WAW willing to try, for now (#2)

[mako]

What you all are saying makes a lot of sense. I will basically just parrot it back with my understanding. It all seems so simple looking it over, but in practice it likely never is.

What it all really comes down to is:
1) We both need to be attracted to each other for this to work
2) We both need to be committed to working on the M for this to work

(These shouldn’t be controversial. Really need to be true for any healthy R. 1 seems obvious. And 2, good M’s don’t just happen, they take work, and we already didn’t work out once so if we don’t change anything that’s where we’ll likely end up again)

Obviously she BD’d me, so these weren’t true for her. I’ve already said I wasn’t happy prior to BD either so 1 wasn’t really true anymore for me either, and I was willing to do 2 but never followed through.

So we both need to make some changes.
3) For 1 to happen, we both need to work on ourselves to be more attractive people
4) For 2 to happen, we both need to put in more effort, whether that is MC, better communication, or whatever.

I've been doing IC and reading and trying to recognize more of my role in all this. I could be better at GAL but I am trying there too. So I am working on 3. I am not sure that she is doing anything on 3. I have said, she is certainly treating me better and being far less distant than she was prior to BD, so that is something, maybe that is more on 4, but either way it isn’t a whole lot. I’d like to see more. What she is doing isn't really changing 1 for me.

4 seems more like a it takes two to tango thing. It’s harder to do by yourself. I am still willing to do 4, but it feels outside my control until she steps up. So I wait on that and focus on 3.

So a big thing now is I need to figure out how long I want to wait on improvement. Setting the date as Steve says. If she doesn’t do 3, my attraction to her is just not going to be there, and if she won’t do 4, the M is certainly going to fail. So yeah, it is reasonable to say, in my mind, if you aren't going to do these things it isn't going to work out so I will be prepared to end it myself. I'm not sure yet how I feel about when that should be, so for now I'll say a year from BD. That's February, and gives us both more than enough time to make progress. Obviously things could happen to quicken or delay this so we'll see.

One weird thing to me is that the consensus seems that I shouldn't say anything about wanting MC. I am supposed to hold her accountable if she doesn't do it. As far as 180s go, I should be open and honest about my wants and needs. But it seems like it has to be her idea or it doesn't really count. I appreciate that I have a number of folks with thousands of posts commenting. You all have seen a lot of sitches and have a lot of experience here. I also appreciate I don't want to push her away. So for now I'm not going to say anything about it.