25yrsMLC 10yrsLater I FILE/Div X marries OW #10

[25yearsmlc]

Great points Maybell.

(**I meant to say x underpays me by about $345 a month, NOT $3450...I wish)

But yes I get what you mean by the reminders in the "gifts" of departure. When their behavior is so outrageous and so much of an "outlier" in the scale of behaviors, you suddenly see clearly that there was never anyway you could meet their insanely high , ever changing expectations. AND that you should not ever have shifted your own goals and dreams to meet them...

I read in the 4 Agreements that if someone causes you pain or tension in your life and then leaves your life, see it as a gift. Because it just is.

And that's a huge shift in me but it's really sinking in. And so is pity for x, who will either face his demons and live with them

or live with so much cognitive dissonance that it will keep him free living authentically the rest of his life, which is also very sad for him. His life up there is based on a lie. The work up there is, the finances, and the relationships and the lies he has to tell people about our children (IF he tells them at all...).

If he can erase 35 years and 3 children and a wife he knows loved him, then he's got a disorder of some magnitude. Not my job to fix it and

as my s31 said, My happiness cannot hinge on x seeing the light."


I spend at least 12 years believing x would see the light and that my loyalty and "loving him thru the MLC" and all the crappy behavior I disguised as his "confusion/fog"

when in reality the kids saw through him much better.


Yes I regret wasting so much time in denial about x.

BUT I promise to limit the regrets b/c they are not productive, once you learn from them.

Not sure how I'll watch for things in my next r, or how I'll deal with issues and enforcing deal breakers, but I KNOW I will.

I'm rebuilding my own r's with the kids b/c I can now more fully see why they were so frustrated with me at times.

I refused to see what they saw...but I do now.

I see that We are truly better off without him. Just not sure how long it will take me to feel healed, b/c I don't see healing as the same thing as meh. I'm closer to depersonalizing b/c of His email. His stated views and his dishonorable conduct during the entire divorce process, not to mention how he treated me when I was sick, help me to depersonalize it in a way b/c it's just so bad. And he mentioned NONE of this in his letter to the kids.

Man it stings beyond description to know the man I loved for decades, all of my adult life, could do these things to me.

And to our children. And take zero accountability and learn nothing. But it's true.

Yep, I know...back to me and my life and kids.

Thanks guys, really.