Struggling with multiple challenges

[25yearsmlc]

DerekM

for me, the analogy of a time machine works well.

What I wanted was a time machine to take me back to when my marriage was really good and strong, and we were very close. Not everyone has that, but we did.

OR I wanted to take the time machine into the future I hoped for, and had sacrificed so much for, and wanted b/c it was "the plan" and otherwise it would feel like my life had been wasted, and or my future was so uncertain & frightening and so NOT what I planned.

But we have no time machines.

So what I am really dealing with, and in my case, losing

is a marriage in which my h crossed boundaries several times, which I allowed.
He mistreated me, which I allowed or turned away from.

My children saw this, & I hid from their pain. Even when h was AGAIN going to leave for Alaska, I vacillated.

When I was hospitalized with seizures & saw who was there for me and who was not (i.e. H, the doctor I put through med school, was absent)--

only then, in what I now call a "lightning strike moment", could I see things clearly.

I am not saying your wife is a lost cause.

I am saying the marriage you have right now, is.