A New Chapter Begins

[AntoniaB]

Oh, I knew there was a reason I read this thread. You just gave me my new "assignment." Remove the expectation that my XH will ever get that what he did was not noble or destined to bring him the "real" person he should be with.

This is something I think I obsess over a lot, the idea that he must be made to understand that what he did was wrong, and I have no control over this. My XH is an atheist, so religion has no effect on him, and even though we were married in the Catholic church, that meant nothing to him, I was and still am a lapsed Catholic, and we did that purely to please my father who refused to come to the wedding if we didn't marry in the church.
And aside from that, he is so deep in MLC land that he may never get out of the fog. I think he LIKES the fog.

So thanks for pushing me in the direction I need to be going in. My psychiatrist told me that focusing on the ex finally "waking up" is yet another way we hang on to the old relationship and to them and get stuck, and that we have to give ourselves permission to fully believe that it is quite possible that they may never come out of this, never see the wrongness of what they did, never really own it, and never come back to reconcile, and that we're OK with them not coming back to reconcile.

I mean if in 5 years they are changed people and we meet them again, maybe things resurrect, but we can't keep looking for that to happen, not even a little bit, because it stunts our own progress.

I'm looking forward to reading about how you handle this problem!