GG - I can relate to your post. My marriage was mostly good for many of the 24 years, but as I got further and further away from it after the separation and divorce, I began to see more of the ways in which my ex really wasn't there for me. And once I dated new men, the stark differences in how they treated me, versus my ex, became more apparent.
Truth is, my ex was unhappy with life and with himself, and the spew and negativity that I got was a small percentage of what he heaps on himself in his own mind. I felt it was part of the normal give-and-take of a marriage for me to do things for him and try to help him feel better - but I can see now that I demanded too little for myself. And that, oddly enough, he might have been happier in the marriage if I had been more demanding and less accommodating.
It certainly doesn't mean my marriage was all bad - objectively I can see that it still was mostly good. But it wasn't quite the relationship that I THOUGHT we were having. And some incidents that I passed over at the time look mighty suspicious in the rear-view mirror. Once my rose-colored glasses fell off, I saw him in an entirely different light.
