A recent poll was conducted, asking whether Plan A was "enough" or whether Plan B was needed to get through to reconciliation.

One thing that we can ask is whether separation was part of the process, since even Plan A'ers can experience it. In fact, as SAA notes, "With separation comes reality", so it's an interesting side of it to examine.

Those who consider themselves successfullly reconciled are welcome to vote.

Bump!

Question #4 offers no choice for those who did not separate.

and something must be chosen or you can't complete the form.

oz

Oswald - DOH! And I thought I had it straight... geeze, these polls take some practice! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" /> (If you continued IC or MC after starting recovery, you could pick one of those items just to complete it, I suppose...)

Oh, and BUMP! (Hoping to get at least 30 votes on this one...)

Not too sure how many more votes we'll get, so I'll do a quick assessment after 21 votes...

Looks pretty convincing... separation has been a part of more than 85% of the cases where recovery was reached, in this (unscientific) poll.

That includes those who've seen just Plan A, or didn't have any formal plan.

The theory I was testing is that separation brings reality - just like it says in SAA. I think it really does...

The median number of separations was 1. The median duration range was 3-6 months (interesting when setting expectations for those contemplating it).

Of the characteristics of the final separation, it looks like a firm Plan B with little to no contact was only achieved in less than 1/3 of cases. The WS was far more likely to have initiated the last separation, and was slightly more likely to have been the one to file for divorce (which was not all that common). It was pretty normal for the WS to "go out" with bad things to say, too. Counseling sometimes continued for BS, but not as often for WS. (Interesting - they seem to need it the most, yet are able to find their way out often without it.) And last but not least, it was quite common for the A to be continuing in some form (EA if not PA) at the last separation.

If we get more votes, I expect the trends to be fairly consistent.