Well that's a nice thing to say, @Puppy Dog Tails, and thanks for it.
One of the things that is helpful for me, I think, is to realize that "well" -- as in "doing well" -- is an inherently undefinable word. I can make "well" what I want of it. This is much better than holding myself out in comparison to some arbitrarily chosen other status (such as, oh, for example, you might say, theoretically, as merely one case, being happily married).
That, I realized, was pretty pointless -- the ultimate cheeseless tunnel:
I can't be doing well because I'm getting divorced and used to be happily married and oh what I wouldn't give for her to come to her senses and come back and I'd be so great and we'd be so great and it would be so great and wouldn't it be great and since it's not and she's gone and it's the holidays my life is a wreck and I'm miserable and it will never be better.
Naaaahhh. The bottom line is you have to get back to the Spiers Doctrine -- given that you're already dead, what does "doing well" look like?
Once I cut into it that way, things improved -- I think it's what allowed me to sort-of re-cross the Rubicon there and put up with WAW's recent nonsense and allow her to talk to me. I'm not saying it's easy -- we were sitting on the sofa (L-shaped, her at one end, me at'other), and I asked her, "So now what?" and we discussed a couple things relative to the kids and trying to keep deconflicting our mutual engagement now that the mouthpieces are engaged in a fight over the Benjamins, and she said something silly to which I replied, involuntarily, "Oh, honey, how would --"
Eeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrkkkkkkkkkkkk! Brakes slammed, I smiled a bit sheepishly and said, "See how easily that came out? What I've been telling you -- it ain't easy being the one who's left behind, so maybe you could gimme a dam break on the whole friendship thing."
She was a bit shocked, but laughed; I was a bit shocked, but laughed; and the laughter sort of smoothed the whole thing over. And she took the point -- it's the process, not the destination, that really matters on a day-to-day basis.
So that's "pretty well" in my book. Managing the process. Finding that I can still laugh. Even with her. And moving forward a step at a time.
