I didn't really want to start a new thread...so I'll just post these thoughts here and let them lead where they may...
I've noticed a lot of tossing out of insults of the WAS spouse on here lately - and I just wonder if it really does any good to call someone's wife a b!tch or a someone's husband a bastard, etc...When we're left, abandoned and hurting - there's already so much anger and sadness mixed together - it just doesn't seem helpful to add to the tension by suggesting that the WAS is somehow a bad person...Of course, they are often responsible for some reprehensible behavior - but I tend to think that WASes suffer terribly with their own decisions - and that, despite all appearances, they are not happy or secure in themselves.
Beyond that, insulting another person's WAS seems to put so much energy into thinking about that WAS as the source of one's pain and sorrow - which I don't think is very accurate. For all their faults, it often seems that the very qualities that cause our WAS to leave us are the same qualities that drew us to them...and that drew them to us...not the need to cheat, etc, but certainly the stuff that allows us to entangle ourselves so easily with our spouses - and thus lose ourselves all too much through an unhealthy understand of love.
It does seem accurate to me to say that marriages help people work through unfinished business - sometimes, both partners can find a way to work through that business together - while other times, we're left and forced to work on our issues by ourselves...that's not the fault of our spouses - nor is it our own fault - but it is, instead, the result of a dynamic that we very much helped create. Does that mean that I don't hold my STBX responsible for giving up and walking out on our marriage and breaking up our family? Yes and no....
While my STBX did leave...I know, without any doubt, that I did my share of pushing as well...(and leaving)...the difference was just that I wanted to work on things when she decided to leave - and she found that she could not...Now we've both left the marriage - and so it's done with - over - and, while that's a tragedy, it's also a process that allowed me to see very clearly that I was very deep into an emotionally abusive marriage in which I was treated very poorly...and in which I had accepted a lot of terrible stuff as normal.
But getting back to my point...my STBX might strike me as less than sane at times - and even cruel - but I know that she's a good person - I've seen it in her in the past - and I've seen it in her even since she dropped the bomb - but something about me and the dynamic presented by "us" just brought out the worst of her unfinished business - and our marriage just didn't stand a chance...especially if she didn't want to do the work to face it and fix it for herself. Will she ever step up and face her reality? I have no idea...but it doesn't help for me or anyone else to insult her as she suffers through her confusion...in other words...If what she says and does really isn't about me - then there's no reason for ME to internalize her anger and allow it to poison me as it's already affected her. I feel sometimes like we can do a disservice to other here by joining them in their anger toward their WASes rather than helping them to focus instead on themselves - first and foremost - since that's where the real work begins.
