I learned of this 2 days ago. But the divorce was final on the 26th. At first it really bothered me that my L had not given me advance notice, since I told her specifically I wanted to know in advance.
I guess I wanted to mark the day in some form.??
Turns out it's a bit less stressful not to know the exact moment your 35 year marriage ends.
A bit anti climatic however. And I cannot for the life of me recall what I did last Monday.
But a man who lied to me a lot and for so very long, who walked away from a long marriage, a marriage in which I made the bulk of emotional investments and ALL the sacrifices,
a man who has not seen our children in over 18 months and who cut off our youngest from college tuition despite his HUGE income,
who lied to her and the courts about said income,
who spent Money on OW and HER D, all while pleading poverty to the courts and to our own children, and while our d20 works 2 jobs and goes to college,
was now legally out of my life.
Like I said, I cannot recall what I was doing last Monday. But I survived.
So far, not a tear has been shed, though when I had a flashback of my late mother and thought if she were here, I'd have told her I "Mom, I have had a rough year"
THAT^^ made me sad.
Not so much the loss of h. His true colors are now revealed. THAT is not to be missed.
My eyes are open now. The years of my believing that exh was "confused" or "MLC" are over and the knowledge that he's malignantly entitled, selfish in the extreme, has helped me to accept that I am truly better off. I know this now.
Any OW who would stay with a man who had done the things he's done the past 17 months,
is not interested in love or commitment. I sometimes imagine that EX H must know at some level, the truth about OW and she knows at some level the truth about him.
So he better spend more...or just not go there, which is the more likely path. H is the least self aware smart man I've ever known. Literally. And the way we all overlook OPs flaws when we first engage with them, may help avoid the truth for some amount of time...
So the question could be "will he resent ME or HER for his lousy r's with the kids?"
You'd think at some point he'd turn to her to blame...b/c I can only be the uniting target of hate and blame, for so long. I mean, I assume.
Really, the only thing I'm sure of is h won't blame himself for ANY of the life he is leading now or will realize he is living.
AND I won't know what he's doing or thinking b/c I will be "elsewhere" for that crapstorm.
Oh the drama and chaos of it all. So much instability being married to him. So much second guessing and self doubting.
Wondering HOW to lower his "restlessness" (which I now see was simply a very big streak of selfishness in him)
how to appease his goals so they would not cost our family so very much...which he never once acknowledged or apologized for ("moving again in high school? You'll like the new place!" - not even admitting it was going to be very very hard for THEM, b/c it was not hard for HIM...)
The job of compensating for the costs of HIS choices inflicted on all of us, is NOT mine anymore.
I am semi amazed at how calm I feel, even though the thing I fought SO HARD to avoid, for so long, has happened.
The marriage is over. I mean it's legally and emotionally and relationally over.
I met him when I was 19 and fell in love pretty fast and very deeply.
I've known and loved him for more ALL of my adult life. But I survived. And I'm more than okay.
I did a LOT of work this past year. Found a very good proactive therapist who did not merely sit and listen to me. She challenged me to reframe things, held me accountable for making changes I wanted to make in my life and steered me back to MY path, off of his, time and time again.
I joined a good Divorce Care group and I reached out to old close friends and I made new ones. To a healthy extent, I GAL but I also relished the alone time I had for the first time in my life, living alone. And liking it fine.
I dug deep. Faced a lot of disillusioned realizations about myself and how much I projected my morals and values onto a man who simply did NOT share them or apply them to himself. I was in major denial. And I see myself as being self aware but I could NOT see that xh was just not that into our marriage or family. He seemed to like the part time aspect of seeing kids and a wife on weekends only - if that. Mostly he enjoyed doing what HE liked doing and not answering to anyone and not having anyone place expectations on him. How loving and mature...oh wait, I mean the opposite.
He greatly lowered any expectations I had of him, to the point where almost nothing was expected of him and everything was expected of me. Although I'll never see his choices the past 2 years as anything but terrible betrayals, I am able to see that those choices reflect on HIM, not me.
I am dating M, and while it should not take OM to convince me of the following - it helps
anyhow, he reminds me of what a sensual woman I am, thinks I'm hilarious and popular for a reason, that I'm super smart and deserving of so much good in my life.
XH cannot do that ^^^for me. OR would not. I'd never KNOW these things are really true and always have been, if I were still with Xh.
I do pray for my children, that somehow they can heal even without a loving father in their lives.
I pray that he will reach out to them in time, but only if he can make amends to them.
No more weird pretenses that he has not abandoned or deeply wounded them, again...
The idea of his taking ownership of his inflicting pain on them, seems so unrealistic that I almost don't dare to hope. He'd need humility to make amends, and that's not something he does. I cannot recall a single event in which he seemed genuinely remorseful for the right reasons (as opposed to self pity for how HE suffered being far from family, even and always by his own solo choice...)
Oh well. I will pray and then drop it, as his choices have taken up SO much more of my attention and head space and caused so much heartbreak to me, it's like self inflicted pain to ponder anything he does or will do, anymore.
