DNJ only ever gives excellent, experience-driven advice, so listen carefully.
Also, he’s the resident expert at calming you down and giving a glass-half-full perspective for those times when you feel overwhelmed/angry/vindictive/sad/broken.
His analogy of getting off the roller coaster and leaving the park is correct. A roller-coaster is not a controllable journey. You can’t stop it, make it go faster, make it go slower or change the direction of the track. That’s what divorce is like just after bomb day. It’s a real waiting game.
The only thing you control is your thoughts, your emotions, your words and your behaviour (which is actually quite a lot, isn’t it?)
Detaching does not mean walking away from your marriage. It means putting a safe distance between yourself and the craziness of a walk away or wayward spouse. It gives you a chance to separate your emotions from your behaviours, it gives you a chance to identify your faults and work on them, it allows you to discover that you aren’t responsible for everything, and it gives your spouse a chance to take a breather - and perhaps realise their unhappiness is not all your fault.
It also gives you a chance to start realising you can feel happy in just your own company.
Another good analogy is being a fallen autumn leaf during a tornado. You know you’re going to get tossed about until the storm blows itself out.
