The core to healing is.. stop all the thinking, pondering, perusing the past. It is what it is. The present, living a life of giving out what you want to receive, approaching experiences with no expectations, no intentions allows tremendous growth, great freedom.
This I take exception to. From my POV it's backwards. I would never have healed from the war had I not thought about, pondered upon, and perused the past.
And if we take @Greek's very, very insightful post above at par-value, which I think we should do, then "it isn't what it is." It's what we make of it. That is what strikes me as being the inherent subjectivity of "Truth" -- there isn't any. What was true in that photograph a year ago is Truth -- a year ago. But it isn't Truth now.
From my POV, one must think, ponder, peruse in order to heal. That is not the same, however, as letting the past dictate the present. It is not the same as living in the past. But to not unpack it, blow the dust off it, and sort of turn it around in the light to appraise it seems to me to be a recipe for (future) disaster.
The sad truth is that somewhere we all gave up, bit by bit, and lived a life of unwitting tension, doing things that 'seemed' right and caring whose core was relief based on avoidance.
This is definitely something I can get behind. It is, from my POV, the "real" Truth of DBology -- which is to recognize that there is shared responsibility, shared culpability, shared failure. And the Getting There is very important -- like all the newbie posts, my "life" here in the DB world started off with a poison pen directed foursquare at myself.
But now I'm inclined to give myself much more of a break, 6 months on. Now I'm willing to point that poison pen at WAW, to use it to highlight her failures (from my POV). Without getting into too much detail, suffice it here to say that in two major instances there were things that mattered a great deal to me -- one of which is all the "stuff" that makes up my job -- in which WAW took, never once, the slightest interest.
Not even a polite, "what are you doing?" or "what is that about?" It was as if my work, my world, didn't even register. Now I realize that that was a profound hurt to me. I mean, here I am working these crazy hours to accommodate her professional needs and still care for the two children. She comes into the home office and sees me hunched over the drafting table or the desk, surrounded by books and papers; I'm going to professional meetings, being asked to write book chapters; I'm being invited to address gatherings, and I take redeyes and flights that get back in the early morning and I forgo the touristic opportunities associated with places in Asia and Europe just to minimize the impact of my life on her professional life.
One example -- I was asked to speak to a meeting in Cairo. I left Thursday night, arrived Friday night, took the meeting Saturday morning, left Saturday noon, got back Saturday morning. I'd never been to Cairo and haven't been since. The only pyramids I saw were through the window of a plane. My neighbor couldn't believe it -- most people go camping for a weekend, he says, but you go to Egypt!
And not once -- not once -- does she say, "What are you going to talk to them about?"
So were there 1,001 things I could have done better, more reliably, in the marriage? Sure. And some of them I can fix, some of them I can be wary of in the future, some of them were situational and, to borrow your phrase, are what they are.
But.
And to me this is very important.
But there were a 1,001 things WAW did, as well. And those things tend to be silenced in the DBology. Silenced because, in a literal sense, there's nothing you can do about them.
But it seems to me that you should absolutely be aware of them, not only because they impact your DB kung-fu in a myriad of ways, but also because they are part of the Truth of the relationship.
And if you take those "past" things out, and dust them off, and look at them in the light of day, you might -- just might -- learn some things about yourself. And the rose-colored glasses might no longer be so useful when looking at WAS.
Because maybe in some / many ways -- and maybe in some or many important ways -- WAS just might not be what you thought.
