Took a hiatus for a bit. Sometimes reading the forums is very helpful, but other times it makes it harder to read the pain so many are going through.
To start, thank you CaliGuy for your response above. You are/were totally right. Good advice.
To catch up from where I left off, my W has been living at home again since July (4 months ago when I write this). That is also when I got a new job. We stopped going to MC at the time she moved back. The up and down has been pretty rough, but a different kind of rough than before. The cycling is hard because sometimes things seem almost normal which makes me want to let me guard down, but then back to LaLa Land. I know that the MLC fog lies and I shouldn't believe the things she says, but that is difficult sometimes. Here is a quick timeline of the last few months:
When she first came back she was still pretty cold and distant with me, but she said she wanted to try and work things out. Said she had a million reasons to make things work. She stopped going out so much and was done with her EA (I'm sure of it, not being naive), but she seemed to be depressed. I tried taking her out on dates as she mentioned that being something lacking in our R, but she seemed to accept reluctantly and was a little distant while we were out. I tried sending her flowers and she seemed to appreciate it, but it didn't help anything. We continued to have sex, and I thought she was in to it, but now I think that she was either faking it or isn't in to it anymore. To clarify, I wasn't trying to chase her...I was trying to work on the marriage because I thought that's what she wanted. I wasn't bgging or pleading, just trying to be a good husband and work on what I thought she needed. I believe that was an error in judgement now. She was not ready.
I have moved to detaching (or acting like it at least). We are now getting along almost normally since I have started leaving her alone, but I am human and occasionally I instigate some kind of R conversation. In the last couple of months she has stopped wearing her wedding ring because she says it feels like a symbol of possession, stopped all intimacy because she says it feels like an obligation, and even told me at one point that she didn't want to be married. She also says that she wants to work things out...and if I leave her alone we get along ok.
I guess I am here now to ask, how to you detach? I mean I know what it means and I know how to "act" like it...but mentally, how do you actually do that. I feel like I need to GAL and detach, but it is hard to WANT to GAL or know how if mentally you can't detach. I analyse her every move. I see her making personal progress in the things she does, even though she is still cycling through behaviors. The bad isn't as bad anymore...but that is my point. I feel like I shouldn't be noticing all that stuff right now. She does something positive and it makes me happy...then she cycles down and it depresses me because I thought we were making progress. She IS making progress, but I need to detach from all that for now to help regain my man card. I swear I had one before...and I feel so close to being able to do it but can't quite get there. Some days its like a light bulb moment and I feel like I finally am detached...but those moments are short lived. Any advice on the mental gymnastics needed to detach would be greatly appreciated.
Sorry for the rambling. Thank you all for all of your posts. They help more than you know!
