My Journey with WAS (Part 9)

[lcause]

Regardless of the pain inflicted upon us, I don't see any reason to hold onto the anger, and I personally devote my time and my future to understand people, including their emotions, better. It's not the ultimate thing I pursue because all things do not have to have a meaning per se - It's just that most of the actions we do are in fact somewhat predictable and universal - and understanding why people do what they do helps us to recover. Every coin has two sides. By understanding, accepting and letting go of the anger no matter what you have experienced is the first real step to a better life afterwards, which shows not only towards your inner circles but in your behavior towards total strangers too.

But I do obviously understand people who are extremely hurt by their long time partners deciding to cheat, lie, manipulate, hurt etc. their own (previously) loved ones. It's something that is really hard to forgive. Ultimately, we are the ones who put the meaning for the actions and we decide how we feel about them. Cheating is a big hit on one's ego and it's hard to understand why anyone would cheat if you are an emotionally stable person who never would do that. However, not all of us are as seen from the behavior our (ex-)spouses have. Understanding that cheating or any of those behaviors is not really related to you, but related to them being emotionally undeveloped. I realize this probably doesn't help, but I got an immense amount of relief when I started to accept things as they are and could see the other side of the coin. I feel that actively using this approach has made me a better person on all social occasions as I tend to analyze the behavior of others more "on-the-fly". Finally, the world goes on and you can either choose to stay angry and dwell on what happened to you or you can decide to use it as a motivation to lead a better life. It is said that those people who go through very traumatic events truly understand what being alive means and they end up being the happiest people around. And I can say that holding anger will just consume you.

I've met a family where a man left his wife of ~30 years to go with his affair partner. This was ten years ago. The man, his ex wife and the affair partner have a lunch 3-4 times a week and they are all friends nowadays. The man and his ex wife goes to sports events or lunch sometimes together too.