Sandi's Reflections - Part 3

[AndrewP]

So you don't see her at grandkid birthday parties or your kids' birthday parties or anything, huh?

No grandkids as of yet and my daughter lives a 16 hour drive away. For S24's birthdays etc and all holidays up until this Christmas he spends them with me. This year for the first time since she left, he'll be spending Christmas eve and day with his mother.

My ex does I think go to pretty long lengths to avoid me although I'm quite confident that S24 and common acquaintances feed her information at her request. I occasionally hear about her, never from her beyond a surprise "Merry Christmas" one line email a few weeks ago in response to me forwarding some mis-delivered mail.

While I wish she would step up and assist with parenting, she doesn't but at 24 my son doesn't need a lot.

I do wonder if that's why a lot of WW do leave. Or maybe, I should say, I really question whether me representing the truth and representing all of the wrongs my WW has done to me and our family is a big reason why she wants to leave.

I think you need to turn that question upside down. From my own limited experience plus a lot of reading it is my belief that a WW is not running from anything but rather towards something. Sure, they may talk us down to justify it to themselves often making up foo-foo dust stories, but infidelity is by it's very nature a very selfish act.

As the behind spouse, you could I suppose try to dance all nice and pretty and look better than OM/OW and I certainly did my best at that to little or no avail. But then you have a situation where the next sparkly tvrd that comes along will attract them away again. Or you can move on with your life, let them go off on their own and then if they crash and burn hard enough to look around - and that "hard enough" undoubtedly varies a lot from person to person - they may look back towards what they had. That's when the really tough choice needs to be made of if you want them back.

The choice is always that of the BS on what course they themselves follow. Few of the BS who've "thrown in the towel" and moved on to new lives seem to regret their choices from what I gather.