so- i'm curious about your "take" - if i swallowed hook, line & sinker his "story" about himself & who he is for 35 yrs. and, find out now it wasn't true - wouldn't this mean there is not, nor ever has been, really, a r at all?
I can have happy memories til the cows come home- BUT if they were alllllll based on un-true-ness - then, really what do we have here? nothing- rite???
Well, always remember that the mlc'er re-writes everything about the R, themselves, who they were, who they are, who YOU were, who you are is changed to "fit in" with their current version of reality. In my case, I have 3 kids who are the truth reminders for Mom (she wouldn't accept it (or anything for that matter) from me for quite a while...lol). My W believed her re-writing, completely...she forgot the past, as it really was. She is beginning to remember the reality (both good and bad). So, time will tell.
Did you have a good marriage, good times? - Yes, from what you have written.
Are your memories valid? - Yes
Is it all meaningless? - NO
Let me use a example from my own life outside of this whole mlc/marriage/relationship thingy...
Growing up, I spent summers at my grandparents cabin in the woods, on a lake...a perfect way and place for a boy to grow up. When I think of my childhood, THAT is what I immediately think of. All my growing was there, all my strongest, most cherished memories are there.
As time rolled on and my grandparents died, my Mom and her sister couldn't agree on things and the cabin property was sold. Gone. When I look now via satellite images from the google, there is a mc-mansion "cabin" there now, instead of the quaint, simple cabin built in the 60's...so it is REALLY gone...but because it is gone, does that invalidate what was? The memories, what I learned, the physical cabin, everything, was it meaningless? Or does the meaning remain as long as I keep it alive in my heart and mind, while accepting that it has passed? Is it nothing then? WAS IT nothing THEN because it isn't NOW?
I think it was something then, and still is now, though it isn't accessible to me anymore. Make sense?
T^2
In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. - Albert Camus
Uncertainty is the very condition which impels people to unfold their powers.-Eric Fromm
