Ryan, many (all?) of us can relate to your comments. Her actions are straight out of the WAS/WW handbook. ILYBINILWY, dressing up, going out, won't let her phone out of her sight, partying with friends/ enablers. It's all classic WAS behavior. Needy, desperate behavior on your part will NOT bring her back. Nothing you do will, all you can do is pull back and give her time and space. Be prepared to see some hurtful behavior because she will behave like she's in a "girls gone wild" video for quite a while. Cadet always says this is a marathon because that's exactly what it is. You won't see any changes in weeks or even months. It'll likely take a year or more for her to snap out of it. So settle in and be patient. Work on yourself and leave her alone.
My ex did all that stuff too. It took her about a year to stop the silliness and act her age again. It did not lead to reconciliation, her personality changed quite a bit and she never did "get back to normal". But she is more like her old self than she was after BD.
One of my ex's enablers left her H, moved out and acted like a college girl on spring break. Her H was like "you want to leave, well there's the door." He didn't do all the begging/ pleading/ placating that most of us did. He just went silent on her. She got a tattoo of a butterfly on her lower back with a phrase in Latin that translated to something like "she's finally free", LOL! 6 months later she was back home with her H like nothing ever happened. That was around 5 years ago and they are still together. Sandi is always talking about how she wishes more LBS's would take that kind of a "tough love" approach with a wayward because that is pretty much the only thing that works with them. The problem with most of us here is we are afflicted with NGS (nice guy syndrome) and are unable/ unwilling to take that approach.
