I think that you can be rid of them in one sense - they may pop up like rabbits dazzled by headlights from time to time, but they lose the power to upset and destablize us. We give them that power, by loving them and by not really fully believing this has happened, and it is permanent. A bit of me went on thinking that my 'real' h was still there. A bit of me refused to believe he would actually do all those stupid and cruel things and if he did, he would feel remorse and try and make amends.
Now I know he has become another person, one I do not care to know anymore. It is heartbreakingly sad and simultaneously liberating. His lies and his attempts to derail me will never work again. It is his choice. I can accept that the early stages of MLC they are acting out of control, but several years down the line it is a choice not to deal with the hurt pain and damage that they feel and have externalised onto others. People they should respect and protect even if they have 'fallen out of love' with them.
Mine has said the weirdest things too about 'being friends' but as I pointed out friends don't do this kind of stuff, and not say sorry. And if they do say sorry, they do not act it. MLCers have a very tenuous connection with truth and reality in my experience. Friends do not trash everything that is important to another group of people and then say 'What I did wasn't too bad'.
In addition to being a hero my xh also plays the victim. According to him, I am responsible for his non relationship with his children because I was upset when he left. If, so his 'logic' ran' I hadn't been upset, the children would not have minded, and would have embraced his new life and OW. I should point out my children are all adult, and my youngest told me that if I had appeared to care as little about anyone else as his father it would have completely destablised him. It is their callousness and cruelty [as well as a lot of mean and selfish actions and continuing hostility to me] that is the reason for their non-relationship, but hey, easier to blame me.
The best bit, though, when we last spoke [nearly a year ago now, except when he invited me out to lunch on the day of the divorce [you can't make this sort of stuff up, even my lawyer was astonished, given his unwavering hostility during the couple of years the divorce dragged on] is that I am responsibile for the falure of his r with OW. Never mind they are still together. because I went on loving him, it interfered with his developing a committed relationship with her, and although he admits [sometimes, though not in court] that they are together, it isn't 'going anywhere'. I am gutted, I really am . . . .
