It's now 8 1/2 years since my journey first began. Like most of you here I thought that I would be the exception. I couldn't fathom the thought given all we had been through together as a couple, that our marriage was doomed. Now my formerly loving husband and the world's best Dad was off on his solitary quest for happiness. I went through all of the usual responses. I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, and had that unmistakable knot in my stomach 24/7. I would say that it took a good 2 years for me to find some sort of normal, but I had to find a way to live again for my kids. Two more years would go by before my ex would file for divorce and all the while I was hoping that his indecisiveness meant that he still hadn't given up on our marriage, but he had. In his mind he had to make a clean break in order to be free to find whatever it was that he felt was missing. Somewhere in all of this, I met a wonderful man who would treat me like I was a princess, but as hard as he would try, he would never be the Father of my children. Oh I cared and still care for him, but all of this time I have been unable to totally commit to the relationship.
Fast forward to present. I don't know for sure if it was the death of my ex's Father or the marriage of his firstborn and only son (which by the way he wasn't invited to)but it seems that he has finally figured out that life isn't perfect, and nowhere is it written that happiness is a guarantee.
What I do know is that this notion that we have of applying "babysteps" to every movement is nothing but bunk. Most times the sudden and temporary signs of caring and calmness aren't an attempt to reconnect, but to find a purging of guilt and a an attempt to hold on to whatever control we are still willing to give them over our lives.
I also know most times they are saying what they mean at that moment. They sometimes get nasty in doing so because in not wanting to hear their truth, we frustrate them and leave them with all of the angry feelings that they had experienced from a parent that had done this damage in the first place. Mix in some guilt with the frustration and you have an expolsive combination. They act out because they feel entitled. We think them to be crazy, but they see it as finally being free to make up for lost time.
My ex has said that it wasn't until we had been divorced for a couple of years for him to slowly see that even with me totally out of the picture, his source of unhappiness, nothing got better. Something else that was kind of a shocker was that he sees now that he does still love me, and probably has all along, but it was pushed deep down below that pain and depression. I guess I'm still absorbing all of this and realizing that most of what I believed or wanted to believe, was not the reality of what was.
My dilema now is in figuring what now? What is it that I want and is a new realtionship possible after everything that has happened between us?
