Intellectually I understand that. Emotionally there is still a voice in my head telling me that it IS about ME. From an emotional perspective he may as well be an alien being at this point. It's nearly impossible for me to understand how a person's feelings can be "turned off'. I feel like I'm in an "invasion of the body snatchers" movie.
Exactly. This is what Detachment is all about. I learned about Detachment by attending Al-Anon meetings and reading about alcoholism and Codependence. You can find an Al-Anon meeting here:
How to find a meeting in the US/Canada/Puerto Rico
The "No Contact" you have read about is a form of Detachment. But Detachment, IMO is not like a switch you just turn off and on. For me, it is a process and there are stages and types, for example, physical detachment, emotional detachment, intellectual detachment, etc. I recommend practicing just one at a time. People seem to practice physical detachment first.
Regarding people here calling eachother "CoDependents": It helped me to not look at codependency as a character defect or some other title. It helps me to look at it from the relationship perspective instead. That is, the way I see it, there are three types of relationships:
Dependent,
Codependent, and
Interdependent.
Relationships with alcoholics and addicts appear to move toward being Codependent. I've been in Codependent relationships before and it has never been a healthy, sane, or peaceful place for me.