Inspiring updates

[Sotto]

Mozza - it's a year to the day since Mozza started DBing..

It's been over a month and I've been meaning to give an update for a while.

I have turned 40 in the meantime and my gift to myself was my D. I wanted to move on, to accept the reality and no longer look back at WW and R as an option. Indeed, I no longer want to reconcile. The idea has been with me almost since the beginning of BD, growing slowly but surely: WW cheated on me once and threatened to leave after 5 years and one kid, then five years and one more kid later, she ran away with a colleague she met a month earlier. I cannot ignore this fact in my assessment of her. Before that, I wanted to spend my life with her. After that, she was a different person.

I'm not proud of the husband I was. Maybe I was worse than average, maybe not, but for sure I was not good enough for her. I could have done better, but I didn't. And she left. She had lost interest in me earlier than that and it was very painful to me, and a source of arguments. She's gone now and looking back is no longer helping me.

In every other aspects of my life, I'm going through a golden age. Everything about my life is right. All my family and friends are healthy and in good situations. So am I: no health issues, a job I love and plenty of work and income. I've never been this close to my kids and parents. I live near them, I love my apartment, and I enjoy dating, even though I haven't met anyone I'd consider as a new life partner. I am in better shape than ever. I could go on.

A few things have brought me there, just before my birthday.

I saw a man on a bike with a leg prosthesis.

I read Norah Ephron who said "My divorce lasted longer than my marriage. It's enough."

I re-heard a bit from comedian Mike Birbiglia who tells how he got involved in a car with a drunk driver who rammed his car. Because of a mistake in the police report, the insurance wanted him to pay $12,000 to the drunk driver. He calls the police to get the report revised and when he finally talks to the captain, he's told «You made a bad turn, now do the right thing, and pay for the guy's car.» He's outraged, of course, and becomes consumed in a fight for justice, so much that his friends avoid him because that's all he talks about. One night, he's on a date with his girlfriend, writing ideas about the case when she says to him: "I don't know what to tell you. You're right, but it's hurting you." And so he paid and moved on.

There has been a few more things, and I was finally ready to hear them. Like the amputee on a bike, it might not be what I wanted, but I can still live a full life. Like Norah Ephron, I can choose to move on before it consumes too much of my life. Like Mike Birbiglia, perhaps I'm right but it doesn't matter: Do I want to be right or happy?

Another thing stuck with me recently: a good friend full of wisdom remarked that I should want WW to be happy otherwise there will be hell to pay for me. If she loses her boyfriend, her job, her health or whatever, it won't be good for me. I still resent her too much for what she's done, but that is my next step, the place where I'm heading my ship.

Then my goal will be to move past my victim status. I don't want to be marked by this D. I don't want to be the guy who's carrying this burden, who can't trust, who's sad underneath. I want to be as whole as I was before it happened.

Most will not see this as a success story because I did not R. But if our primary goal is to save ourselves, than I am a success story. DBing has helped me tremendously to get through the worst period of my life and doing the right thing. I'm proud of how I behaved myself during that horrible year. I'm proud of how I acted with my WW and my kids and with myself. If I had one thing to change, I would be less open to so many people about my relationship with WW. I confided in too many people, but then again, this is not a big regret. I don't know if I can say that this is the end of DBing, given that I've always seen it as a good way to live my life, R or not. Many things are now a normal part of my life, especially doing things for myself and not for WW. I speak with my actions, with her as in the rest of my life. I'm immensely grateful I found this community: it was the only place I met people who were going through the same thing.

I'll probably stick around to read about a few people's lives and perhaps to give an update every now and then. I want to say an immense thank you to all of you, the vets and the newbies, for being a special part of my life at a moment where I needed it most.