Quotes Found on DivorceBusting (11)

[Ready2Change]

https://www.divorcebusting.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2773103#Post2773103

Something I've come to realize from what we've gone through as well: We aren't in control of everything.

I'm embarrassed to remember how arrogant I used to be; I mean, like even more than today! When I was young I saw other people's problems and somehow thought they wouldn't happen to me. I thought that I was different, special, the main character of the movie. That if I just did the right things, was clever and smart enough, played my cards right, and had a good deserving heart, things would just work out. I was the gingerbread man.

I've been humbled by all of this. I'm not more deserving or more special than anyone else. Suffering and loss won't avoid me in life just because I'm me. And most of all, I don't have everything figured out and under my control. Even if I did have it all figured out, somehow out of the billions of people on the planet I was the wise one, I could get hit by a drunk driver tomorrow and end up in the hospital. One of my children could take their own life and change mine forever. I could be falsely convicted of a sexual crime and end up in prison.

Bottom line, no matter how we play our cards we aren't in control. In our cases our partners made choices that ended our marriages and destroyed any possibility of a unified family or a lifelong partnership. No matter how special you are or how cleverly you DB'd, you couldn't prevent your XH from doing what we did. Neither could I.

Oh, it's appealing to cling to the idea that we can or could've done something differently. This idea is nice because we get to cling to the illusion that we are in control, that if we just figure out the right things to do or say we can save our M, get our WAS back, or bounce back and learn from this to find the perfect new R and quench our every desire.

But this just doesn't work. This all comes from a place of attachment. We are so attached to what we want that we can't bear to think we might not be able to get it.

I grieve the loss of my marriage. It hurts me to know I couldn't protect my kids from the pain of a broken home. I miss them when they go back to their mom's, the house goes from being filled with joy and life to seeming empty. It feels wrong to my soul that after centuries of families being torn apart by hardship and oppression that we now choose to do this to ourselves because we're willing to trade our families for the pursuit of happiness that appears to lie outside of our marriage in the arms of that other person.

But I am so grateful that God knocked the piss out of me and reminded me of my place, made it clear that my job wasn't to get everything I wanted but rather to serve Him, my family, my employer, and in the end to say thank you for this opportunity. My life will never fulfill my every desire or live up to the delusional aspirations I had when I was 18, but when I let go of that and focus my attention every day on what's in front of me it is so lavish I can't believe there was a time I demanded more before I could be content.

I got a little carried away and went from talking about lack of control to appreciation. My main point was about giving up the illusion of control. But appreciation has allowed me to find peace while my outer world crumbled. I wish that for everyone on these boards.