I didn't leave her, but yet she's the one who is angry and bitter. It doesn't add up, but then again, not much she does really makes any sense to me. Oh, well. Not much I can do w/it.
I keep wrestling with this one myself...even my SIL brought it up a couple days ago when she called to wish me happy holidays - she asked about my W's holiday plans, I said I had no idea - and she responded by saying, "she got everything she wanted, why is she still mad at you?" SIL decided not to go home for the holidays this year - just to avoid my W and their dad.
I think a lot about the relationship mistakes people make - and wonder why it's so wired in us to make certain mistakes - and how we can do better. I think about my boys a lot, and what I can tell them about life, and what I can model for them in terms of achieving a healthy relationship - and yet I wonder and worry if it will be enough...since there's just no predictor of whom my boys with fall in love with and maybe marry.
I guess it's that willingness to push through personal pain that matters most - it is so very hard and frightening to do - to face our own demons and the demons we've inherited but the lessons learned are unmistakable.
Before all this happened to me, I had no idea how self-defeating it was to be a fixer - and I had never even considered the word detached in terms of love...this process changes everything...as I'm discovering on my first trip home to my family since this all started.
So glad that you're traveling with your lovely D for the holidays - sometimes a short trip is just enough to get the love you need (and not the issues).
