Things would have been better had I left W a long time ago also, she was controlling and in the end held me back from becoming who i was meant to be. Except, I made the choice to be who I was and can't really put that on her. Maybe had I never married her I would own my own business by now, traveled the entire world and married a much more compatible person. But then again I wouldn't have my kids either and instead married a serial killer. I could say had I saved the marriage I would have ended up being forced to cheat on her and live in a loveless marriage disproving why this site would have been, that's a reality that could have happened also.
I could look at an unlimited amount of realities and rewrite them to suit what I want to hear, pick the ones I like most or that were even the most likely. However, none of them happened so they are based in fantasy. In the end those realities only serve to keep us stuck in what should have been or could have been instead or looking at the reality of now. Life could better, sure, but for most of us it could be significantly worse also. I spent alot is time here both when I was trying to cling to the M and afterwards when I was angry with BD. In the beginning I only seen and heard what I wanted to hear "this is how you fix this" instead of the deal message that was fit in about improving yourself, growing as a person and letting go of trying to control someone. Afterwards I couldn't accept the failure so places the blame on a broken theory. One where we should have never tried to save the M and everyone was a fool for "eating [censored] sandwiches". But after a while I realized I was still cherry picking what I wanted to hear. My DB coach showed me how to stand up for myself in a strong way and not allow people to walk over me. How to set strong boundaries and grow as a person. My coach even told me to "give yourself permission to give up on my M". Not to save the M, but to help me let go of things outside of my control. I think the root principles we see in DB are good, we just perceive them in a different way depending on where we are. I don't blame MWD for making a business aorund believing in something like hope a marriage can get better, because for some it can and even if it didn't work those things translated into different area did my life positively.
Do you want to be someone else other than who you are now? To accept who you are now you have to accept the events in your life as stepping stones that shaped you, no matter what they may be. In the end we may not have control over the events or situations that happen in our lives but we do have control of how we react to them and what we take away from them.
Accept what is, let go of what was, and have faith in what will be
