Quote: If you can really step away from the old-R as much as she has and give her real freedom, it might not take her that long to get it -- the it being that she really does love you and wants to spend her life with you (hopefully, NO guarantees). How long did it take you to get it when you got the bomb????
By "get it" do you mean to stop groveling and let her have the space? One day. I wrote a letter the morning after that laid out my feelings (and it wasn't that bad, I read it recently). From there, I found DB the next day and I have been "giving her space" ever since with varying degrees of success. This is why I am looking hard at HER changes towards me. Are they "keeping me around" or are they genuine reactions to the month long changes she's seen in me that are really fundamental. I WAS an obsessive, controlling, always right, slightly overweight, out of shape, insecure, slightly slobbish man. Over the past month I have learned to validate, thought stop, lost the need to always be right, listen, lost 20 pounds, taken up running, regained my self esteem (as much as possible anyway), bought tons of new clothes, and most of all, adopted a PMA around the house that has been missing for several years now! Sure, does a month make a marriage? No, but it's a start.
Quote: That any future H-W R between the two of you, or any other R (friendship, co-parents, strangers) that may replace it, will need to be built with the honesty and trust of two people who know that each has chosen to be in that R with the other. Until the two of you decide to be in the same relationship together, you are respecting both of you as people with emotions and feelings by taking some space to develop your own life.
That is sage advice. I will keep mulling that over because as you may have read, one of my greatest fears is that my W will simply try to go back to the way things were without addressing any of this. No matter the cost, I cannot allow that to happen. There needs to be a new foundation of trust built between us, and that can't happen without honest and forthright communication from BOTH of us.
