Maybell X

[Underdog]

Maybell,

Bug asked me to come over and visit, so here I am. Forgive me for not reading all your threads, so I don't know all of the back story here, but I read this thread to get a feel for why Bug wanted me to visit.

Bug said what I was going to say! So read her post and absorb it. It's the essence of what the doctor is ordering for you and the other posters who are chiming in on giving up.

I'll take what Bug said and expand. Giving up does not equal not standing. It doesn't mean jack. What we all are called to do in ALL our relationships is to let go. Take a deep breath and let go. No amount of worry or overthinking or overacting is going to change any outcome. The only thing any of you can control is how YOU interpret things and choose to behave. Notice I didn't say behave - I said choose to behave.

The essence I see here of being stuck is focusing wayyyyyy too much on what your WAS thinks or what others think (rings vs no rings). You do what makes you feel like the best you that you can be.

My XH and I were separated a little more than 2 years before he filed. I wore my ring-because I love my ring (still do) and felt that I needed to wear it. Then one day I felt differently, so I took it off. It reflected how I felt. Nothing anyone did or thought mattered at that point. I took all my photos of him down the weekend he moved out. That was for me to cleanse my own living space and I never doubted that it was right. Was he mad? Absolutely. I think he had his own ideas on how things were supposed to go, and me doing what I needed didn't fit his script. You do what works best for you and the kids.

Let's get to the important point here. The kids. They are watching your every move and word. They are literally focused on how you act toward their dad (they didn't ask for this) and how you treat someone who has hurt you greatly. So you use this opportunity to have compassion for the father of your children. You show them how to take the higher road and to gentle yourself in their eyes. My girls were 8 and 5 when their dad moved out. While he was off living in a hole apartment and drinking himself to death through a horrible depression and MLC, I took charge of our girls. They became my primary focus - doing things that propped them up and using teaching opportunities as they arose. I worked at not protecting them from any truths that were out there. When their dad let them down, we talked about it. I didn't slam him to them. I let them express their feelings to me and helped them move through them.

I had to laugh when I read your comment about not wanting to date him if you were in that spot. Like the other posters, I think all of us felt that way! But the flip side is also true - I didn't like myself much and didn't think I was a great candidate for dating either. So that left me with me.

I spent 2 years Dbing the heck out of my family. I kept a solutions journal so I could try new behaviors and monitor results. I worked on my own baggage and all the negative things he complained about me. There's one that was a long term project and that was my penchant for bringing stress and unpleasant work stuff home and taking it out on my family. So it's always a project with me.

Now about the other friendship stuff. What torqued me the most about our splitting up is that somewhere along the line, we stopped being friends. We were friends for a year before we even dated, and I truly missed that person. I still do, and we've been divorced for 9 years! But what I worked on over time was to create a good parenting R with him, encouraged him to be present with our girls, and tried to create an atmosphere where I didn't make it uncomfortable or impossible to be around. It took awhile.

All of this wouldn't be possible if my XH was truly a jerk and for years I overlooked his jerkiness. My XH isn't a jerk. He doesn't like being a jerk and his sensibilities are offended if people put him in a position of having to be the jerk. So I intrinsically knew that if I didn't put him in a box, he wouldn't choose to be a jerk. Time has a way of healing things, and it definitely did it for me.

Once our D was final, things took a funny turn. Several months later, our oldest was 11 and convinced both of us that she wanted to play club volleyball. We were both against it, as it was time consuming and expensive and we'd both have to commit to her. LOL. It sure does read like we're stupid, doesn't it? She pulled a guilt card and got her way. We set some ground rules, and sometime over that first year, we looked at each other on a random court and realized that we were both in love with our daughter and how much joy playing volleyball was for her. It forced us to cooperate fully, to plan things as a family because our family was affected a lot by the volleyball family, and to have a purpose. In effect, we created our own little mission statement.

Our daughter played club and high school volleyball and is now playing college ball as a junior. So we've been at this for a really long time (she's now 20).

With each passing year, we'd have team events and dinners. At some point along the road, when I wasn't chaperoning, my XH and D17 and I traveled together. About the time she turned 15, we started to hear from people who met us for the first time, "Are you really divorced? You get along so well and are a lot nicer to each other than lots of married people are." And Maybell, we get the same stuff today! It cracks us both up.

Eleven and a half years have passed since he moved out. He's got a serious GF and I've chosen the footloose and fancy free route. I learned how to hold myself responsible for my own happiness. And once I did that, I could see things very clearly.

Somewhere along the line, he apologized to me for his choices and actions and for the outcome. He's told me that he'd choose differently if he had to do it over again. I'm glad he feels this way because it makes me see that he grew up after his horrid MLC. But when it happened, I was at the point where I didn't need it. So it was a lot less impactful than what I had imagined early on.

I've received 2 incredible gifts from this crappy road. 1) Several years into this mess, my now D20 told me that I was her role model in how to behave with friends that were acting sh!tty. 2) 2 years ago, my dumbass XH told me that he was the luckiest guy on the planet to have an XW like me, because he couldn't have picked a better mother for his girls. And he gave me credit for being the parent who did the right thing at the right time for the right reason.

This is not to say that we don't have days where we aren't snappy with each other or say things that piss each other off. We do. But unlike 11 years ago, we typically come back and apologize for being the a$$. It takes the sting and resentment out of the equation.

So let me drop this final bombshell on you so you have something to consider on that resentment note. One of the ICs I saw told me early on that resentment occurs when we expect others to take care of our needs when we're not willing to do the work ourselves. Think about that long and hard, okay?

Getting back to what Bug said, instead of making those lists of things he'd need to change to be in an R with him, make a list for yourself. Make a list of things you want to do to make your R with yourself happy and fulfilling.

Once you stop looking at his train wreck, you'll better be able to see the things in your own house that need your focus and attention. So like Obi Wan said, "choose wisely". There are no do-overs!

I won't be on much for the next few days, as my D20's volleyball team is flying home to Colorado for a tournament and I get to have her on home turf for a few days. Plus my dad is flying out too. It's going to be a family first weekend.

Take care, all of you. Put your focus on YOU. Once you do that, you can let go. Whatever outcome prevails, you're doing what you need to save yourself. That's what is important here.

Betsey