"Had to live without." Those are powerful words, @Greek. Why not, "Chose to live without." "Opted to live without." "Decided to live without." "Didn't have to live without." "Did everything possible -- or, in this case, didn't do anything possible -- to avoid having to live without?"
All narratives, you see. Which is why The Story matters so much. And, paradoxically, doesn't matter at all.
That's the part that bother's me the most in all of the WAS stories. The idea that they had to live without, it isn't true and yet it's the story you hear so many times, he/she wouldn't change and I had to leave to find someone to make me happy & fulfill me.... and then the LBS changes, turns into something better and when they start to reconsider the situation and think that they can do better and ultimately become the WAS themselves, the original WAS starts saying things like "why weren't you like this before?", "you were never like this before", "you changed", "you're different", etc.
So it's not the people can't change, people can definitely change. However people instead of communicating what they want would rather start new hoping to leave all their past problems behind instead of dealing with them and that doesn't work, it can't because none of those issues are resolved, you were part of the problem and you will repeat those same mistakes and years later wake up feeling the same way about the relationship except they'll be waking up next to a different body saying to themselves "how did I get here all over again?"
