CG, I have no answer for you other than we all - men and women - have accumulated abandonment issues in our lives that are all re-triggered by being abandoned by our spouse.
In The Journey From Abandonment To Healing, Susan Anderson lists two of the stages of spousal abandonment as:
1) Shattered (no explanation needed, with this one) and
3) Internalizing The Rejection ("Spouse left me, therefore I must be flawed,") which includes "Idealizing the Abandoner." Among so many other things, her book helped me realize how long I spent in this stage - and why.
Originally Posted By: CityGirl
So basically a woman is going to ...treat you like dirt, ignore your emotional and sexual needs, tear apart a family, rake you financially and do whatever the hell she pleases to do and still gets treated like they are the best thing on the planet.
Personally, I initially treated the memory of a wonderful life-partner as "the best thing on the planet." And initially equated/confused the memory with the now-real person (and, sporadically, still fall into that). fwiw.
Peace,
Gardener
"My soul, be satisfied with flowers, With fruit, with weeds even; but gather them In the one garden you may call your own." Cyrano deBergerac
