Nor would you have a son and a 23 year marriage. What is your point?
My point is that I could have been married to somebody that truly loved me. We could have had a child and a marriage that lasted a lifetime instead of 23years. Not to mention a much MUCH happier marriage.
You don't know that. There are tons of people here whose marriages were created out of love and a desire to be together, and they are in the identical situation that you are. My H and I were SUPER careful about entering M; H is a child of divorce and I wanted to choose someone I believed was solid and truly compassionate. We were both 30 when we married, so we weren't even young and acting out of infatuation~we married after nearly 3-years together.
But we ended up in this same place. Honestly, after talking to married friends of mine and older people, EVERY couple hits this wall. Some people because of religious or other beliefs either suck it up and stay together, miserable, or find a way to work together to get past it. Other couples bomb one another, and some divorce.
What I'm hearing from you is that the only reason your M is failing is because you picked wrong, because your W is a rotten person.
I want to know what YOU did to contribute to the downfall of the M. What did your W complain about? What do you know about yourself that needs to change? THIS is where your energy needs to be spent, because you know what? If you get married again and bring those same traits and mistakes that helped get you in this place to begin with, you WILL experience this again. Wherever you go, there you are.
All of us contributed to the downfall of our M. My H was a super nice guy who rolled over all the time and NEVER EVER opened his mouth to express what he wanted. He expected me to be a mind reader, then resented me when I didn't pick what he secretly wanted. He never expressed any displeasure with anything until he bombed me. He also put what his parents wanted first...everyone else, really. He never listened to my sincere fears about socializing (I had extreme social anxiety), and decided that I just hated people. Since he didn't listen, I started getting physically ill before events to have an "acceptable" excuse.
On the surface, he'd look like the "good" guy and I'd look like the "bad" guy, but in reality, we BOTH contributed to the downfall of our M. It was something we both had to learn and accept and work on. It's only because we BOTH did the work that our M is working today.
I'm sorry, but I'm just not accepting the victim/martyr/bad choice role. The only way we progress is by owning our faults, examining them, and learning to take different actions.
SD
Me: 40 H: 43 H had EA from 2/06-9/06 Bomb 5/06 Piecing since 9/2006 3/2008: Boundary setting 7/2009: Boundary crossing~dropped my own bomb. 8/2010: Marriage finally on track!
