And for me, I just saw a decline in our marriage really from both sides maybe the last 5-6 years of the marriage. I did sweep a lot of stuff under the rug that I probably should have confronted a lot earlier. What I did neglect though through my years of kids, work, etc. was our friendship. I took for granted quite a few things...made the assumption he'd always be there.
Not blaming myself...I'm just at the point where I see the mistakes on both sides and have just been totally past that for a while now. It happened. It's done. It's where it belongs...in the past. I guess for me blame isn't a need here. I do know my ex has done things I think are totally unforgiveable. He chose to do them and has not shown an iota of regret for the hurt he caused. So for me, it's more like recognizing and knowing he burned my biscuits, accepting that, and just moving on now.
Doing what your X requested and finding out it isn't what he wanted isn't your fault. That's an example of the things that to me I just recognized and accepted. I guess too I just found it too burdensome to carry around the need to place blame, it was like an unsolveable puzzle to me. So I just realized over time it was something I didn't need to fully answer. I know my part in the situation. I'm more than sure my ex knows his, whether or not he ever expresses it.
Telling your children to hell with them is also wrong. My ex said that during the early stages of the game. I do know...without my "knowing" (if you get my drift...my kids do talk LOL...we can't let the ex "know" I "know" because after all he's been secret-agent man for ages now...if you can follow that loopy hillarious logic)...that he regrets that and he has been rebuilding his relationship with them as best he can. And it's a difficult road. We're all miles apart...spread from Pennsylvania to Nevada now.
I found that as time went on, as I let the situation go my life became infinitely better.
I'm also learning so much in the R I am in now. Ironically we implicitly trust each other. We talk and communicate so much better even though we are separated by 60 miles due to just practical stuff...work, family, etc. (He has daughters living near him, I have to remain in the Columbus are for work and because of my elderly mom.) And the odds are stacked against us: long distance relationships aren't great in the statistical odds for success. The fact that the distance requires us to communicate so much better and enforces us to really think "what is important here?" helps a lot. We know that a priority of each of our days is to make certain we have touched base, we give each other a run down of our day, talk a little bit about what's good or bad going on in our lives, and set the expectations each day. I guess one of the beauties of the 21st century is you can "communicate asynchronously" in the jargon of my industry...meaning if one of us can't reach the other by phone or in person, text and email have been godsends--although communication methods really aren't as important as really making sure you DO talk. One of the best compliments Dan's ever given me was "you're so easy to talk to."
But we took a very long time to get to know each other, we made sure we introduced ourselves early on to our family and friends, we asked each other a lot of questions...even the uncomfortable ones. There was more vetting going on there I think than with a vice-presidential selection LOL.
