Not Sure Where This Is Going

[SteveLW]

I can also say from my own experience, that when my perspective switched from trying to save my W from herself, and trying to save my D and myself, things turned around pretty quickly. My sitch was very unique in timing and turnaround speed, so please take it with a huge grain of salt, but you will never move forward with your focus on her.

I've seen it mentioned multiple times that your turnaround came unusually fast. Last night I read some of your threads and realized that patience, which you wrote to me about, didn't come easily to you either until all this. And that little seeds of doubt can still creep in. It helped me understand that it's a long road back for everyone, it's hard for everyone, and not just a question of you being inherently much better at DB than I.

Agree 100%. I struggled mightily. However, I did resolve pretty early on to try and DB as hard as I could. I think that resolve helped me to get through my mistakes. We have a saying around here when someone makes a mistake in DBing. "Don't dwell on it. Just learn and move forward. Get back up on the DB horse!" Or something similar. The point is that once you initiate an R talk, you can't "uninitiate" it. It is water under the bridge, just resolve to do better from this point forward.

I also eventually got detachment down pretty good. By time I took the focus off of her, had GAL in full swing, stop reacting emotionally to the things she was saying and doing, and began to embrace my future life with or without her, the turnaround happened quickly. And again, that was unusual, because it usually take a lot longer. We've had some success stories, but they all take a strict adherence to DBing principles and techniques. One guy (hoosjim) whose W was still engaging with OM, and he started to apply sandi's rules and follow sandi's advice and his W turned around quickly after that. The quickest path to R, if it is possible at all, is to adhere to the principles as closely as possible.