The first line in the book The Road Less Travelled is "Life is difficult." Most of us cruise through life with nary a problem until we get old and gray. Some of us get exposed to the full spectrum of life's hellstorms all at once. I, like you Scott, suffered a terrible blow to my life...We both suffered the loss of the women that we grew to love and chose to share our lives with. We brought children into the world with them, only to find out that single-handedly, they could take them away from us. As men, we open up the most protected areas of our lives..entrust it to them...and when divorce occurs, the pain is real and raw.
Rejection is a horrible thing, especially when we see things from a different viewpoint as our spouse's do. We see healing..we see change...we saw opportunity...we see preservation of family. Sadly, they do not. For whatever reason it is...and..we should by now stop searching to answer this...they need to run..to abandon what they started...and leave incomplete a promise they made to us years before.
It hurts.
Despite how some of us are treated abysmally, with anger and the rewriting of history, I think it is unfair to them for us to shift total blame on them. By now, we should all know what our contributions were to the demise of our M's. The time spent here, hopefully, was wisely used to obtain that knowledge, learn from it, add it to our new warchest and, become "BetterMen". There is no easy way to say goodbye Scott. I, like you, have the same cherished memories...an idyllic trip to the Swiss Alps....holding our babies together right after their birth....the smell of my wife's hair and shampoo and the warmth of her back against me, at night, sleeping warmly with her. Gone Scott..just like you. You are not alone. No my friend....there are a lot of great guys out there suffering in silence.
So...............
So...............
Scott............what do we do?
Carry anger? Cuss them out the rest of our lives? Blame them ad infinitum?
Or go forward?
Scott...I've searched, like you, for the answers...for the whys...for the what ifs. I think there is a point where we just need to let go and forgive them....and go forward with a new life. Sure..it's gonna take some time for me to get there too. Bottom line Scott...you and I have a tremendous legacy to give. To our children. They will need us even more right now. You girls are going to look at you and choose their men based on you. They will also look and learn..thru you...how a woman should be treated by a man. Yeah Scott..me too..my D4...will now watch how we treat our STBXW's.
Are you up for the challenge? It's the ultimate DB 180 I think, especially, in the face of our W's 'march to the sea'...leave burnt embers and smoking lives behind them.
Can you do it Scott?
Can I?
I want to leave you with something I may have printed before Scott. It's a poem by Albert Camus that has give me strength through the years during times of adversity:
In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
Scott...find your invincible summer. If you look back, I'll be standing right behind you.
I am a better man for having seen you fight to save your family. Don't lose that Scott...don't lose that.
God Bless. Frank
Me 55; XW 47; 2 kids (S13, D11) Bomb 05/19/06 Original thread http://tinyurl.com/yg2ou2t Last anniversary 04/25/10, Divorced 5/12/10 Status: Loving father of 2 beautiful children;
