Into The Sunset

[25yearsmlc]

Tad,
As you may recall, I've been here for most of your journey. I called your ex w out on her crazy stuff (like when she brought up a "girlfriend" of yours from 6th grade). I called her out on her gratuitously nasty stuff, w/her spewing.

But you are here now, and I hope you'll check out a thread w/my screen name on the subject.

You may find some of your issues addressed there, but here goes.

Thanks for the responses. 25, to answer your questions:

If we have children with our former spouses, we still have duties to our children to MINIMIZE the affect of the divorce on them. Tad, how do you see your efforts there?

I'm doing better here. I don't talk about it as much and I have stopped asking S18 questions when he returns from her place.

I'm glad to hear this^^. As you may suspect, I was saddened by your resentment of your ex w, your son's mom, getting them Christmas presents BECAUSE you had not. I thought it made you look small & petty to be mad at her. But to your credit, you stepped up and admitted to something like that, and regretted it. So, kudos.

That's pretty much all we can do, but it gets easier if you FIRST ask yourself "how will this affect our children" BEFORE you react to something that happens, or to anything SHE does. IT's not all about us.

If your son's welfare is your priority and guide and NOT getting her back or trying to "understand" it all, you'll have fewer regrets. Truly, you must make TODAY'S decisions so that tomorrow you'll regret the 'yesterday' less.

If you keep staring at the past and wondering why, you'll miss out on what is happening NOW. I'd urge you to read "The Power of Now" as well. It's soothing and enlightening. Also,

At this point - your ex wife's actions now are NOT of your world, unless they affect the boys. And even then, that is between them. Especially at their age.

As you know, my h & I have reconciled our m. But here is a newsflash. My h and our d's are in "piecing" as far as I can tell. They have their own journey.
The girls have not done the forgiveness work I have done and it only recently dawned on me that they might take years to get there OR never get there.

Keep that in mind too, b/c even when a marriage is restored, there are other r's in a family that are still being worked on and evolving. But we can serve as models for our children; models of forgiveness, redemption, letting go and being in the present. Our Happiness is our task, our responsibility.

I think that's the best we can do, IN or OUT of a marriage.

(Off the top of my head, I can't recall a single time Tad has mentioned one thing he wishes he'd done better as a h...did I miss it Tad? Do you recall any flaws you want to work on?)

Yes, I did post these here early on.

I could have been more supportive

Tad you say this^^ & I believe you mean it, but I have no idea what it means. The less specific you are, the harder it is to change. Be as specific as you can be so you can measure your own progress. This is not meant for a reconciliation but as a measure of your own personal growth.

But then, who is to say she won't find herself missing the old original Tad? Then again, who is to say you'll be available?

Showed her more affection

Do you think in your next r, with her or with OW, you'll be more affectionate? IS it important to YOU?

Worked less (I thought I was doing the right thing. Kind of hard to turn down a $600 appearance fee for 2 hours of work. I worked a lot so we could live comfortably.)

Men say this^^ a lot. God knows my h did & so did my dad. & There is SOME truth to it! Men are seen as providers (apologies to my feminist friends out there) so yeah, the earning capacity reflects on them being a good catch, etc.

There's also ego to it. My h gets lots of accolades at work, (not just money). OR he gets a promotion or a bonus or published or gets lots of pats on the back, thanks from his patients, and he does life saving work.

it's hard for a family with toddlers in diapers to compete with that, and Lord knows that we women at home don't get bonuses or promotions, so maybe there's an insight of value there.

(SIDENOTE: I've been a full time mom, a working career mom and an in between, and there are upsides/downsides to all. But purely for the purpose of ego, I'd take a paying job anyday. For my heart's needs, it's staying at home.

In sum, we all struggle with these choices Tad, after the fact too.)

But in general, I think 2 factors play here with the "works too much" issue.
1) Financial NEEDS count, but have to be balanced against greed or workaholism...but 2) whoever is at home (usually the mom) has to have their contributions appreciated and valued.

A lot of tension, marital harm and neglect, resentment, etc, would be reduced or eliminated, with some simple, consistent effort on the part of the "away from home" partner.


Could have made her feel important - guess I took things for granted.

So can you think of ways you did not make her a priority or valuable to you?

I mean, you say "guess I" and "could have" but Tad, my gut tells me something is "off" here^^^....you've had quite some time to reflect so I'm not sure your first posts listing general failings is what you'd write now.

Either it's a raw issue for you that you don't want to look at, or you don't honestly believe it. Check the tone you're using. Does it sound very remorseful to you? And if it's not, be honest about it. If you do NOT believe you took her for granted, feel free to say that.

IF you DO, then figure out how you'll change for your next r. And how you have done work on the r's you have with others. Are you more appreciative of the people in your life at home, work on the social scene/neighborhood? Do you express that appreciation more? Are you more affectionate with your sons?

See, there are changes you can make that are not about your ex w now, or that won't matter, but they're changes you want to make for YOUR LIFE.

What are those??


I never considered myself to be judgemental, but according to her I guess I was.

Tad, yes or no. Were you judgemental or not? Did you SOUND more judgemental than you meant to, or is she simply projecting? Why is this still something you're not sure of? Is there ANY validity to it, b/c I cannot tell from what you wrote. AND....-----

This ONLY matters if it's true AND if it's something YOU want to work on for YOUR LIFE.

None of this is for more post mortem analysis of the dead marriage.


I shouldn't have assumed that she knew the way I felt about her.


None of us should do that^^. But we all often do. We all need to express our positives more and our negatives less.

But the ratio of feedback in our world tends to be more negative (what we euphemistically refer to as "constructive feedback") than positive. ANd the irony is that how we hear feedback gives MUCH more weight to the negatives.

Let's say you were to list 20 traits about a new person you met, and literally 18 were positive traits. You can bet the audience AND the "new person" will first & foremost focus on the negatives you mention. It's how we seem to be wired.

So we have to make an effort to INCREASE the positive feedback we give exponentially. It's not just you who has to do that, but most of us.

Plus let's face it, Tad. You were married for a long time. Many partners get lazy. We call it take for granted but it's pretty much the same thing.

I wasn't there, so I don't know if your wife told you she felt neglected or what she SAID to you then, or if she said things you really did not hear. Evidently she did ask you to be home more. (WHen a wife asks her h to be home more, it's usually not b/c she wants him to do chores. She wants time together. She wants intimacy, even if only emotional. She misses HIM).

Many of us are guilty of this, and it's a thing to note. We try to Learn from other's experiences and our own.


I know there were a lot of things that I could have done differently. I did the best I could though.

Tad, I don't want to quibble or make you feel bad. You've been depressed too long imo. But to say there were things you could have done differently BUT you did your best, just does not make sense.

After a few years of marriage, most of us start to fall asleep at the wheel and we do NOT do our best. If there are things you could and WOULD do differently, then own that and learn from it. No need to wear a hair shirt forever.

Consider your sentence "time served" and free yourself.


I can't get over the feeling that the best 25 years of my life were nothing but a lie. Atleast, it seems that way to me....

Tad


Oh YES YOU CAN GET OVER "the feeling" that...

Otherwise we're all just subject to the whims of the emotions we feel at a given moment.

Isn't that what you think your ex w did when she had an A? She "felt" something and so that FORCED her to act on it.

No, we are in charge of how we handle our feelings and we can direct them to more positive perspectives, absolutely.

Where the head goes, the heart will follow (IF WE LET IT!)

It's an absurd thing to say that your whole life or marriage was a lie, absurd to have that belief let alone to dwell on it. But you have dwelled on it and repeated it.

It doesn't even make sense to me. Maybe a few months of deception happened, but why enlarge it so much? What's the point?

Please go to the thread w/my screen name on it. There's a big part of it that relates directly to your situation, imo.

As a long time poster here, I take different approaches obviously depending on the situation AND depending on how long someone has been here.

If you were a newbie reeling from a recent OP discovery, I'd coddle you big time and tell you that you will get better, life does improve, you are not a bad person, you will learn to love and live fully, again, IN TIME.

But a lot of people have told you this ^^^already. Countless times. For years.

A lot of posters have spent time to help you analyze WHY she did it, what it meant or did not mean.

(Others, like me, don't think it matters much why she chose "x", or if it's an MLC or a WAW, b/c YOUR path and course of action are identical regardless of her reasons or intentions).

Some of us keep said it's not important why b/c you must adapt to the world as it is now, not as you thought it ought to be.

Some have said the more you look in the rear view mirror, the more mistakes you make NOW driving.

Others point out that whether SHE is "really happy" now or if she will regret it later BUT THEY mean nothing to your day to day life...

OH Tad, We don't get through to you for long. Why do you think that is?

Tad, sweetie, a part of you is comfortable wallowing where you are, and staying stuck. Part of you is terrified of letting go of this struggle.

I worry that it won't end with her marriage to OM, if that goes through. You'll wonder if she's happier NOW? What about the honeymoon??

If she breaks it off w/OM, and meets OM#2, I think you'll spend time reeling and analyzing and feeling bad all over again, "why not me now?" etc.

So in a way none of what SHE does matters b/c what matters is that you are not moving much.

(CAVEAT--I say this based on these posts and threads. I concede you could just be having a bad day and choose to post on those days. I get that. I truly hope a lot of your sadness is temporary and fleeting and that you find it helpful to journal here...)

But I worry that you've decided to "stay here" in the land of "WHY ME???"

And the other side of that is the ""My whole life was a lie." Um, Tad, that's a bit too dramatic for me.

You're smart enough man to know that it's also not accurate. In fact it's kind of silly.

BUT HEY, Let's Run with it For illustrative purposes...

"Okay so the 25 years was ALL a lie. Like, on your wedding day SHE was lying! She knew it too! She NEVER Loved you, not really...she was ALWAYS miserable!

She NEVER never wanted the kids. Wait, She ONLY wanted the kids...

She never thought the times you made her laugh were actually funny. In fact, she's the greatest actress of the century. She ought to coach Meryl Streep. (And maybe she's gay too-but that's a whole other lie she's telling her fiance.)

The times she cried at funerals or sad events, were also lies...she actually LOVED every minute of those tragedies...

Tad, I hope you can see that w/gross exaggeration we can illustrate that some of our worst fears are NOT valid. Your whole marriage was NOT a lie.

In a nut shell, at some point her needs were not met in the m. RIght or wrong, she either told you and you didn't get it, or care enough, or she kept it to herself and hoped things would right themselves.

Over time, enough emptiness occupied her tank & she looked elsewhere and or stumbled into someone willing to meet those unmet needs.

She chose to focus on a r w/OM, instead of working to change the m she had with you.

So, now what, Tad? What do you want to do with your remaining time on earth? To me, that is the question to ask.