Got an apology from XH. Need advice now.

[AntoniaB]

I guess I should explain where I'm coming from on "everything happens for a reason."

In my mind, the past week's interactions with him have shown me that the things I suspected that were wrong between us LONG before OW showed up are still there. I have felt for years that he and I were incompatible in some key ways--mainly that I like to be productive and active if things are not good in my life, and I like to be proactive, and he's a complainer who just says the world is against him. Our first conversation ever when I was 19 was that I was an optimist and he was a pessimist. He belittled me for being a polyanna who was so optimistic about life. Then later he said my optimism made me able to handle being with him since he was so dark and troubled. Stupid youngster I was, I thought this was romantic ;-) I was going to pull him from his dark outlook. I had a mission.

By the time things got to the past 5 years, I'd become so much like him that I also sat back and did little to improve myself or my life/job. I just wallowed in self-pity. Anything I did do that was productive, like my first book, I didn't celebrate as a tremendous accomplishment. I knew it made him feel like he didn't do anything "important", so I just downplayed it and every other accomplishment I had. Like I was ashamed of it all and hiding it.

So when I say that things happen for a reason, I mean that him rejecting me was such a wakeup call to me through my own sort of "mid-life crisis" that he triggered that it now is SO clear to me that I cannot be with someone who has his approach to life, who feels darkness is all around him, and who does nothing to improve himself. He is now just like I was, assuming that the perfect relationship will fix him, when you have got to fix YOURSELF to even be in a fulfilling relationship. He just doesn't get it and he won't, until the rel. with her ends and he's alone. Who knows? He mighth find someone after her to escape to. Not my problem.

So while he may take it that I let him off the hook about what he did with "all things happen for a reason", that's not my problem anymore. As much as I miss him sometimes and as much as I will always love him, I am really the person I was supposed to be now, and I'm much happier with who I am and no longer searching for an identity. And I just don't think my identity could survive a relationship with someone like him anymore.

I guess what I'm saying is that I don't think I want to be with the person he was before he "snapped" because at this point, that person, even if he were to "come back", no longer fits my needs.

I can't believe I've just said that.