When it's a one-way street...part 6

[adinva]

If someone said Hey Ad, your husband is being a rotten jerk and the way to get happiness in your life is to be a model wife to him, to love and understand him, to find and fix all of your problems, and to let him be how he is...for one year (or two, or anything more than a couple of weeks)...without seeing or expecting to see any change in him. I would have said, forget it. And that's what you see all over the boards when people first come in.

I see the choice as: (a) my husband is being a rotten jerk and I can tolerate it and deal with it by hating him, demeaning him, and wishing him dead for the rest of my life...without seeing or expecting him to change...so my kids aren't from a broken home and so I'm not stygmatized as divorced. Or...
b) my husband is being a rotten jerk and regardless of him I'd like to be a gentle, forgiving and loving person. I'd like to be someone who overlooks small things and isn't eaten away by medium and large things. I want to release my anger and resentment and act like the wife I'd like to be...without seeing or expecting him to change...so I like who I am.

In both cases H may never change, but in case (b) I get to feel better and happier in my own skin and H MIGHT too, and might want to be with me. In case (a) I just figured H would never divorce me so I'd live with it.

Because (a) is exactly where I was pre-bomb. I didn't strive for (b) right away and sometimes I still have some trouble with it. But in my logical mind (b) is the right choice, hands down, and I don't see a better one anywhere.

Choice (c) was where I leave him, because we were certainly making each other miserable and frankly he deserved better as much as I did. I was dedicated to marriage and would rather suffer forever than choose (c). I have read enough on these boards in real, personal stories, to know that there are worse things than divorce.