Very hard to answer. I think I admitted to myself that my AH was an AH for real about five years before I left. Took me a year to work up the guts to go to Al-Anon. Four years of Al-Anon and increasingly worse A-behavior before I left.
The limbo on this side was easier and shorter. I think because I was well underway in my recovery before I left, and because my leaving-inducing situation was pretty scary, I never looked back. I did drag around an old sack with feeling-sorry-and-responsible-for-AH for a while, but he helped me let go of that by being just as much of a controlling, scary sociopath sober as he had been drunk.
We have been separated for about 8-9 months and there's ZERO limbo in my life. I hate having to deal with him, but that's it. No regrets, no looking back, no what-ifs.