I'm so sorry to hear about this with your boys. I think that no matter what, our boys and I would have went on as a family.

One thing that was very touching to my heart was that H talked about how grateful he was that S19 had taken on so much--trying to step up to the plate to deal with H's absence.
He also talked about having wanted my boys to turn to him as a father, but he often felt like an outsider & not really needed. They actually apologized to him, saying that they had had to grow up very independent, as children of a single mom, and that they never meant to make him feel excluded.

I guess what I am struggling with right now is guilt and sadness. I know it is H's choice to make, but I feel sad that H has been conflicted all of this time. Being a family and a partner comes naturally to me, and I can't imagine what he has gone through to be so conflicted. Considering what I know now, I can see how much H loved me and loved the kids to have stayed with us all of these years, but he must have been miserable!

Again, I know it his choice, but for him to feel that he has to kill off a whole part of his personality in order to stay with us makes me sad. I let him know that the door is open with no guilt and no recriminations, but he says leaving isn't an option because he'd be leaving to big a part of his spirit behind.

I've also been feeling some anger about all of this. I am angry with his family for how he was affected. I'm angry about the Viet Nam war and how it affected so many of our men. I suppose H could have been one of those guys who never was able to come home after the war so it could have been worse. There were those who were never able to adjust to any kind of normal life afterward. I know of guys who felt deadened by anything but high-adreneline stuff after the war, and some of them became mercinaries because that was the only lifestyle that allowed them to still feel alive.

H says that he was able to put Viet Nam away in a little box in the back of his mind, and felt that he had to because of the way the guys were treated when they came back home. I think it has only been very recently that it has become socially acceptable to talk about being a Viet Nam vet, and only because of the patriotism that the country has experienced in the past 2 years.