When do the tears go away ?

[still hopeful]

whitney,

I wish I could say that my separation/divorce happening was the best thing in my life. I lost my wife, my marriage, and my family unit because she and I did not have the skills to keep our marriage strong and together and because we did not have the skills, the desire, and the willingness to work on our individual changes to make our marriage happy, healthy, and whole.

I am saddened by all of this. So...what do I do. I DB to the best of my ability from the other side of the fence...by myself. Why...? Because if I quit fighting to reconcile my marriage, the end game is here instead of near. As distant as the light is at the other end of the tunnel, it's still there. I SEE it!

I, too, have looked deeply inward at myself to critically determine what parts of me are lacking or missing and I continue to shore up my weaknesses as a person, a man, a father, a family member, and a friend. What I have seen is that God made me as a huge mound of moldable clay, and taking into account the gifts that God bestowed upon me in the beginning, I am putting those gifts to work to fashion the best ME possible. I have come a long way in making myself better, achieving my daily goal of making Tom a little bit better than he was yesterday, each and every day; day after day.

My XW is from a newly affluent family. She is afforded both pluses and minuses from being part of that dysfunctional brood. I, on the other hand, my career also got off track and I have made some poor life choices. Now I see that I can no longer make choices based on what others think of me and how the external 'stuff' makes me and my life look. I am searching for meaning in my work and in my life today. I am confident I will find it in both.

I hear what you say, and I, too, may have just been a phase in XW's life, but what I see in watching all of her running and turmoil is that she comes back to me for stability and comfort. I don't mean to imply that it's more than that at this point, but THAT is much more than it was three years ago.

My XW also is living her life, and as it is, I would not fit in it. But I didn't really fit in it while we were married. She often felt unsettled and felt the need to get out of the house to 'relax'; be away from her husband and children. Always running to be with friends. Sadly, both of her parents are only children, so she has no aunts, no uncles, no cousins. I, on the other hand, have 7 siblings and come from a HUGE family. Family obviously meant much more to me than it did to her; family was foreign to her.

Since we've been apart, she has talked about the importance of family, but her nuclear family is completely dysfunctional and affluent. There's lots here, but it's off my point.

Saturday evening I received a text message at 11:05pm from XW asking if I was awake. I called her back and she asked if she could come over to my place (I had the children with me). I, of course, told her yes. She came over, for her reasons, and stayed. In talking with XW, she said to me that she was not welcome to my family's Christmas celebration, like I was invited to her family's, and THAT truth hurt her badly. I could see that our (she and I) not being a family was hurtful to her again.

Sadly, LAST YEAR I brought her along to my family's Christmas celebration and XW got drunk, physically hung all over my male family members flirting with them in front of me and my family, ignored all of my female family members, and, in short, made a spectacle of herself in front of my children and my family. Unfortunately, she doesn't recall ANY of her behavior that evening as being the reason for her not being welcome.

Yes, XW and I have a loooong history of almost meeting in the right place at the right time. And as often as we have just missed, I still see the possibilities that exist in our future together, rather than the missed, and now long gone, opportunities to make our lives together work out happily ever after. And yes, I know I am holding on to a long shot of our being able to reconcile after all that has passed, but I feel strongly that everything that I am seeing encourages me to push on.

I understand what MW-D says about marriages. Some cannot be saved. However, in listening to, and interacting with, my XW over the past 3 years, I believe that she is beginning to look back at her missed opportunity to be a happily married wife with 2 beautiful children and a doting husband, rather than a frantic, unhappy, searching, single mother of two. She is missing the 'family' she decided to divorce herself from.

Marriage is the hardest work you'll ever do, my sister told me when I married XW. It certainly can be. I see the rewards from making it work. I have friends who have built a life together with over 50 years of marriage.

I see that XW runs around with her friends, but I see the longing in her eyes and hear it in her voice, and watch it in her actions, that she misses being a part of a whole family. She could run from fun stuff to fun stuff forever. THAT unfortunately will only lead to HAPPY (for a while), not HEALTHY AND WHOLE.

Most of the people in my life think I am not exactly sane in holding out any hope to reconcile with XW. They think the same about me thinking that XW has the capacity and the will to change in any demonstrable way. I say I am sane. I fight for what is right. I have regular conversations with God, and He guides my action, my thoughts, and my words. I am moving in the right direction. XW and I will once again be H and W and our entire family will be happy, healthy and whole.

Tom