25yearsMLC - 10 years later I FILE D

[25yearsmlc]

Still rambling a bit but bear with me please...


SIGNS/SYMPTOMS...

Yes, there were triggering events in the decade that followed our reconciliation, like both our mothers dying, and a brief deployment of his, several puzzling behaviors, his comments about financial fears he mostly created.

I’m just not sure those^^ matter b/c the triggering events happen to all of us in life.

H barely dealt with his mother's death beyond a few visits and the funeral week. But had ALL her furniture shipped to us and stored, rather than HE go through it. 7 years later...still in storage and now my children and I get to do it.

Losing my mom suddenly was the worst thing that ever happened to me. We dropped our youngest off at college the same month, so for the first time in 30 years I had no child at home, and had lost the role of daughter. Plus, side note, we were an hour from the d's college when we heard a gunshot and came upon a murder victim. Very surreal and horrible.

Then we moved 2 weeks later to a place where I had no friends but h had worked for 3 years. All so he could "finally" get his pension.

This 6 week period in my life made me reel. H was pretty mediocre. Not horrible but just not particularly kind. After Christmas (my mom's birthday) I was functioning pretty well and looking for work as it was "MY turn" since H was retiring soon...or so he said.

Look, I can go on with details about how he said one thing but did another...I literally could write that for a week, which is why it's taken me so long to put this out here!

10 years ago I spent way way too much time asking why or how he could do this.

I spent way too much time wondering what the he11 h was doing/planning/feeling/thinking…or what I had done.


I don’t have that kind of time to waste anymore. And there truly are NO "Good" answers.

SO- I will spend a certain amount of time per day (and then per week and then not at all) looking at what I could do differently if I had it all to do over again.

And I will ONLY spend a certain amount of time per day (and then every other day and then every week and eventually only a few times a year),

allowing myself to mourn the loss of a long marriage.

I will enjoy and embrace my new life.
I know I will do this b/c The alternative is unacceptable

DIVORCE BUSTING

NO I can’t say I did anything “wrong” in DBing. In fact, I don’t have regrets there. We did reconcile and without DBing, the marriage would have ended 10 years ago. Would that have been better for me? MAYBE....I'd be 10 years younger, so who knows?

What I do know is that our daughters wanted very badly not to move again. I am responsible for achieving that by DBing. They have friends they knew for 10 of their formative years and to whom they're still close. That's a win.


MLC? MAYBE H is just not who he once was, or who I thought he was and regardless, he's not the spouse for me. I honestly no longer care about the terms "MLC" very much. A little, but not much.

I truly thought H & I were past the Alaskan obsession, & maybe we were past it or it was just dormant. Or maybe he was eventually faking and biding his time for 10 years.

***OR MAYBE we reconciled as I thought- but the underlying issues in our marriage and or in him, were not fully explored AND resolved.

I tend to think this^^, at the moment.

A few months after reconciling and attending Retrovaille, (Which was a great thing)
H’s mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

In retrospect, we should have somehow 
“checked in” more often. I recall h being very irritable back then, post recon, but I didn’t want to push too much when his mother was dying.

I distinctly recall telling a DB friend that I didn’t want to kick h when he was down.

So I realize I let a lot slide. NOT saying I should have made h pay or suffer more to reconcile, at all. That's destructive. I do not believe in being punitive. That's just not our jobs.

However I sure wish we had explored the roots of it more, once we had established piecing. It's as if I had Not gotten any real "marriage insurance", which does not ever ever guarantee a lasting m, but would not have hurt.

By that, I mean some sort of barometer to check in and to regularly ask about the r, without being negative. Just because h didn't bring up Alaska again (the financial arrangement up there was NOT what he envisioned and our family finances took a hit we never really recovered from).

I never once threw that in his face, but it spoke for itself. In retrospect, I wonder if H blamed me?)

Anyway he often seemed restless and created chaos in the home. Gone "commuting" for most of the years in the past decade and that is POST reconciliation. UGH, I am mortified just to write that. And of course our youngest d19 feels unloved by h. How can she not?

And his conflict resolution skills only briefly improved but when I disagreed, he almost always got his way anyhow (I actually cannot think of when things went my way but I'll spot him a few).

When I filed for divorce, I had been put in an impossible situation. H was up in Alaska pretending or even believing I’d join him later. Or not caring b/c he saw Other women around.

But I overheard him telling one employer I'd be joining him "as soon as our daughter returns to college". Which was a total lie. Why lie ABOUT me? Bad enough to lie TO me.

Who knows? Who cares?

Here is what I do know.

1) I could not DB to reconcile again. For ME, it was a once in a lifetime thing.

DBing for me? Yes


That doesn't mean I'm not GAL or detaching.

As for any hope of reconciling. Hey, I say "never say never" all the time.

So while I am Not saying that H could not radically change & wake up or find some weird explanation for all this from all his childhood issues (dad was alcoholic military and mother was mentally ill but loving)

--- I’m saying I cannot & do not expect it. I cannot wait for it. I am not positive I want that. Because for this Crap to happen again, means he’s not the man he once was OR he never was.

Realistically It would take so much change in him & actual brave inner work, to arrive to a place where I'd even consider trusting him, is just not realistic. It's not about punishing him, it's about me only wanting trustworthy people in my life.

Plus, if he showed up on my door tomorrow, I'd know it had not happened. It's the type of work that years of effort require. And he's too proud. …


The TIME MACHINE WE ALL WISH WE HAD

When I say I miss him, other than day to day things I know we both enjoyed b/c in many many ways we were well suited...what I really am mourning

is 1 of 2 things.

1) The past

It's as if I want a time machine to go back to what we once had, b/c it was damn good. And for years I held onto what we once had b/c I believed we could get there again...so I missed the past marriage. Some folks don't really have that, but they miss something else.

AND OR

2) the hoped for future - I missed what I felt we were going to have, what I hoped we'd have. Traveling in our retirement years (which we could be doing now, btw) sharing hobbies, building a lovely home...visiting our children...

But what our marriage had actually become, and the behavior and contempt with which h treated me much more recently, is totally unacceptable. I doubt h would ever file for D. Too "conflict avoidant" and it won't play well with his victim image.

So without a time machine to go backwards to what was, back then,

or forward to what MIGHT have been, is impossible.

And frankly, the future I hoped for was unlikely to happen with the man my h had become, anyhow.

H is endlessly restless like some but not all, doctors. Always striving, never arriving.

H has something to prove, to God knows who. But that's his sandbox, not mine.


Finally, (for now at least) our children saw h's recent fb posts about the great OW.

S30 was concerned for me & reached out about how I was feeling. Also says his dad is "mentally ill, substitutes his own reality for ours"...(And I'm so co-dependent my first
reaction to that was of concern for h!! SMH)

Anyhow,
I chose to be authentic but reassuring b/c this is my son. I said I was "very surprised & disappointed. But I'll be fine in time. No worries"



Our son's reply - "Mom, yes you will be fine. Say Good riddance to lunacy.

You are bound for so much more happiness now, than you would be otherwise."


Though bittersweet to hear from my our son, this^^ actually helps me a lot. I think it's true about my happiness being more than what it would have likely been.

My happiness now does not have to revolve around the shifting goals of h and what MIGHT make him less restless or more content...


sorry for the length of this