For the benefit of those of you reading my thread, I have copied and pasted the quote, below, from someone named iwondertoo off of another thread in surviving. I felt that her comment was appropriate and important to my thread. And I wanted to be able to refer to it, both in my replies and for my own growth:
"Can I mention one thing that I figured out? Very similar to what Cat said. When a spouse puts us in a situation like many of us have been in-- there isn't anything much we could do to change the situation. And yet we had to make a choice on how to best do what we could to save our marriages. Often and I would say usually they had already made their choices and were using us in one way or another. In my case if I did x I could not retain my dignity and actual sanity as a person as the affair carried on. If I did y I was leaving him to his own devices. I chose y. The hardest decision I ever had to make.
I carried around inconsolable and highly inappropriate guilt for many years. The deal is that some of these people are passive aggressive types. They will not take the decision. They want you to own it and carry the guilt when it was their decision all along. Not right, not fair. It took 2 years for my ex to file for divorce because I would not do it and 2 more for it to be done because he would not do the paperwork. There, I finally said what I was trying to explain. It's not about you. Stay strong and try to be around people who love you during this time. Wonder"
Dear Wonder, Thank you so much for your very strong words of encouragement and explanation of why things are as they are. I relish reading a post from someone who's been through the storm as long ago as you have ... and come out the other side intact.
I don't know. Call my needy. Call me silly if you want, but I look up to the oldtimers. I believe you know more about me than I do -- not literally, of course. And its not that I look up to you so much for definitions of who I am, or what happens in my future, or my past; but more about the scenarios of life after divorce, and maybe even why things happen, or about what leaving someone else says about the WAS.
In fact, I know I crave that knowing...that knowing what walking away says about the WAS. And even more than knowing, I needed to know the tiny little details about why they tried so, so hard to make us think it is/was our fault.
I can remember being devastated, almost insanely so (you can read my earliest posts if you really feel a need) but trust me, I was clearly incoherent. My H had me believing I was the flaw in the marriage, so much so that I had myself convinced it were true. It wasn't until I went to an intervention therapist who works with batterers and their wives, when I found out the my H was the real culprit in the marriage. And then, it was a long hard haul to get to the point where I was just OK with who I am.
Sorry for babbling on your thread, Lea. I think I'll go over to my own thread and splash it on there so I don't lose these thoughts in the mix.
Thanks again, wonder, poet My thread: This train: rolling down a no-come-back track
