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.
