I can do this...

[AntoniaB]

Well, to give you a comparison with me, mid-May, I asked my H if things were ok because I felt like he was spiraling down again. He assured me via email, "I'm in a good place; don't worry. Everything's fine. I'm not broken anymore." On June 7, he suggested in front of our close friends that he and I should renew our vows on the beach someday. On June 10th, he said he was not in love with me and in love with someone else, and in about 2 weeks, we'll be divorced.

Is this "normal", our situations? Well, yes and no. It's normal in that it happens ALL the time and the statistics bear this out in terms of infidelity and divorce. Is it "right?" No, of course not, but it just is. In a perfect world, I guess, we'd all amicably come to terms with the end of a relationship (or try to fix it and both put full effort into that) BEFORE someone would move on to relationship number two, but that doesn't seem to happen much.

I mean, I don't see how the very quick turnaround of them getting involved with someone so deeply so fast will ever last. Seriously, try to put yourself in that mindset. Could you honestly go get involved in a deep relationship right now? No! Because you're suffering and have baggage and you're smart enough to know that you don't poison a new relationship with that. But these WAS's seem to think they're so powerful, that they are on a mission to suddenly right everything in them that's wrong, and they feel that the new relationship will give that to them. I think they figure that "sure, many affairs don't work out, but she and I are DIFFERENT. We have our heads on straight. We know what we're doing. We won't fail." I mean, any relationship born out of deceit, or heartache, or separation/divorce and breaking up of a marriage when the other person never saw it coming, how can a relationship built on such poisoned ground ever flourish? I am convinced if they do, it's only because the affair partners are hell-bent on "making" it work because they've burned their bridges elsewhere, espcially if the marriage that one or both ended was essentially a good marriage till the MLC began.

Is this normal, what they're doing? No. It's not. I think by saying you come to a point of acceptance, no one is saying you have to accept this as "right" or "normal." For me, acceptance is more about saying "I'm not gonna keep beating myself up about what is out of my control and I'm just going to try to live with the reality, even if the reality screams "unfair" and "wrong" at me every day. I'll just learn to live with it and try to find some happiness and peace despite my world crashing down around me."

In the end, your world crashes down, yes, but there are seeds of rebirth all around you that you can't see yet. But they are there.