You ask excellent questions and, to me, the answers are no.
Mr. A and I had a ton of external stressors when he left. But no - we were not abusive, we didn't fight all the time, we DID spend too much time apart, and I wasn't miserable. But I guess maybe he was.
Mr. A and I dated and lived together a long time before we got married. We both have divorced parents - so we said, Why get married? That doesn't guarantee anything! (Haha - so ironic to think of now.)
But then we came to a point where we wanted to get married. At least I did. And Mr. A said he did.
For the first maybe 8 months, it was awesome. We were so excited to finally be legit! It didn't seem that different to us (so I thought), but it was amazing how differently people treated us!
Then life got more complicated and everything went downhill. I'll write more about it in another post.
But, basically, Mr. A has been throwing me crumbs almost this whole time (since he left), and I've been living off them. He pulls away and then he comes back. Or maybe I'm just interpreting it like that.
NM, I will write more when my head is clearer. My WH confuses the hell out of me. But my sister asked me the other day, Would you want to date him if you just met him for the first time today? And the answer is yes!
Aargh. Ok, more later. Thanks, NM, for your food for thought!!!!
