Upset

[AntoniaB]

SC I was saying everything you were weeks ago, and sometimes I cycle back and still say the same things about my 23 years with XH being a waste of time.

You can't really see this now because you're in far too much pain to see straight, but you will see this all IN TIME:

1. Nothing you did was ever a waste. Not one minute you spent with your spouse/on your marriage. All of it made you who you are today.
2. The biggest thing I learned in all of this is that just because I give love doesn't mean it is received and/or reciprocated. I have cried a ton over the fact that ONE MAN who "promised" to receive and reciprocate my love for him has rejected me. And yet there are COUNTLESS people around me, friends and family, whom I practically ignored for the 23 years that I was tied up in him and our very isolated life together. I learned that there is no point to crying tears over the person who won't give back what I WANT. I have tons of people in my life who do want my love and who do give back love in return. They are my focus now. Not him.
3. A friend said something very important to me. (Incidentally this is a person I was not friends with at all when the bomb dropped--I barely knew him--he was a former student who I opened up to at some point and we have become very close, so a very "new" friend said this): "there are people in your life all around you, including me, who will restore what he has taken from you. You feel now you have this huge whole in your heart and all this love "gone", and all this trust "gone", but we will all restore this for you AND THEN SOME, because we want to."
That's what you have to have faith in now--other people.

I think a lot of us, if not all of us, had so much invested in our spouse that when the spouse suddenly stopped giving, we have become these empty shells. Well this is something WE NEED TO LEARN TO FIX.

We all need to learn the meaning of happiness, and happiness doesn't come from being so wrapped up in just one person, where it can be totally removed from our lives if that person stops paying attention to us or worse, is cruel to us. We all have to learn that happiness comes from within and from our connections to many.

You know these MLCers are on a journey and I guess many of them fail and never come out of it. But their journey pushes us into one too, and we have a lot to learn about ourselves. I think we're in a better position to get it "right" in the end than they are.

So this all happens for a reason, and in the end, you will be so much stronger and I think, happier, for it. It's impossible to see it now, but it's true. Keep the faith.