Also, find it interesting what Steve mentioned in his new thread regarding Christian LBSs that want to bring their wife's sin to the church. In my case, I was thinking about reaching out to her pastor. Not to call out her sins, but more so to see if he would intercede to try to save our marriage. My Brother wants me to do this so I can say at the end of the day I tried everything and followed scripture (Matthew 18), but the way I see it, I want to take whatever steps necessary to not push my STBX furthe away.
Then again, I haven't spoken with my wife in 2.5 months, and wasn't even aware she had filed. I had the pleasant surprise of opening the front door and being served without notice, which just falls in line with my STBX's conflict avoidance.
Anyone have any insight or advice? I want to keep hope that there could be something down the road, but I'm not going to sit back and wait for her.
One oft the things I have learned is that although I went dark and didn't initiate conversations with my STBX, because I was still hanging onto the marriage, I hadn't fully detached. The last 2.5 months, I fully believed our marriage was coming to an end, and surprisingly, I have been able to focus on changing myself for me, and not my STBX. I have learned more in the last 2.5 months than the prior 7.5 months of this separation. I've come to recognize that my parents truly never validated my feelings, and were somewhat emotionally empty beings when I grew up. I'm the opposite in a lot of ways, but I realized that I never truly learned how to validate feelings, and unfortunately for my wife, I was doing this unintentionally. That's a hard pill to swallow. I have to remind myself that this is my failure to own, but also, STBX's failure was to not speak up about things that bothered her. I contributed to the downfall of our marriage, but I didn't cause her to leave. That is on her 100%.
