I’ve come to understand through the wisdom of this forum that detaching is crucial.
Detaching is an interesting one. There’s pretending to be detached to try and manipulate your spouse into wanting you back, and then there’s actually being detached.
How do you do this? Well that’s an interesting question!
Part of it is fake it until you make it. Force yourself into hobbies, renovations, work, exercise, counselling, reading and personal development. This reduces the amount of time you depend on your spouse and their company, so it starts the detachment ball rolling.
The other, much more important part of detaching, is working on your mental health. It’s rebuilding your self worth and confidence and independence. At the moment, you can’t picture a life without your spouse because it’s all you know. So you hang onto what you know (bumping into them, messages, communication, slowing down the divorce or them moving out).
When you truly come to love yourself, then you’ll drop the codependency which is actually why most people end up at this website. When you KNOW you’ll be okay with or without your spouse, you won’t have so much skin in the game. You won’t try to engineer time with them. You won’t get drawn into relationship discussions where they’re trying to confirm they’re doing the right thing, you won’t delay the divorce process hoping they’ll wake up.
And once they see their security blanket is no longer there, that’s the best chance you have that they might realise what they’re losing. Ironically, if you’ve REALLY detached, by the time they decide they might be interested, you’ll likely prefer the look of life without them.
Don’t detach to manipulate them back. Detach because you’re worth it, and you’re going to be happy with or without them.
IC is the best way to rebuild yourself and work towards true detachment.
