Maybe both? I can only speak for myself but part of MY issue was that i wanted to believe he was something different than what he was showing me. But that wasnt true. I lived on hope...the hope that he could be better, that we could be better if I just waited it out..that it would change in time. Things changed alright..but not for the better in our relationship. in fact, things didnt get better for me until I put the focus back on me and getting myself in a healthier place, which was long after the divorce.

I loved him very much. I still do, just not as a husband and on a different level. Sometimes love is letting go.

a thousand pages have already been filled with the how', who's and why's to this dilemma.
I tend to believe it is both, love the person and feel all is lost without them which in turn creates the illusion of loosing the perfect mate. Often times holding to a false hope that the leaver is completely delusional , and they just need time to see the errors of their ways.
Tennyson~"tis better to love and lost, than to have never loved at all"
jmo

namaste02 - Great words and I think that is exactly what I have been doing for two years straight since my separation. Neither one of us can get the divorce but I think it is his potential that I love. He has proven over and over again that he is not this person and even when he gives me a glimpse of that person I know he can be...he goes back to being his "real" self not long after.

Sometimes love is letting go. I hope I don't wait until I am forced to let him go to "actually" let him go. That is going to be painful. I want to make a conscious choice to let go, even though I still love him and know he is not good for me. I want to do it in a healthy way.

Sometimes we are all just obsessed with what we hoped or longed for our relationship to be. However, under the microscope we can see more clearly. Take a step back and consider all that has transpired and then you can decide whether or not it is really love or an obsession with what it used to be or what is could have been or should have been.

I think it is also the fear of failure that is taken personally plus the fact that we are the ones who are "trying" so hard but just could not make the life that we wanted. It is always harder on the ones who are left behind because we have all the questions that are never going to be answered. The one who moved on has had the time to make the decision, justify it to themselves and move on feeling they were "right" and that they are the ones in control.

I don't think about him every moment, and I don't want him, in fact I expect to continue to priotect myself from him entering my life in anyway, but my heart still loves....and that's after a long time of hate, so this part is much softer and quieter.

So it's not obsession for me.

But I have spent some time in the therapist's office exploring how part of me has "decided" to still love him, and for me anyway, it comes down to having loved him big and wide and deep, and in my subconscious, that means also loving for a long time...that somehow my love was committed so strongly, to let go too quickly would somehow negate that, or make it not so deep.

Mind you, that's subconscious. In my conscious mind, I'm still making baby steps towards dipping my toes into the dating pool. In fact I was just discussing it with a couple gf's yesterday.

have no idea what will happen to my feelings for my exS then, if they'll finally fade, or what.

We'll see.

if there's one thing I've learned in this entire mess, it's that as much as I'd love to put myself on my own timetable, my heart has to go through everything it has to go through in its own sweet time.

And thankfully I'm not feeling any urgency or rush or like the clock is ticking.

At first it is love - you still love that person so it is understandable why it is so painful to love a POS X when they don't love you back.

Then its obsession, of the past, the dreams, the future of you "one true love"
but it boils down to FEAR!

Fear of the unknown, fear of the future, fear of letting go.

I don't want her in my life but I do want her happy.
I don't love her anymore, hopefully she can find and understand what love is.
I have moved past her, and I hope she is past me and never tries to come back.

http://tinybuddha.com/blog/how-to-let-go-of-a-past-relationship-10-steps-to-peacefully-move-on/

Read it, love it, live it - it helped me understand your exact question
I love step 4 - speaks directly to your question - I made a list of all the things that I didn't like about her or were wrong with her - over 500 strong and growing!

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.[

I'd say it depends on the person and their relationship. Considering how much we are still into the person and still want them back, I think our minds just hang onto the tiniest shred of hope and fantasize things we wish were true.

analyzing as an outsider I ask what is wrong with the scenario.

After all, if I am told no more, I grab my hat and I am out the door. Chewing on the impossible or attempting to glue a broken jar, all I am really getting is pieces of something that is no longer whole and tells me it will break again.

It sounds cold.
Maybe it is.
My heart, poor thing, doesn't agree with any of my thinking. It has a mind of its own.

I think we are in love with the person we put up on a pedastal for so long. you just got kick em off and say screw you and move on.

^5's or maybe low paw to you doxie28

reminds me of the father in "Legends of the Fall" screw em!!!

CMondo, that's the thing about the heart isn't it? the thing poets and playwrights know...how the heart has a mind of it's own, that it bonds with the wrong person, or at the wrong time, or unrequited....

So I have been told he will be taking some time alone to prove that I am not a rebound and show me that even with time alone he will still want me after. So, the hope, the holding on to whatever I have left of "us" is so painful because am I holding on for nothing or will he really want me after this space time. or is it an easy way to try to let me down by letting me get used to being alone. Do I move on and if I move on will the feelings I have for him go away? If I try to date others and move on am I using them to try to fade the pain? My brain is telling me one thing and my heart another, thus the tug of war with love!