two steps forward, three steps back (burned)

[Wanted1]

ST, you're yet another of the people who say they've seen this play out in real life. Before I got to DB, one of the first books I read was "Rebuilding" by Fisher & Alberti. I was totally floored when I got to the part that said "the dumper (WS) frequently comes back talking about reconciliation, right around the time the dumpee (LBS) is "making it," and the most common response is for the LBS to not take them back. Why? "I'm happy even without them, and they didn't seem to have changed much." Maybe AS is actually one of the authors. He won't admit it though. :P

Hahaha! No, never heard of it. I'm just coming from the angle of someone who has been here a long time and seen LBS's come back with updates, sometimes years after their last post and share that their WAS did eventually try to recon. I've also talked to quite a few people IRL that share similar stories. It happens a lot, but mostly it's YEARS later and that is the problem. I think if I told you "Burned, your W will truly repent of her actions and want to reconcile in 23.2 months" then you would probably wait, but all I can really tell you is she may want to in 2 years, or maybe 7 years, or maybe never. And what LBS is willing to wait 2 or 7 or 10 years just to see if -maybe- the WAS wants to recon? I can't imagine there are many. So we get over them and we move on and we build new lives for ourselves. Then when they do approach us, we're a new person with new interests and new goals and slotting them back into that can be very tough indeed. My whole spiel isn't that we should wait for them forever, it's just to say that the sad truth of it all is they will probably want to recon AFTER we don't want to anymore.

Judging by everything that I've learned on this forum, I think if that were the case, they wouldn't come back because we, as the LBS, waiting around and not believing that they are gone for good wouldn't create the necessary changes it takes to "move on" and "make it" that's probably required for most of the WW and WH to realize they screwed up and come out of the fog.