Your post (and Bklyn's endorsement) was really useful for helping me to try to get past my current stage.
I feel like I've moved on - in the sense that i no longer have the cloud of XH's absence hanging over everything I do. He is not 'on my mind' constantly, as was the case for a loooooong time.
What I still can't shake however, is the yearning for things to get back to how they should be. I watched Spielberg's Empire of the Sun a few nights ago with S16, and the boy's line "I can bring everyone back... everyone", as he tries to resuscitate his dead friend, struck home. I feel like, subconsciously, I'm still hanging on to the belief that we might all get back together as a family - in the way that I believed we once were: loving dad and husband, secure and happy kids, al of us pulling together and with complete faith and trust in each other....
I STILL seem to believe that i can get that back!
How weird is that? (Maybe not so much - if Spielberg is making films about it!)
I think I am still hoping that one day XH will turn up on the doorstep and announce that he's seen the error of his ways. Somewhere, deep down, I still hold out hope for that. I don't actually think I want him back, I just want him to want to come back....
Realistically, I know this can't happen. But I'm just wondering how long this yearning takes to go away. I'm more than 3 years in, and I feel like i still have it.
Time and patience , I suppose, just like everything else.
In other news, S15 turned 16 last week. That event was clouded a little by the anxiety of what XH might do. In the end, he imposed himself on S16 against S16's wishes.
We found a present on the doorstep from XH on the evening before the birthday. We 'd been home, so don't know if XH just dropped it and failed to try to see S16 or if he knocked while we were in the back yard.
Next day, he called S16 several times, but S16 did not want to speak to XH - who has not been in contact with him for more than a month.
While XMIL & FIL were visiting S16 that evening, FIL's phone rings and sure enough it's XH insisting to speak to S16. S16 accepted his grandfather's phone and spoke briefly. It was a set up - XH and FIL had planned to make S16 speak to him this way.
Maybe just a minor incident, but to S16, another manipulation on the part of his father - and a chipping away at the trust he has in his grand-parents (they sided with XH in this).
Oh, and by the way, XH's present to S16? A video game ... and a moleskine notebook. The latter evinced a WTF moment from S16. Wonder what was going through XH's head when he purchased that for a 16-y-o boy?
