Need advice on stubborn W part 2

[AKuei]

Sorry for the delay in response. Needed to take a few days off the board to gather my thoughts...

YOUR MARRIAGE IS DEAD. I'm sorry to say that but it is for right now.

I've realised that months ago, I'm still in the bargaining stage to be honest. It's a steep hill to climb to acceptance but I'll get there eventually.

And since its a WW you're dealing with, have you read all of Sandi's posts on the WW mindset and the loss of respect for you as a man?

I believed I've read most of them. I've been doing my best to stand up for myself and the kids. I've been putting most of my focus on my kids and my work and myself. There are some nights where I'm so tempted to go pain shopping or even initiate a conversation but so far I've stopped myself.

Now while you take the pressure off of her... here comes more of the baby steps of working on you. Asking yourself what went wrong. Were you a slob, fix it. Were you always yelling and mad, control those emotional outburst. Were you passive aggressive?

Her comments during BD was that I was an absent parent, flying off to work for weeks and still have the cheek to take an extra 1-2 days to travel the country before heading home. Being sarcastic at times about women doing housework, having a short fuse towards the kis, etc. I made sure I do a 180 about those. My kids are closer to me than the W (because she's out socialising with her colleagues; who by the way were mostly divorced and kept dishing her ill advices), I've taken up most of the chores because I'm working from home; even cooking for the kids most of the days. No short fuses anymore, I just took a deep breath and stopped myself from screaming and tried to talk in a calmful manner. I've grown to like this version of myself better and I intend to keep improving on that.

Learning to detach, there are baby steps to that like getting rid of the feeling that you needed to do something for her.
Some attachment issues may stem from NGS, nice guy syndrome, have you looked into that? Working towards identifying your issues and working on them one at a time is baby steps.

Oh yes, I have NGS without a doubt. Always having a covert contract and having expectations. I'm working on getting rid of that so that I can be happy without expecting anything from anyone. The fear of not doing things seems to have an effect on me previously last time because NGS will tend to think that the inaction will further speed up the hatred of the W. I'm really taking baby steps here because it's so hard to shake of decades of habit. But I am starting to stop myself in the tracks if i know the things I'm doing are signs of NGS. Works MOST of the time though. Haha.

As the runner, they will need their space so as not to feel like you are pressuring them. As the chaser you will feel the need to be close to them. You're going to have to work on this dynamic with some self control.

The other night I lost the battle when she opened up a little and I kind of mentioned about our sitch as "been so long this is dragging on". She mentioned that her decision is final and she's perfectly fine with the current sitch (limboland). I told her I understand where you are coming from and I thanked her for confirming it. Had an anxiety attack after and once I calmed down I realised the folly I've made and I went back to re-read sandi's rules. I was so angry with myself how I slipped up on this.

I'm struggling to detach because when I try to detach, my face says it all. I will purposely avoid having eye contact with her, not being proactive in starting conversation (I don't see the need), my face just turns all serious and not jovial at all. How do I improve on this? However, when she approaches me for any comments on anything, I made sure to respond in a calm and friendly way.