Ok, so had the talk with W about her thoughts on Retrouvaille.... I listened and validated and it was a nice, calm conversation. Ended on good terms and everything.
AWESOME! Whether you go or not that is a huge step in the right direction as far as how you are interacting with her, especially given what you had previously said you were going to say. Well done!
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So now what do I do? Is it worth still going? I’ve heard of stories of people going with this exact intention and being able to R. There are examples of people going to learn to communicate better for after the D and end up R.
We're not supposed to share too much about what takes place in it, that's why if you try to research it you can't hardly find any info on it. They want you to be a "clean slate" going in. But in a nutshell, it's all about helping couples learn to communicate better. They give you certain tools for doing so. And you go through exercises while there to learn how to use those tools. Pretty much all the couples there are broken in some way. The ones that have the most success are the ones that still live together and where both parties are at least somewhat willing to work on things. The couples that have the lowest success rates are the ones where one is a WAS. The problem with WAS's is they are so far gone that they are unwilling to work on anything. They are done. They do stuff like Retrou just to go through the motions and say "well I tried but it's just not going to work out." They go into it with the conclusion already decided. Going within a year of BD is just too soon, the WAS hasn't yet come out of the fog.
To give you a specific example, one of the coach couples had a man that was going through MLC. Wow their story was something else. He was boozing it up, doing drugs and sleeping around all over town while she dutifully stayed home praying for him and waiting for him to "snap out of it". She begged him to go to Retrou and he did, and he did nothing but complain about how stupid it was and what a huge waste of his time it was the whole time he was there (he was the one telling this story by the way). As soon as they got home he went right back to his MLC behavior. Eventually he hit bottom (if I remember right I think he was driving drunk and got in a terrible accident and that was when he realized how far he had fallen) and started looking back, and saw that she was moving on. Then HE wanted to go to Retrou with her again. They went, and this time he fully embraced it and really tried. They reconciled shortly after and had been together ever since (I think it had been 10 years at that point). So the first time they went too soon after BD, but the second time it worked because HE had a change of heart.
So, going in with the right mindset makes all the difference. Your W and pretty much every other WAS our family here on these forums is dealing with is not in the right mindset. That said, as I said in your last thread I think if you get the chance then go, because the worst case scenario is you come out with a lot of great tools and knowledge you can use with your W in the future when she does soften her position, or use in a new relationship. Just don't go with any expectations that it'll turn her around because that's unlikely.
