I think the ego fights the spirit to preserve what was familiar, secure, and attached to your"re identity as a spouse and you. Its hard to come to terms with, but when you realize, your roles, your talents, your emotions and even to an extent, your personality and behaviors aren't really you, but your who trying to preserve itself with memories, habits, routines. It might help a little. When you do something and go places with someone for over a decade or more, its hard not to remember and grieve. I've had to go through this 5 times in my life. The more you frequent it, the more the feelings of loss subside.
To put it this way. There are a lot of things you did and frequented before you met your spouse, there are a lot of things you did and places you went while single, and even the same from when we were children. If we remaun stuck there, we don't grow, we don't heal, we don't move on, and we don't experience. I am very guilty of dwelling in the past, as it is a bad habit I picked up from my family as all they ever talk about is how good things were, and how everything is always getting worse. They are never present. I an never present. Yet they refuse to change or take initiative to change and chronically whine about their circumstances in life. I don't want to do that anymore as I've been mentally doing it for the last 40 years.
As much as it hurt me to hear it a few months ago. XW said I was just another chapter of her life. And appalled me that I could be looked at that way. But in time of the last few months I got it. I've watched her change into a person I don't know. I've watched her make changes in her life. I've observed her family making changes in their life too. The whole time I'm watching all this the more I realize the little I have changed. I mean internally I'm learning things and mentally does far as taking actions time to put the rubber to the road. I have to change by force and I have to move on. For the first time I understand what she went through. Because I have been in limbo for the last year I have lost a sense of myself. I am forced to reevaluate a lot of things I have done, said, acted and didn't act on. What I want out of life now, who I am, etc. This is why time and space is healthy. It is our opportunity to get ourselves right. I will let everyone here know how I am doing with this once I move in a week.
