DB'ing while living in with a WAS/MLC husband

[SteveLW]

BluWave’s advice is impeccable. She had the gift of hindsight to share what you quoted, however. Not that it changes the validity of her advice, but it is SO hard to get there in the moment you (and I) are both in.

But it sounds like you are doing a great job right now of detaching and staying in the present moment. You are in limbo... and I have so much empathy and admiration for how you are coping with it all. If you read BluWave’s threads from start to finish, you will learn that she struggled so much in the beginning to detach. She fell victim to what all of us do: the begging, crying, pleading, sadness, rage. And she learned that it didn’t work. But what I am slowly realizing is that those emotions are instigators to detachment. Human nature can only stay in pain for so long before we start to move away from it. For survival.

You are deserving of great love. Of faithfulness. Of not being hurt in this way. Don’t forget that.

Sage, I hear what you are saying. However, nothing worthwhile is life is easy! Yes, this approach Blu laid out is hard. But look at how she voices the opposite:

"No one wants a needy, sad, or weak person. No one wants someone angry or raging at them. No one is attracted to someone waiting for them as they are actively rejecting them."

I think of an ex-gf I had when I was in my late teens. I met this girl and she fell hard. Very hard. She was almost obsessed. So much to the point that she accused me of cheating because she heard that "I was a really big flirt". I WAS SEVENTEEN! Of course I was a big flirt. It took me months, after breaking up with her, to get her to accept the break-up. She'd still call me everyday. She'd show up at places I was at (her best friend was dating a friend of mine). I pretty much had to be rude to finally get her to stop. 2 years later something weird happened. It had been 6 months since I had heard from her. and the 6 months prior to that was her trying to convince me she had moved on. "I am dating a guy, he's this and has that." It was obvious to me she was trying to make me jealous. But after that 6 months with NC went by II started to wonder about her.

I called her. She was happy to hear from me but her whole demeanor related to me had changed. It kicked in my chase instinct and suddenly I started wanting to date her again! If you had told me a year before that I would become the chaser I would have scoffed. But by her stopping chasing me, and in fact running the other way, it kicked in a predator instinct in me! "She's mine, and I will get her back!"

We never did get back, after a few weeks of chasing, and realizing that she was completely over me, I gave up. But the point is that notice the difference. Most LBSs fail in what Blu says because THEY DON'T truly move on. They just want to make their WAS think they've moved on. WAS have excellent instincts related to this, and will know you are just trying to manipulate them. It is only after you truly have given up and moved on that sometimes the WAS will start wondering what changed.

So yes it is hard. But it only hard because most LBSs, and LBWs in particular, are too afraid to actually drop the rope, give up on their WAS, and move on. It can be done. Many have done it. And eventually the WAS comes crawling back. Some of the LBSs accept them back and begin to work on MR 2.0. Many have truly moved on by that point and are completely over their WAS. The difference is that in that case the choice is up to the LBS, not the WAS!