And then it was over.

[SteveLW]

PLEASE HELP!
Do I confront him on his outing last night?
Do I say anything about the ring? or his planned counselor session with a DB counselor?
How do I handle this?!

So look at those questions above. In the frame of what I asked you to reread.

I think you already know the answers.

Here is the truth. You, unfortunately, don't get to decide that your marriage continues. It takes two to make a marriage, but only one to divorce. If he wants a divorce you will be divorced. If he wants to leave, he will leave. Nothing you can say or do will change that. There is no magic bullet to fix this. We all come here looking for it only to discover it doesn't exist.

What you do have is X amount of time. Again, X is not decided by you, it is decided by him. However, your actions can make X go down exponentially. Every time you pressure and pursue, you push him further away and further out of the door. Unfortunately that is the sad reality. Unfortunately, you've already made X go down, and your actions last night (hiding the phone) made it go down more. If you want to subtract from X further, then go ahead and ask those questions. They are all pressure and pursuit.

MS, I wish I could tell you "do this or say that" and it would fix it. It can't. We have a saying around here, hope for the best, prepare for the worst. So you need to prepare for the worst. You also need to maximize X in the equation above. And you do that by removing all pressure and pursuit. Leave him alone to figure his stuff out. In the meantime you focus on you. GAL, which means to keep busy. Keep improving yourself. And detach. Which means to stop reacting emotionally to what he says and does. Use GAL and stay busy to study detachment. Learn what it really is and isn't. And then apply it.

I was one of the lucky ones and turned my situation around. I never would have if I hadn't studied detachment, worked on it, and became really good at it. You don't get there overnight, so start working on it now.