Just doing some journaling.

I was waiting in the lobby of my local urgent care clinic for an anti-body test when I came across an article that interviewed a lot of people on their second marriage that went over aspects of their first, and what went wrong. I figured what the hell, probably an apropos thing for me to chew on.

What really struck me from the article were two things: one, a lot of people chalked up the demise of their first marriage as the result of two people who were earnest but young, and found themselves and their lives moving in a different direction than their partner. And two, a lot of them also said that if it wasn't for the demise of their first marriage, they likely never would have found the strength, growth, and wisdom to be successful in their second one.

I certainly understand the first point. When I met WAS, she was 24 and I was 30. (We married at 29 and 35.) While I was in a different phase of my career than her, it's true that we were both very young. My career had the path that it did, and she had hers -- but we weren't moving at the same pace nor having similar success, and I think I was very much more set in the who I was/who I'm becoming mold than she was. I'm not using it as an excuse but it follows logic: I was really the first long-long-term relationship she had, we met when she was fresh out of school, and down the line she may have simply realized that the person she was becoming or wanted to become wasn't possible in our marriage.

To the second point, I'm a bit more torn. Do I believe I'd have read NMMNG if I wasn't in my current situation? Probably not. But I do believe if we had continued to work in counseling, we'd have made a lot of progress on what was in our way. I'm not yet willing to conclude that I needed to have this happen in order to have the epiphany I needed to change my perspective. It's irrelevant though -- I have changed my perspective, I'm putting in the work, and I'm so much more capable and aware of my patterns than I ever was. I'm far from a finished product, and I certainly wish that growth didn't have to come at such a large expense. But I 100% believe that there's a healthy and fulfilling relationship down the road for me with plenty of better days ahead.

Last edited by SteveS; 06/30/20 12:56 AM.

Me: 37, WAW: 32
T: 7.5, M: 2.25
NYC
BD: 5/19/19, S: 6/21/19