Is this the place for me?

[~ kd ~]

Even though I understand that you are here to try to decide whether you want to move on from X2 or not, I want to speak on these two things, specifically to M1 and X1 as it appears, from where I sit, to have been a pattern repeated in M2 and which could continue until it's resolved and you change your behaviours:

<How was the love for your X1 when you M her different than when the two of you D? Or was it?>
Well, I think it was different in all the normal ways. We had been together like a decade so in the beginning it had all the new love feelings etc. After 10yrs, graduating, making careers, buying a house, etc, it was like many marriages - I guess the spark was gone, I wasn't engaged, etc.

It is interesting that you describe the above as "normal".

While I agree it is "normal" in the sense that marriages change, over time... there are many who find themselves in this change, rethink the relationship, and then work with their partner to make things better. To re-engage the relationship, once the elephant arrives in the room.

Your description above, are words that rationalize the break down of an M as though it is simply "normal" to D, if things aren't the way we expected. In this case, that the honey moon didn't last, forever...

That's not a judgement on you. It is simply an observation that the whole "normalization" of D in society is built around a belief that the infatuation of early love is something that lasts forever. That there's not a maturation of love that can just as easily be normal and relationships adjust around that change, rather than end because of that change.

People seem to think that a M should not be work. If it's hard, it was not meant to be. Those who live their entire life with their spouse have a different story to tell. One that, while overall the M was good, there were challenges along the way that required them to work things out.

<Do you feel you emotionally mourned the loss of M1?>
No, I don't think so.

It is entirely up to you to revisit this. You did not come here to try to figure out why your M1 did not work. You came here to determine whether you should move on from M2 or not. Yet as I've been focused on, until you change your patterns, your patterns are likely to continue.

Do you feel that there is nothing to mourn from M1? In your mind, was M1 just a diversion on your path to M2, in which you married your first love?