I am realising just how poisoned my life is at the moment as a result of battling for my marriage and having her in it, like toxic waste has flooded it. I have been speaking to either my mother, sister or father every day for emotional support and working as hard as I can. I feel more focussed at work than I have done for a very long time - trying to channel my die-hard, competitive nature into my work.
These words jumped out at my as I read your thread... Though my situation differs from you in terms of intensity, I recognize your wife's erratic behavior - and when I separated from my STBX I had that same realization of just how toxic my life had become through my interactions with her.
One thing that really helped me with my perspective on my (failed) marriage was a comment from my T - he reminded me of the Stanford experiment - in which students were given the costumes of guards and criminals and eventually started playing the roles defined by their costumes...Similarly, he said, my STBX had cast me in a role that I had taken on all too willingly - and I had lost some of myself in that role, and I had allowed myself to play into her toxic drama on a daily basis...once she was out of my life, I found that there wasn't any anger or tension around me - seriously, none, and I remembered how much I could laugh and enjoy my life.
It was a painful, horrible process akin to leveling a building to put up a new structure, but I see now how necessary it was for me...it also made me realize the extent to which I was trying to understand why I was abused as a child by trying to love someone who could not help but be abusive of my love for her. The worse she treated me, the more I loved, until I finally understood that I could not understand the abuse from a loved one by trying to understand the loved abuser's behavior...rather, I had to recognize my own self worth and know that no one had a right to treat me the way she did.
