It is good to hear from you. I see that your XW has been very much in need of your company. I gather that in your case there is the technical issue of dealing with the integrated family. I have no experience with that one and hope that I never do. But I see several positives in your situation.
Your observation on WASs expecting a miracle to make them fall back in love again is well taken. It does not work because there is too much negative history that they have stored in their brain and they just cant flush it out. And they are very scared. Fear and love cannot coexist. My W appears to be headed that way because she feels that has not happened, so she has no options. You are also right about just letting her go. I have done everything possible in the past couple of years to show that I care and that I want to work on the R. All I can do now is to stay the course and let her figue out what she wants to do. And to DB my posterior off....post-D.
I am going to take Gabriel's advice seriously and ask myself whatI want to do to have an R with my W and forget the stupid M. And I really need to lighten up. I think in the past year I could have prevented the D if I had let go some more. I really have much to learn when it comes to relationships and things.
UD
The 3 laws of DBing:
1. PMA is critical to DBing.
2. Since drop in WAW's PMA leads to drop in LBS's PMA and vice-versa detachment is critical.
3. Validate to raise WAW's PMA and GAL to raise LBS's.
You can call me Wes. It's easier than the screen name. Although you aren't divorced yet, our situations are disturbingly too familiar. The friendship part...the getting together for dinners..family time. Like you, I was never sure if it was good or bad to spend so much time together. It appears that time together and our budding friendship did nothing to delay or prevent divorce. Will it in your case? Who knows. Will suddenly going dark help her realize that she misses you? I don't know. What has been her behavior to no contact in the past?
I worry that we are being used. We make ourselves accessible as a source of adult companionship instead of them always being alone with children. It isn't easy for a single mom to have stress free time out to dinner with her children and a date. Maybe we provide the date without the stress. They get to have the happy family together again for a little family time. Plus, in our new found DB way, we listen to what they have to say and obligingly nod our heads and validate.
So it's very difficult. Do we accept the invitations and enjoy time with our spouses/ex-spouses and hope that the friendship will blossom into more or do we avoid time together and hope that "distance makes the heart grow fonder"? The answer is probably somewhere in the middle. I always think that she will miss me more if she remembers the recent positive interactions with me rather than the years of resentments from the marriage.
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. Abraham Lincoln
It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. Theodore Roosevelt
You can call me Wes. It's easier than the screen name. Although you aren't divorced yet, our situations are disturbingly too familiar. The friendship part...the getting together for dinners..family time. Like you, I was never sure if it was good or bad to spend so much time together. It appears that time together and our budding friendship did nothing to delay or prevent divorce. Will it in your case? Who knows. Will suddenly going dark help her realize that she misses you? I don't know. What has been her behavior to no contact in the past?
I worry that we are being used. We make ourselves accessible as a source of adult companionship instead of them always being alone with children. It isn't easy for a single mom to have stress free time out to dinner with her children and a date. Maybe we provide the date without the stress. They get to have the happy family together again for a little family time. Plus, in our new found DB way, we listen to what they have to say and obligingly nod our heads and validate.
So it's very difficult. Do we accept the invitations and enjoy time with our spouses/ex-spouses and hope that the friendship will blossom into more or do we avoid time together and hope that "distance makes the heart grow fonder"? The answer is probably somewhere in the middle. I always think that she will miss me more if she remembers the recent positive interactions with me rather than the years of resentments from the marriage.
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. Abraham Lincoln
It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. Theodore Roosevelt
Yes, I feel very used as well. When I am really upset with this situation I feel like my W used me over the past couple of years to give herself a soft landing to a D. Also, I feel like my love for D3 was used as a pawn for the whole procedure. But I, like you, feel I had no way of knowing whether to participate in "family-like" activities so my D3 would have a semi-normal childhood or to back off to let W realize what she was losing. I took the unconditional love approach. It has obviously not worked for me. My expectations got in the way. On the upside of the rollercoaster my hopes would be up and then I would apply pressure, even very slight and then there would be downturn.
Going dark has been difficult in my situation due to D3. I have refrained from calling her for the past couple months unless necessary to deal with D3 issues. She comes over to pick up D3 and sometimes will stay for over an hour playing with her. She gives me long rundowns of her day-to-day activities and I have always has a very good "map" of her life and have maintained it through these two years. Even at the time of asking for a D she said she would like to continue doing all that. I dont know, its all so confusing.
Maybe it is just my limited knowledge, but what I have noticed on this bb is that the success stories always involve lovingly distancing and for the LBS to drop the rope and move away before the WAS comes back. Otherwise it just leads to a pursure-distancer dynamic that never stops. Examples on this bb of such successes that I have seen are : Cliff, Xalelle, others?
UD
The 3 laws of DBing:
1. PMA is critical to DBing.
2. Since drop in WAW's PMA leads to drop in LBS's PMA and vice-versa detachment is critical.
3. Validate to raise WAW's PMA and GAL to raise LBS's.
I am pondering the pros and cons of friendship with WAW post D. In some ways, since we have a D3 I will have to interact closely with W. This will be good for D3 and to maintain an R of some kind with W and hoping that it will go somewhere. However, I feel sometimes that my W has carefully planned and manipulated the whole process of extended separation (2 years!) and then D in such a way that it is a soft landing (I may be just hallucinating here). In the talk last week in which she expressed intent to pursue D she said that "we have evolved now to a stage where D will be fine"!! So, in a way being friends is what she planned for and what she wants. She will not have to experience the pain of the D if we just make it a natural extension of the S. I dont know. The ultimate reasons that she stated for the D was "I just cant seem to make it back into M, I have changed, I think it is my personality" and there is no (apparent) OM, although there has been an EA I suspect. Is the friend approach just giving her exactly what she wants? On the other hand what choice do I have?
Will post goals today. Thanks all.
UD
The 3 laws of DBing:
1. PMA is critical to DBing.
2. Since drop in WAW's PMA leads to drop in LBS's PMA and vice-versa detachment is critical.
3. Validate to raise WAW's PMA and GAL to raise LBS's.
Keep wresting with this question: Do I want the M or do I want the R with my W?
My W is going thru some developmental stuff that may include gunk about an evolved woman not needing to be 'trapped' in a M. I'm not bothering to go there. Instead I'm busy making myself into so great a catch that W is starting to notice that I have lots to offer. She's also noticed that other women are noticing this as well, and is starting to get pulled back, just to a friend state mind you, but since friendship is the basis for any longterm R, what a great place to move to!
Try to avoid all A$$umptions - especially about her intentions, b/c they are rarely accurate.
Yeah, the thread title matters. Think informative yet optimistic, yet eye-catching.
Our sitches are very similar. W and I are from blue-collar families, definitely not blue-blood. As a result, we struggled as a pair with much more financial press than our counterparts, and we have paid the price for it, in different ways, but also in terms of the M. I don't know how helpful it would be to think of her wanting to 'upgrade' from you to a snoot. My guess is that its more of the additional struggle the two of you had.
If so, you can do tons to undo that in her eyes by doing loads of self-love/work, moving to strong PMA, and feeding her with this optimistic attitude whenever she's around you. Such strengths can't be bought or inherited from affluent parents, or picked up in ivy-covered buildings, and she'll be drawn to that plus likely admire your accomplishments and stance so much more given your shared roots than those of her colleagues.
