And as I just posted to SallyM, knowing much more completely about H's depth and length of R with OW (having spent much of last Sat night reading emails...) has served to bring me to the point of being able to look more realistically at 'dropping the rope' and moving more toward acceptance of the likely outcome of my M.
THere are just times, like now, in the still small hours of the night (about 12:30am here in OK...while I'm waiting for S18 to get home from a late catering job...) when I feel so sad about what's to come. Not so much the loss of this man now, who clearly has no love left for me (it will take a very long time to erase his words in those emails from my soul...they weren't ugly about me, but made it very clear that H feels he is "married to someone who told me that her actions were never meant to hurt me...and you [OW] know how I feel about how that relationship turned out...", but the loss of what was 21+ years ago, and what could have been.
We have failed our Ss, still the most precious thing in the world to both of us...and we have failed each other, at one time, equally precious.
