Thanks AS! I appreciate the advice. Sounds like I will become a validation expert, a useful tool in a relationship. She’s definitely had her feelings through all of this and mine have mostly been in direct conflict. I will be careful not to judge as they were real for her regardless of whether I felt they were right or wrong.
Yes exactly right. You'll learn that your feelings weren't so much in conflict, it's just that each individual has different feelings and feelings are not "right" or "wrong". For example maybe my favorite cousin Joe Awesome passed away in a car accident. I am upset about it but others I know could care less because they don't know him, so me expressing grief about it might be falling on deaf ears. The thing is, even though they don't care, I do, and if they were sensitive to my feelings then they would understand and sympathize even though it's not a personal loss to them. Sometimes your feelings may be the opposite. Maybe Suzie down the street had a dog that was run over by Joe Awesome and she never got over it, so she was actually happy that he died. Those feelings may seem "wrong" to me in my grief, but she has her reasons for her feelings just like I do.
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I do hope we make it through the weekend and the six post sessions.
I think if you're honest with yourself you "hope" that because you heard the statistic that people that made it through all the sessions had a better chance of saving their M. But I don't want you to get your hopes up, you'll learn a lot but this isn't the "epiphany" you want your W to have. The statistic gives false hope because the people who both WANT to work on their M are the ones that go to all the followup sessions. It's not the other way around where the people who make it through the sessions save their M. Do you understand the difference? Your W is both feet out the door and this won't change that.
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I feel completing the entire program would demonstrate some level of willingness and commitment.
I am with LH, she's only going so she can check it off her list of "everything I did to try and save the M but proved it was already over." It's fine to have hopes for future recon but you can't attach them to a "magic bullet" because that's not how these things work (unfortunately).
