It's amazing that we can have the clarity to dole out perfect advice for someone else; yet we are still looking through mud in our own at times.
So, so true, Tom. It seems so much easier to look at a stranger's actions and discern their motives. Not so easy when it's people we know - and love. If it's a stranger, there's no history, no baggage, no memory of the good to cloud our vision.
Makes me wonder sometimes if it isn't a little one dimensional, sometimes. That's not to say that strangers can't give good advice, but is all the insight that we get really insight or just judgement and assumption?
If I get angry at myself for dropping a carton of eggs I just bought, I'm angry because I know there was a moment, a circumstance, a hundred little things that came together to make me drop that carton of eggs. I dropped it, and it sucks, but it doesn't really mean anything. Someone from the outside would look at me and say - how clumsy, how careless, yadda yadda. Insider-outsider bias and all of that.
Of course, what's happening to all of us here is a hundred times bigger than a carton of eggs, but I think the idea is the same. That's not to say that DBing doesn't work, that there aren't fundamentals to behavior - and it certainly isn't to validate what your W is doing. Just a thought, I guess.
I wouldn't tell your W either. Unfortunately, she's not in a place where she's going to respond positively, and it will only add to her pressure. She's chosing to be an absentee mother. She's got to know that. She can running around, sleeping around, and altogether avoiding reality - but there is no way she doesn't know deep inside what she's doing. She's making a really terrible choice that is extremely selfish, and she will pay for it later when she wakes up and has to live with it. It might take her whole life, but believe me, she will suffer for that choice one day.
I'm so glad that you didn't get dragged down into bitterness. Your kids will love you even more for being their rock. Not to be redundant, but they really do notice.
I'm so sorry that you're having to go through this ordeal. You deserve better.
