Hi Mighty,
You seem to be holding your own in a hard situation. Your poem really hit home. My W has avoided being "hurt" her whole life. She left every R she ever had before we met including an engagement when she was 20. She was proud of the fact that she was always the "winner", that no one ever left HER. She never learned how it felt to have someone leave her....with one big exception. Her dad left her, her brother and mother when she was just 10. Up and left and didn't care. Never paid CS, only saw her a couple weeks in the summer and then it was "uncomfortable". He didn't care about her and did so many awful things over the years that just showed how little he cared. Meanwhile her mother never got over his leaving. Never dated, never remarried. She saw her father enjoying his life (inside I don't think he was so happy but...) and he was a 'winner".

My W's depression and eventual MLC started when her father came back into her life after his father died. Said he wanted to make up for everything bad he had done but just her, no husband. He said she was wasting her life as a wife and mother, he wanted her to go away to Europe with him and his wife (OW that he left his family for!) for a couple months but just her, no H, no kids. When I said that wasn't right, what about her kids (13 and 9 at that time, girls) she was upset, thought I was stopping her from having a R with her dad. That changed everything about our M. It was never the same after that. When her father got cancer and she thought he may die...off into MLC land she went, that was 3 years ago. Now she lets him tell her what to do from filing for D to where to put her bed in her room.

Looking back my W avoided being hurt her whole life. She was bound to have an MLC, no matter how good our M. I didn't break her, I can't fix her. I love her, I know she is hurting, I know she is in crisis. But her crisis is hurting so many including me and my kids. At the same time it is giving the person who abused her most of her life all the power he had over her as a child right back to him and he is using it, believe me.

Thanks for sharing the poem, it really hit home on so many levels.