And we keep moving on.

[Rita]

Irish, I came late to your story so I just read the first post you made. WOW. I always liked reading your posts not only because it's great to get to know a great person/dad is out there but because your posts make it particularly clear that it's not about you. I see many similarities in our spouses. Our MIL's were similar as well -- mine didn't encourage my H at all but she stopped seeing me and the kids and hardened her heart, told me that he was her blood and she didn't want to hear from me anymore, that I had ruined everything by choosing to live in the city!!!! Amazing that anyone would choose their version of righteousness over getting to see their grandkids! And like you, we seemed like such a close family before; but yes, looking back, some flags. However, I think that the flags could have gone either way. Our spouses could have been healed by devoting themselves to the marriage rather than destroying themselves and all the rest of us by destroying the marriage. I do think marriage offers us an amazing opportunity to become our highest selves because of the unconditional love it teaches. But in our cases, we had to cut that journey short when our spouses cut it short.

Anyway I just wanted to support your choice to do nothing. Doing nothing is doing something. It is not only not yours to fix, but I think that fixing it only extends the MLCers lack of responsibility. It would be like apologizing and cleaning up the glass and putting in a new window for your neighbor when your kid is the one who broke it. Except much worse, since it's broken people, not windows.

And also I think that my son is much healthier than my daughter right now precisely because he chose to go no contact. My daughter gets tortured once a week on Wednesday afternoons and then every other weekend for a night-- supposed to be two nights but we always say she has a sleepover so it's only one and H of course is happy enough to surrender his time. My D comes home totally distraught, reeking of vape, conflicted, anxious, takes days to come down off of it. And of course the effect on me of having to hear about the OW and other tasty tidbits is just awful, so then I also struggle to be a loving kind patient present mom when I am hurting.

So I think you should feel free to see the no contact as a very healthy choice for your kids, not as something that you are choosing not to help with. You ARE helping with it, by letting them take all the time they need.