The journey begins

[ClingingToHope]

Another GALing weekend out of the way. My last stop last night was a bowling alley bar where a friend said he'd be. He was and this place is a huge hangout for my high school so there were a couple dozen people there I knew.

Ended up seeing two couples that I've known for about 25 years and they were part of a group of couples W and I hung out with back at the beginning of the M.

We stopped hanging out with them for two reasons. One, my best friend in that group moved away so I didn't get as many invites, and two, we started turning down the invites because one of the women in the group also named their daughter the name we gave our oldest.

That upset W. She said they knew that was the name she'd wanted to name her girl for years and she felt it was disrespectful.

So when I was invited to join them W would ask if this particular couple was going to be there. If they were we wouldn't go. Eventually, everyone stopped calling.

One of many stories like this.

Anyway. One of the wives knew we were getting divorced. I worked with her husband last summer when everything started. The other had no idea. So I spent the last hour going over everything. They felt sorry for me, but agreed W has always been a little off, always a little unhappy.

Funny, one of the couples I always looked at for hope. The husband, a friend of mine, was tossed out of the house twice because he wouldn't grow up. He went out every night instead of helping around the house. He had affairs. He was a player and didn't want to grow up.

The second time he got it and was promising to change. Begging to come back. But his W was done. She'd hired an attorney, started hanging out with single friends. It was over.

Then a weird thing happened. She had to travel with a co-worker who was also a marriage counselor. This co-worker was happily remarried and really in love with her second husband.

But she told my friend that if she could do it over, she would have worked it out with the first one. The D caused so much wreckage with her kids and financially that even though she ended up finding someone new to love, she would have rather stuck it out.

That woke my friend up and she let her husband back and he's a new guy now. He's in residential construction so there's no work for him. Instead, he's super dad. He learned how to cook. He keeps the house clean and takes the kids to everything so his W can concentrate on her job.

It's an amazing transformation.

She said maybe there's a lightning strike out there for my W.

I told her I'm not counting on miracles anymore.