I am with you on all that you have written. My W is doing EXACTLY what you are saying your W is doing. But, I have to tell you this is standard MLC behavior. I dont know if you have read up on MLC. If not, there are som very good books on it that I can recommend. You are, my friend, asking some very complex questions. And there are no simple answers. If you said "do I want this R because: a) I love this woman, 2) She is a habit that I cannot break, 3) she heats me up, 4) She drives me crazy, 5) She is unattainable at present, etc. etc." I would say yes to all of those. I have not been able to compartmentalize and answer the whys and hows of my feelings for my wife. It is a safe bet that your W cannot either. She is as lost and confused as you are. She is world-weary on her midlife. she wants to recapture some of your youth, she sees old age coming, she is wondering what it will be like, there is fear, there is uncertainty, there are hormones. Now it is your choice. Are you going to stay with this woman and see this relationship to its conclusion (either way) or not. You make that choice, this is a spiritual decision, not a rational one. It involves a leap of faith. And there are no guarantees. But, you have to make a plan and prepare for the long haul. You may have to sit back and watch your W flail around and seek the answer from the web or from her new-found friends or whatever. You will have to exercise the utmost patience. You always have the choice of moving on however. I have been here for two years now and I know that this is not an easy game to play. But I am choosing to play it. Nobody is forcing me. At this point not even my conscience is forcing me because I am confident that whatever mistakes I made in my relationship I have more than atoned for them. But I am doing it because I believe that deep down my W is a wonderful sweet person and I love that person. She is not, in her behavior, the person that I met and married any more and she may never be that same person again. But everybody changes and grows and it is sort of silly to expect that my W will be the same all her life. I did not sign up for that. I want her to grow and I will learn to love whatever she grows into. But it is my choice to stay and see this thing through.
This thing is a test of your character really. It will test whatever you believe and whatever you have at your core. No doubt about it. Now, I see a lot of positives in your sitch. Your consistent problem, because of the positives, is that your expectations are always high. It is very difficult to manage our expectations. When your expectations are not met you try to rationalize(and I know this from personal experience my friend, I am not pointing fingers at you, I am telling you what I am going through by subsituting "you" for "I" here). In the process of rationalizing something that defies rationale one of the thoughts that you come up against is "This does not make any sense, why am I in this, dont I deserve better". I am sure you do deserve better. So these thoughts are natural. But I bet tomorrow morning you will wake up and there will be a little dull pain in your chest that reminds you that you miss the scent of your W's hair on your pillow and then you will call her again just to hear her voice.
My recomendation to you: Please send your W a nice bouquet of flowers and a simple card wishing her happy anniversary. (pursuit? yes, but you have been pursuing her in so many non-serious ways, if you dont pursue her on a serious occasion, wont she question your seriousness? I believe that dropping pusruit should be done gradually and not suddenly, but that is just me).
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.
