Waiting More Than a Dozen Years

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

Thank you for your reply and your consideration of my questions. I keep thinking about where I am with my life and what, if anything, has changed for me that this situation has occupied my thoughts in many of my waking hours. I have sensed I am in transition from one phase of my life to the next. It certainly feels that way to me and maybe that is all that I needed.

I generally say that I'm pleased with who (and how) I've turned out. And part of that includes this sentiment: if what I've experienced is and was the only way to become who I've become, I would do it again without hesitation. That does not mean that my life is without disappointment, as some things have not turned out the way I expected.

I also look to see what I can learn from the past, not to relive it, but to observe my life to see what occurred and how it might inform me in the present and the future. For example, my ex-wife and I really are good friends after everything we've been through. We maintain a certain distance in our relationship. And we've explored, both individually and together, what could have been done differently on either of our parts that would have had our marriage succeed. Other than a matter of poor timing and having a greater awareness (in 1980)of the hormone flood/imbalance, neither of us can come with anything that would have made any difference. (she can offer nothing, and anything that I have come up with she has told me that would not have done it).

What she knows (and knew then) was she underestimated my love for her. But once she felt she was committed to carrying through her affair ("to see where it goes"), she didn't turn away from it. She vascillates on whether it was ultimately the rigth choice (it depends upon what she's talking about and with whom she's talking). But as I pointed out, all the things she blamed me for in her life are still there, unaddressed.

She looks at how my life went after she left and what I was doing and willing to do (which I told her I would, not to spite her but to be her partner in getting frompoint A to point B in things like career, areas to expand our lives together, the sharing of the joys of parenting. There have been times when she has expressed that it should have been her and I that were doing those things sharing that life.

She has apologized to me for what she did (apology accepted AND not really necessary for me) and yet, she does not go so far as to tell me that she made a mistake because I think there is a mixed set of feelings.

In my case, my intuition told me (not right away in the shock of the discovery and her desire to leave me and move out of the house, but months later once I realized I was going to survive, the thoughts of suicide subsided, and I was rebuilding my life after on the "journey of a discarded husband"), that I just should not be involved with anyone else. The struggle I felt in this relationship kept reminding of that intuitive thought. Yet, I ignored it (I ignored it over a new job I took and after that experience, i realized that I really needed to start listening more closely. It wasn't that something did not feel right, I would take the time to think things through, examine that sense of things critically.). Hence, my sense today is I neither heeded my own intuition and I would probably make a different choice today.

There is a characteristic pattern to my life and specifically in my love relationships...it is that they ultimately are sexless. Or as I sometimes say of myself, I seek out women with whom I desire to be sexually intimate and related, whose defintion of "success" is if they don't have sex with me.

Lunchtime over. Back to work for me.