Every sitch is different and is compounded by different personalities so I wasn't looking for similarities that I could comment on. What I was looking for is your understanding of where you are today as a person and the person that your W fell head over heels ga ga with. You say the spark eludes you now but it didn't back then.
My belief is if a person fell in love with you once, they were strongly attacted to something about you. Because they don't feel that love, perhaps that something is eluding you. Finding out what that something is may be the key that unlocks their heart.
I don't think that asking her would be a good idea for 2 reasons. One is she may not be able to articulate what it was and two, she'll know that if she tells you and you start changing a little more, it will be obvious why you are doing it and perhaps spoil the surprise. I really think the value in it is for you to figure out what it was. I found that looking through pictures when we were dating through to when we got married gave me alot of answers.
In DBing, there is alot of emphasis on doing 180's. I think it is because to do a 180, you firstly need a change of attitude to successfully execute a 180 and the execution of the 180 provides behavioral role play while the behavior becomes ingrained. The problem I see is that doing the opposite to what you would normally do may not be leading you in the right direction.
I think to do 180's successfully, you need a point of reference and that point of reference is to think and act as the person your spouse first fell in love with.
I know it's been a long time ago to remember what sort of person you were back then. If my drug abused memory was able to take me back 20 years then I'm sure anyone can do it.
Before we enter a long term relationship, we are really together people with a very open mind to the future. We love our partner for who they are without conditions. However, money, children etc over time and we begin to loose touch of who we once were and our behaviors are shaped by our attitudes of a much more narrower view of the world. That is what I think people refer to a "losing" ourselves in a R. In our attempts to adapt to our responsibilities, we get more set in our ways and all of a sudden, our partners feel sucked into this narrow vortex of ours and don't feel comfortable with it. We see it a good family management, our S's see it as control. We see it as family first, our S's see it as he's not loving me like he did. We see it as a natural progression, our S's see it as he doesn't take care of himself anymore. Before we know it, we have changed dramatically and though we feel very comfortable with the way things have panned out. It takes a bomb to crush everything we have achieved and to shatter the illusion.
So the challenge I put to you COG is for you to articulate what it was that your W fell madly in love with you and what 180's you can do to restore that situation.
"It's better to have no spouse than have a bad spouse"
