Thanks Heather and AJ, The thing that has me the most worried is that my W comes from a family history of D. My parents are still married (55 years)and VERY few of my relatives have gone through D. The fact that I have seen how badly D has affected my W, the way she has always spoken about how hard it was on her and her brother and mom, I saw first hand how it negatively affected every part of my W's life even now. Added into that is how the MLC has changed my W, how she stopped spending time with the kids, spends long hours at work and with her "friends", how she had the attitude that because my D was a teenager, she didn't need supervision. Ever since her depression my W hasn't made time for the girls when they tried to talk to her or ask her about something. The way my W has been so obsessed with her own body image (always complaining about her weight or how she looked when she was too thin and while maybe not model on cover of Vogue beautiful she is very pretty)and how that may affect her girls body image (it didn't help when she called my 5'1" 105# D19 "getting a bit chubby"!) and how that may affect how my D see's herself. And of course there's the fact that they both are now much more likely to have marriage problems or get a D later in their lives.
While I know that there is much that I can do to help make sure that both my D's get through this and their lives in general the best way possible, I just know that it would have been so much easier (not easy, just easier!) had none of this happened. As I have learned more and more about MLC and the how and why's some people go through them, I have been more able to not "blame" my W. I know it wasn't her choice to go through this but at the same time she did make many poor choices due to her going thru MLC and it does take an effort to not just see this as a series of very immoral, valueless choices that my W made and could have made differently. But like AJ says, she has a right to do what she wants whether I agree with what she choices to do or not or if it's totally different than the person who she used to be would have made.
AJ, you are right about my W needing a friend. Her father is still going through intensive chemo and even if he makes it through this round, he is not going to live forever and she will be very lost, I fear, when that happens. She has always had a hard time with making real friendships. I have seen her just totally stop caring about people she was very close to because of some small perceived slight my W felt they had made towards her. Her friends now are all people she works with and I really think that while they are friendly, if she stopped working with them they wouldn't stay friends with her for long. Whether I could ever be a friend to her in the future is hard to say. The way she is acting now, the attitude she has towards our shared past, the way she wants to blame me for things that aren't at all my fault would make that very hard. If she ever starts to make her way out of her fog and begins to see that she needs to fix herself if she ever wants to truly be "happy", maybe then I would be more able to be a "friend" to her. I also think time is a factor. As more time passes and I am more and more able to build MY life without her, the sting and feelings of betrayal will lessen. Only time will tell.
Thanks again. I truly appreciate all of your thoughts.
