Boundaries, sometimes people mistake DBing with losing their personal boundaries and becoming a doormat to the WAS. I am a firm believer in boundaries. It was one of my biggest struggles when I was in here.
I had to learn what was and was not acceptable behaviour for myself, for Wanker and for at one point, everyone in my life when I went through all my hell.
My take is that while it certainly is easier to DB when your spouse lives under the same roof as you, you also tend to lose yourself in your DBing... perhaps becoming a doormat, subjecting yourself to intense pain, hurt, humiliation, internal, emotional and even physical pursuit. None of which is healthy and if there is one thing I learned through everything is that the only person you have to be responsible for it is yourself. You have to take care of yourself. Your WAS has left you, left the M, the R, whatever. Something happened... somewhere it failed and they found something that for now seems better.
Depending on the situation, your WAS gets the best of both worlds... they have the A, they have you waiting and pining for them at home, DBing your little heart trying to win them back. At some point, you realize that DBing is TRULY for you, for you to regain YOU back... that at that very moment in time, you are not really the attractive alternative to your WAS. They want no part of a relationship with you, perhaps friendship, perhaps to be there to pick up the pieces (and in my case still pay the bills, LOL) but they are soo hooked on the feeling, the drug of the OP that there is little you can do. That was very hard for me to realize. I thought that oh the memories, the life we had built blah blah would always be the more attractive alternative to OW... but wanker was so involved in feeding his pain, his depression and also in his case, alcoholism... there was no turning back for him. Oh, there were signs along the way of him wanting back, but it was too little, too late by then. The heart can only take so much.
SO I guess what I want to say is, don't beat yourselves up... give all that you can without losing yourselves. Take this time to find yourself again, find the person that your WAS fell in love with (you will at some point find yourself admitting that person has disappeared), dig deep into your soul and see if you can find what role you played (it truly does take two for the demise of an R). One of the wisest things I ever was told on here is that the old R is gone and dead, that if the WAS comes back, it is a new R. It makes sense now.
You and your WAS need to find your way through it all. Some will come to the surface and realize they have been in a fog quicker than others, sometimes it takes years, and some, well some may just never find their ways back. That's why it's so important to take care of you.
