The only thing left for me is battling my ego. I don't want STBX back. I know what happened and my role in it. And, newly, I understand that I was enduring quite a lot of awfulness as part of my commitment to her, even before the affair crisis. In fact, yesterday, one of my friends I hadn't seen since the A began, who had known the both of us, said "when I met [STBX], my first thought was 'why is he with her? He could do better.'"
It seemed to me that what I "want" is for STBX to know and believe that she made an awful mistake, to accept that her behavior is inexcusable and immoral, and to see her poor choices collapse around her in failure, frustration, and despair. "Serves her right."
But what made me realize that this is just a matter of my own ego and pride is a computer glitch. Clearly, because I don't want her back, absolutely nothing that happens in her life will have any effect on me whatsoever. I had deleted her calendar from my computer months ago, but somehow, the link is buried somewhere in the software. That calendar is not currently on any of the menus or option screens, but twice now my computer has, when resyncing my calendar, shown me what STBX has been up to for the last month or so. This last time, it showed me some of the things she and OM did together, which didn't bother me; but it also showed me that STBX is now seeing the counselor regularly. And my thought, in seeing that, wasn't "thank goodness she's getting the help she's needed for years, and that she sees the value in getting that help." No; instead, I felt awful about how unfair it was that she's finally motivated to get this help for OM's sake. Oh, yes, she's willing to get counseling and improve her behavior so that she can love him better, but she wouldn't make that effort to help repair our relationship. And worse, this counseling may even prevent their relationship from imploding horribly like affairs are supposed to do.
But all this does is make me feel awful.
And it's obvious that the only reason I'm thinking this way is because my ego is wounded. If I were still in love with her, I'd feel badly that she's going out and doing those fun things with him-- which I don't. Or I'd feel badly knowing that she's spending intimate nights with him-- which I'm not. All I'm doing is inventing reasons to feel awful because of how she treated me.
Which means, in turn, that the only way I can (or should) get over it is by actually wishing her well. That's the conflict-- because wishing her well is the only real way to sidestep my anguish, but doing so means that I give her a free pass for what she did. It's a frustrating dilemma, because it won't work unless I'm sincere, and if I'm sincere, then I'm accepting that she got away with it, which seems like admitting defeat and failure. Even though it's neither my remit nor my charge to assess whether she "gets away with it". Sigh.
