So glad to hear that you had such a good time this weekend! I understand your feelings about not feeling as scared anymore if you decided that you wanted to "call it quits". In the beginning, a part of me desperately wanted to save my marriage and do whatever it took to make my H happy... Another part of me kept asking myself whether I should be putting up with this insanity and asking myself if I had lost my mind? The truth is that despite all that my H had done and said, I still found myself longing for him and to snap himself out of this tempoary insanity long enough to put his arms around me and tell me that everything was going to be okay. However, the more I tried to convince my H that he was overreacting or undervaluing the good things in our marriage, the more he pulled away and blamed me for our problems. I think there was a part of me that needed to be able to tell myself that I tried everything I possibly could to save my marriage, as well as an important lesson that I hoped to teach my stepkids in that you must do whatever you can to make a marriage work. The truth is that I was unhappy in my marriage too, just in denial over the "gloomy" shape of our relationship. When at the end of our seperation, I knew that my H still wanted a divorce, I simply told him that I loved him enough that I was prepared to let him go and I have now backed off from him completely. In letting go, I know that I must follow through b/c I will lose all of my credibility if I go back to trying to change his mind.
In a way, I almost see your husband DBing you now. It seems he is "acting as if" and is changing his behavior. He went from CONSTANTLY talking about his feelings of wanting to come home to now no longer talking about missing you completely. Is HE reading Divorce Busting? It's "as if" he is trying to make you react differently, by doing something completely out of the ordinary.
It seems that you have usually taken the role of always assuming responsibilty for making things better in your marriage... Now that you are taking this well-deserved break, it will give your H the opportunity to notice that you are not trying to "fix" things anymore. It does seem that your H realizes that when he was recently pressuring you to have him come home that it was causing you to push even farther away. It is almost as if the tables have been turned here, JV. It does seem that your H is now DBing you... He is trying to become more upbeat in your presence... He is APPEARING to be pleased with himself and his own life... These are things that the DB book tells US to do... Now, YOU have to decide what it is that JV wants... Hang in there, JV... -KIM
