Got an apology from XH. Need advice now.

[AntoniaB]

Hi Beatrice, I think I can clarify on some of the points you raised, definitely.

On the rel. with others/not being defined by the wounds...she was saying that eventually we know we have "learned and moved on" when the thing that draws us to someone else new (or alters in an existing rel.) is what makes the person we interact with uniquely them and not the fact that they also suffered a similar wound. Sure, with the divorce rate what it is, it is most likely new friends/romantic partners would be divorced. But there are people who are divorced whose "trauma" is a small part of their story vs. people who are divorced whose trauma IS their story.

I used the example of "say I met someone, I usually tell them up front what happened with my marriage. It's important to me to tell them that he cheated, but that we had this amazing rel., and I love him still, but I'm accepting that it's over." She said "but there is SO MUCH more to you than that. That is part of your history, yes, but it isn't who you are. It's a very tragic time that changed you. But it's not YOU."

I have a colleague who is known for dumping on people within the first 10 min. of having dinner with them the first time that she was the victim of a murder-suicide with her parents. At age 6. She is now 65. That's defining by the wound. It's a way of not moving on from your past, and a way to try to control how people relate to you now too.

I agree some married people are nervous being around divorced people. My younger married work colleagues stopped inviting me out and now I feel like I'm leaning towards my older divorced colleagues for socialization. But it's not just that, it's that the younger people seem to not be very resilient to me anymore as they have never been tested. They seem whiny. I am more "attracted" to the more "seasoned" people who seem more grounded.

So for me, my "goal" with this is to, if I meet new people because the divorces are the link between us, to move away from talking about that as we get to know one another and focus on the interests we have that make us get along, NOT our similar pasts.

See I also think that your email disc. now with your XH don't fall into the category she's talking about above, as SO much time has passed. Her reflections are mainly for me and I'm only 15 mon. out, and XH and I were extremely co-dependent and in some ways I really think we still are. I don't think that's the case for you so your emailing has a diff. purpose.

(She noted that when I talked about co-dependence for me or XH that I NEVER used the past tense....which was very telling)

Oh I agree there are tasks no one likes to do. Those don't count as 'nourishment', ha ha!

I have also said "if I met the right person"....but also "I am going to work to be really good with assuming that I never do because my marriage for so long was amazing." When you ask me why I say "assuming I never meet someone" it comes back to the idealization aspect, that in my mind, he and I were "meant" to be together for life, and since it didn't work out, I'm assuming that anything like what I had with him just isn't in the cards for me. It was going to be him or no one. I "mated" for life. I don't REALLY see me with anyone else. So I'm sure that I give off that signal to potential mates, whether through what I choose to talk about when I meet them, or the way I carry myself.

And yes, it does take a lot of adjustment. Again, I think in my case, her advice is targeted towards the fact that I am a person who even now, tends to rail against things that are like 2 years or more in the past PLUS present things. That I'll still bring up "well when we had that argument when he came back in 2009 I should have done this and that led to that outcome", or "If he'd only go to counseling now like I did he's see that this is about his issues"... well for me that's a form of temper tantrum, being unwilling to accept that nothing can be done to change it.