skull for a little bit. Thanks.

Can you all play some devil's advocate with me? I'm only about halfway through the P/D thread, but I wanted to ask this question since it keeps coming up as I'm reading:

Is there a scenario in which the P/D theory does not hold true? In other words, have people had situations in which even though one person may have been the pursuer and the other the distancer, the circumstances of their situation changed or were unique in some manner in which the P/D theory didn't hold up? I may not be explaining this thought well, it was much easier to envision in my mind. Are there cases in which P/D didn't work and something else was required, and if so, what did that look like?

Second question now that we're talking about this: Does sending a card to my MIL and Step-MIL count as pursuit or can it simply be the decent thing to do as the SIL, estranged or otherwise?