THAT ^ is the most painful thing I think I've ever read on here as an LBS. As painful, honest and true as it can get.
It is a painful realization to be sure. I think a lot of us come here with the same thought as Did- "But I know beneath the anger is hurt and beneath the hurt is love" which implies that getting through the anger and hurt will reveal the love and put everything back to normal again. The problem is that the love is just not there. So you try peeling back layers of anger and hurt and just find more and more anger and hurt. At some point you realize that every layer you peel just causes the WAS to build 3 more layers around their heart. The gist of DBing isn't to dig down and find the love again. It's to lay the groundwork for a new seed of love to plant, take root, grow and eventually blossom. It may be similar to the previous love, or something completely different. But it's not THE SAME love.
Originally Posted by ovrrnbw
Well, truthfully, the WAS hasn't been "in love" with the LBS spouse for a long time. People who are happily married aren't "in love" forever anyways. They may recapture that "in-love" feelings for a few hours, a day, a week, months, etc but life and the challenges of marriage will always be there.
This is frequently true, but it doesn't have to be. Retrouvaille taught me that. The coaching couples had been in love, fallen out of love, and fell back in love and found a way to keep the love alive the 2nd time. The key to it could be boiled down to one word- WORK. Most of us get married and go on autopilot after a while. One of us thinks that just persevering is enough. We assume the other thinks the same, but he/ she doesn't and we eventually find that out at BD. THEN we're ready to do the work, but they're not. Anyway whether we recon or go into a new R, I think that's the number one lesson for all of us- do the work. A successful R depends on constant nurturing. If we don't learn that we are destined to be BD'd again.
