25yearsMLC - 10 years later I FILE D

[25yearsmlc]

Very sorry to hear it 25yearsmlc. I've been divorced now for three years and you are correct -- there are definitely upsides once you heal enough to enjoy them. Like you I also had a reconciliation, although mine was only three years. During that three years, I was an H that only a fool would leave (although really I wasn't that bad before that either )

The great gift and blessing in that, which I'm sure you have or will see in your own situation, is that I was able to leave the marriage without regrets, knowing that I had done the best I could.

I think^^ this is true but atm, I'm reeling from feeling that h was out the door for longer than I realized and that I must have really been a fool for believing this would not happen again.

I will work on this^^. Because as much marital revision as h must have been doing to justify this, again, I don't want to do the same thing and deny what was, actually very good at times. (Even in the past 10 years).

I just hate that sick "WTF was I thinking?" feeling. I did not have that before.

If things had just ended without the reconciliation, I have no doubt that I would have been tortured by guilt and self-doubt for a long time for things I'd done, not done, or imagined.

The gift that you and I share is that we got to go into a reconciliation with eyes wide open and bring our best, and that is an absolute positive.

A ten year reconciliation is a "successful relationship" in its own right. It takes two people to stay married, but only one to get divorced. You don't own that and there is no shame in it, as I'm sure you realize.


Only in my head do I feel no shame. In my heart, there is fear and shame.

Even though I THINK I will be more than okay in time, perhaps my fear is that some of his justifications (whatever they are), are valid.

The shame and fear that at some level I really let him or our family or myself, down. That somehow I deserved this. If I'm so great, how could he do this AGAIN??

Cognitively, I know this ^^ is not true. I'm just trying to process what my worst emotions are and where they come from and how to get through them.

I don't know how, other than to pick them up and stare for a bit and then learn from, and forgive myself and or, let go of what simply isn't mine. It is brave work I often wish to avoid, but I think I am healthy & self aware and strong enough to feel vulnerable.
To face it and own whatever is mine, and to move forward. God help me (literally).

I know and feel and am certain that h's decisions to leave us back then, and the secret trips to Alaska and his irrational obsession with it, and the many many other secrets he has, and the cruel indifference he has shown the past year, are all on him.

This^^ I know to be true.

You've spent hours and hours helping countless people here and I'm confident that you've changed and improved many lives. If anyone will come out the other side in a better place you will.

Acc

Thank you. I can honestly say my own growth & self awareness is peaking, and it would not have been able to do so, if not for the intense therapy, and workshop and HERE.

((( )))