I think a lot of my anger is at myself. I willfully ignored all the things that made me uneasy about him-- and there were quite a few-- because I thought that he was essentially a good man and I was lucky that he wanted to marry me. If I am honest with myself, I am not surprised that we are getting divorced.
I settled for someone who didn't really love me (or at least didn't love me the way I wanted to be loved) because I wanted to be married and have kids.
I do not want to be married to him. While there were many things about him that I loved and admired, there were also many things I felt like I didn't respect about him. Maybe that was because I didn't feel unconditionally loved by him.
A true 180 for me would be to tell him that I agree-- that I no longer want to be married to him -- and to take a more active role in the process.
What will I tell my daughter? Is my conscience clear? Did I try absolutely everything I could? I made so many mistakes. I didn't do a good enough job DBing because he doesn't feel like he's a fool to walk away.
Will I get to a point where I can wish him well? I have this vision in my head that he'll end up like his dad-- with a wife no one likes, who never connected with her step-children, and seemingly not a whole lot happier than he was, and that I'll end up like his mom, with a husband who adores her and loves her children like they were his own.
But that might not be how I end up. He may end up with someone fabulous, and I may end up alone. And maybe that is part of my fear-- that his view of himself and me (that I'm unloveable and he can do better) is right.
Oh boy. I'm falling off a cliff here. If I read this pity party on someone else's thread I would whack them on the head and tell them to GAL.
I want to send him to this site, but that would be such a waste because a) he would just think it's BS; and b) he doesn't want him and I certainly don't want to guilt him into working on the relationship.
Our WAS are so stuck in their ways and beliefs, and our entire culture feeds that belief. How does DBing work for anyone whose relationship is as far gone as mine?
Or, maybe another way I have to look at it now is that this is for the best. I never thought those words would come out of my mouth. But I can't think of anything else to say that helps me come to terms with this. If this is the man I married, if he doesn't love me, then it is for the best that I'm not married to him.
