Thought it would be done by now...part 3

[AntoniaB]

If you say you will never let it go, then you won't.

I think a lot of what we're going through is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you say you'll never forgive yourself, you won't.

If you say you WILL let it go, that you WILL forgive yourself, then eventually you will, not all at once, but gradually.

I can clearly see the demise of my marriage too...and I can see how my childhood learned patterns of behavior, just as much as my XH's, made me into who I was, made me into someone who reacted VERY poorly to any attempts he ever made to change...and I can also now see that I kept claiming things were wonderful long after they were not. I did a lot of things wrong.

But so did he. And I think he knows it too.

There is nothing we can do about it now. I think it was Brooklyn who said to me a few weeks ago that I did the best with the skills I had at the time, and that I never set out to hurt him. I also think that he never set out to hurt me with OW. I think we did the best we could and we messed it up because we had a childish view of what made an adult relationship work because both sets of our parents had (and still have) terrible, I mean TERRIBLE marriages. We're lucky we kept it good as long as we did. Meanwhile our parents hold fast to their "years" of supreme dysfunctionality and verbal/emotional abuse like it's a prize they've won for endurance.

I mean, if any of this type of thing is true for you, if there is anything in your past, in who or what made you who you are, that then contributed to the way you were in your marriage, then how it is YOUR fault? You acted as best as you knew how at the time.

Now you know better.

Forgive yourself because you did what you were capable of. Yes it's terrible that a great relationship suffered as a result, but you get a second chance now that you've woken up to this, and some people never get that.

(((HUGS)))