LH appreciate your reply as you always tell it like it is.
guess I was thinking about her saying "we could have gone to dinner, on a date" that type deal but with no R talk. and I fully get the time/space, LBS making themselves the best/new version of themselves. course in the WW world or in Did's sitch, it's like his W is expecting/wanting to know the old Did but with some of the new stuff as well, not say a completely new person.
like I say my W left, her decision set our sitch in motion. I've done my best to navigate it as it's come along always with the desire to bring us back together. as you say though if she doesn't want it, makes no matter. for me it's that same thing she always said, she walked, didn't want to work on us, but yet then would say we have no R. a perfect cyclical trap for me. Accuray talked about that in one of my old threads, need to go read that again.
ovrrnbw...it's more like I don't want to pursue, I know better..but is there in the spouse who left a middle ground of action that they expect/believe is ok and don't consider pursuit. see if THAT exists and THEY expect it and we detach/don't catch on to that...two ships pass quietly in the night. is there a distinction to them between "let's work on the R" vs "keep me aware of the person you are becoming without being needy/desperate"...my sitch is cast so to speak, I'm on the path for me and my life...it's more a ponderance than anything...all of us are just hoping we are doing the best we can for whatever hope/desire it is we have for our lives...as we presently know them.
again that might not be 100% clear, apologies I hope you get what I'm philosophizing about!
I think I struggle with the same thoughts you are having ballast, and I worry that I am being too "mysterious" by being so disconnected with W now that she has moved out. We've stopped sharing things on our calendars, don't talk anymore, she unfriended me on FB. And a few weeks ago in one of the last real conversations I had with W I told her I couldn't be friends with her (she was requesting that we "start over as friends or acquaintances") until we talked about the fact that I had worked hard to repair our relationship and she instead chose to have an affair. Then she told me I didn't include her in that work. That comment keeps playing back now. It comes across as her saying "If only you had done the right thing at the right time, I would have stayed". So it feels like I failed at saving my marriage, after I already failed at stopping this crisis from happening in the first place. Big ol' negative thought train. I'm still stuck on it now. Feels like it's the last thing my W said to me, so it's all I have to hang on to of her now. And I worry that I wrongly turned down her offer of friendship. I was not going to allow rugsweeping of her affair though, so I still believe that was the right decision.
So yeah, when you feel like you're not allowed to pursue, and distancing feels like hell, what can you do? I think most would say detach. Detachment + Separation + No Pursuit just feels the same as divorce to me. Just accept that? Maybe I need to get to a different mental place still. Maybe I'm in a down week.
Me:30 W:31 S:4 M:7 T:12 PA: 5/6/18 - ? W moved out 7/18
I can relate to this feeling. I am trying to detach with the mind set that we are going to D. The comms between W and I are getting less and less frequent. It does feel like the train is on the D track and that’s that. But I guess that is DB right?
There's a website out there that I learned about recently about "ex boyfriend/girlfriend recovery". Funny concept.
I was listening to a podcast where Michelle Weiner Davis was on w/ Neil Sattin. Very cool and she's done 2 of them with him, both over an hour I believe. She is amazing to listen to, truly. I even like her old content from 20 years ago on Oprah.
Another podcast popped up and it was about getting your ex back. The guy running the site has collected extensive data and the overwhelmingly best way to get your ex back is to cease all contact. There's more to read than this, but it's a good read.
H 34 W 29 BD 3/12/18 Divorce Busted Spring 19
It is not things that bother us, but the stories we tell ourselves about things.
There's a website out there that I learned about recently about "ex boyfriend/girlfriend recovery". Funny concept.
I was listening to a podcast where Michelle Weiner Davis was on w/ Neil Sattin. Very cool and she's done 2 of them with him, both over an hour I believe. She is amazing to listen to, truly. I even like her old content from 20 years ago on Oprah.
Another podcast popped up and it was about getting your ex back. The guy running the site has collected extensive data and the overwhelmingly best way to get your ex back is to cease all contact. There's more to read than this, but it's a good read.
I believe I read that guy's stuff before. Yep, detaching and stopping contact is the tactic that works best. It isn't a guarantee. But that so many of us struggle with that. With thoughts of "being too mysterious" etc. It is under the mistaken thinking that if you do what you should have done before she became WAW, it will fix it. That is why I wrote my post on BD NOT being the start of your sitch. Most WAWs started planning their exit 2 years prior to BD! If you act like BD is the start it will make you think you should do the things you should have done BEFORE BD. After BD it is too late.
That is why moping, acting sad, and being depressed doesn't work. The WAW already came to terms a long time ago that to walk-away she had to hurt you. She is okay with that. In fact you being hurt validates to her that she is doing the right thing! That is why if we were aware of DBing prior to BD, and we could immediately let go it would go a lot further to potentially change her mind. But crying, begging, pleading doesn't work because she expected that. And was braced for it.
So can you be too mysterious? NO! It is impossible. In fact, most LBHs are not mysterious enough. Why? Because they are GAL, and detaching for the wrong reason. When you do it to REALLY let her go, then you will be mysterious. Completely. When you do it only to try to manipulate you then you won't be mysterious enough and she will see through it.
DBing is doing the opposite of what we think we should do. We all struggle with that. But once you start doing it well THEN it gets easier because it has the intended effect on both you and the WAS.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
I think I struggle with the same thoughts you are having ballast, and I worry that I am being too "mysterious" by being so disconnected with W now that she has moved out. We've stopped sharing things on our calendars, don't talk anymore, she unfriended me on FB. And a few weeks ago in one of the last real conversations I had with W I told her I couldn't be friends with her (she was requesting that we "start over as friends or acquaintances") until we talked about the fact that I had worked hard to repair our relationship and she instead chose to have an affair. Then she told me I didn't include her in that work. That comment keeps playing back now. It comes across as her saying "If only you had done the right thing at the right time, I would have stayed". So it feels like I failed at saving my marriage, after I already failed at stopping this crisis from happening in the first place. Big ol' negative thought train. I'm still stuck on it now. Feels like it's the last thing my W said to me, so it's all I have to hang on to of her now. And I worry that I wrongly turned down her offer of friendship. I was not going to allow rugsweeping of her affair though, so I still believe that was the right decision.
So yeah, when you feel like you're not allowed to pursue, and distancing feels like hell, what can you do? I think most would say detach. Detachment + Separation + No Pursuit just feels the same as divorce to me. Just accept that? Maybe I need to get to a different mental place still. Maybe I'm in a down week.
"If only you had done the right thing at the right time, I would have stayed". This is a lie designed to alleviate her own guilt. WAWs and WWs especially lie. That is why we constantly say "Believe nothing she says, and only half of what she does!"
Put no stock into things she says like this. None. The planets could have aligned, you could have turned into Brad Pitt, and your back account could have swollen to a billion dollars, and she still would have walked. They will ALWAYS say there was something else you could have or should have done differently.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
"How could I commit to being your wife without even getting to know who you are today?"
while I'm where I am in my sitch THAT bothers the H out of me. I mean she made a choice to split us up, I tried a bit to see if she wanted to work on us, got shot down and have been leaving her alone as a result, BUT I still think a big feeling to her could be that exact statement above. it reeks of an LBS pursuing and requiring us to be counter to what folks recommend here, yet as time goes/hope diminishes man does that gnaw at you. did I make the right decision? not saying pursue her, talk R, the works, but between the two pursuit/detach is there some middle ground that might have provided a better result such that I as an LBS would not feel like she might be right/justified in hitting me with that comment?
I can hear my W saying that same thing as justification for D insinuating that by my "inaction" I was directly responsible for where my sitch is right now.
Agree 100% with what everyone has already told you. I want to point out that this is your "desperate internal pursuer" looking for *any* excuse to resume pursuit.
Of all the thousands of things you read on this forum, why do you think you keyed in on that line?
It's because it cracks open the door just a little bit to give you a seemingly rational excuse to try some pursuit.
Shut that down.
How could *anybody* commit to being in a relationship with you without getting to know who you are now? No one could. So why would anybody invest the time to get to know you? Because you're an attractive person to get to know.
How do you be an attractive person to get to know? You're confident, self-assured and happy! At this point she has to come to you, and you can't induce her to do that, as much as you want to try.
Acc
Married 18, Together 20, Now Divorced M: 48, W: 50, D: 18, S: 16, D: 12 Bomb Dropped (EA, D): 7/13/11 Start Reconcile: 8/15/11 Bomb Dropped (EA, D): 5/1/2014 (Divorced) In a New Relationship: 3/2015
