What do the tattoos look like and where are they (on him)?
To me, this puts a different spin on his disappearance... it's like the final adolescent breaking-away thing. Like he just felt completely oppressed by everyone, didn't know how to tell you, HAD to get away, packed his bags and ran. I think most people have to do this at some time in their lives, but usually it happens at a younger age, at college, a junior year abroad or something. They just throw over everything and blow!
Not that this excuses the damage it did to your R. But it sounds like his breaking away thing was waaaay overdue.
I wonder if you can reframe it in your mind as an overthrowing of his childhood/adolescence and NOT as primarily an abandonment of you... would that help you forgive?
The tattoo... that's what makes me think along these lines. My late H's first wife was very controlling perfectionist type 1 and one of the things he did after he left her was get a tattoo for his 50th birthday. It was a symbol of independence.
I find this new piece of information encouraging...
Is one of the reasons you can't forgive because HE thoughtlessly indulged in this totally selfish overthrow of the known order and that's something you would have liked to do but could not ever let yourself do because of your children?
And yet he was at the place where he was about to blow... and you hadn't quite gotten to that place...?
Just fishing around.
One time I was on a driving trip with a close girlfriend. We got to Santa Fe and we were getting ready to set out in the morning. At breakfast she said, "Oh I have this terrible headache and my period just started, so I will be perfectly useless today." I was instantly FURIOUS! It took me a while to figure out why... but what I came up with was: this was MY vacation, too, and here she was announcing that SHE was basically checking out and from now on *I* could do everything, drive, navigate, pick where we were going to eat and stay-- it felt like she was completely dropping her end of the rope and I was just supposed to go along with it.
A trivial example compared to your sitch, but do you see the similarity?
