I think that those of us who are oldtimers seem to have given some the wrong impression of us.
Some of us have our Marriages restored, others are happily divorced and some are dating or remarried to someone else.
Not one of us had an easy journey, not one of us did things without screwing up numerous amounts of times til we finally got it right. And even then, there were setbacks.
The things of the past do get blurry at times, and we forget details.
I know for myself it took so damn long to learn how to detach from the insanity of it all. To actually be able to cut off from the MLCBS and try to live my life as though he didn't exist.
For those of us with kids, it is even harder. Partly because we have to put aside our own pain for the sake of the children, and partly because the WAS does have a place in our children's lives whether we like it or not.
Some of us were surrounded by family and friends for support. Some of us were abandoned and had to deal with it all totally alone, with help only from our cyber friends on the DB-site.
Some of us had huge financial difficulties and couldn't pay the bills, others had plenty of money and never had to worry about expenses or groceries.
Some of us got involved with another person, and had a wonderful distraction from the WAS, others handled their lonliness in a different way.
Whatever the situation, although many of us are the same, we are all different.
What may be easy for some, is hard for another.
Nobody has any right to tell you how to be a Man, and tell you to grab your faithful steed and bow and arrow and suck it up. It doesn't work that way.
Not in real life anyways.
Each day has to be taken as it comes. Some days are easy, others dreadfully painful. Anything can trigger the emotions. A song on the radio, a memory, the holiday season.
We do need to be respectful when giving advice to others especially when we make a huge statements of how to be and how to act during this ordeal.
I do not know what it feels like to be served papers and be told that my marrige is now officially over. I don't know what it feels like to not be able to see my children on a daily basis or have to fight for custody. I do not know what it feels like to see my children hanging out with OW and her family.
I can only imagine and I can feel the pain of others, but it would be wrong of me to tell another how to feel about a situation if I had never experienced it myself.
Not one of us has our sh*t together. We all have issues, which we should be working on daily. NOT for our WAS but for us, so we can become better people and an example for our children.
There can be no testimony without a test. I am praying to go through this test and come out the other end with a new and better marriage then before.
