This is the thread...........

[Just_Me]

As I noted on Kevin's thread, there seems to be a sense about "why should I be the one to work on this 'friendship' that my spouse says he/she wants but never does anything to advance the friendship." And you've seen me write on more than one occasion that it would be easier to start over with someone else where I don't already have three strikes against me. Thought this might be an interesting post...

If we were to get a divorce, and we did once again find someone that we were interested in, we would give that person a “fresh start” and more than likely this person will have learned a lot in their lifetime by now that will stop them from making the same mistakes that our spouses made in the past. Does this person really deserve a fresh start? I do not think that it is fair to give a stranger that which we would not give our own spouse.

Today, our spouses are also just people, they have learned things in their lifetime and they also will not make these mistakes again, (well at least not all of them), if we can try to look upon our spouses once again as new people, without all of the negative baggage that we have attached to them, we will more than likely find that they are still great people. That even better than that, they are people that we have already established a strong bond with, that we can trust and that we do have love in our hearts for. I know that this is very hard to do, that there is a lot of pain and resentment that we feel from these things that have happened.

I know how much easier it seems it would be to just find someone new and start over with. Also, I realize that even if you were to try to take this new look at your spouse, there is a good chance that you would still find things that they were doing yet today that drive us crazy. Please bear with me here, and try to open your heart. Please remember that life is difficult and demands a lot out of each of us, and as a result of working our way through life we become hardened, just as ones hands become calloused. My wife one time remarked about how ugly the stretch marks on her belly made her look. I told her I did not think that at all, that I thought that her stretch marks were beautiful because they were made from her carrying my children and that no other woman on the face of this earth had these beautiful marks. So I guess what I am trying to say here is we all have developed scars and calluses as we have lived. And even though to one who knows nothing of how we got them they are ugly, to those that know where they came from they should be viewed as a tribute to that which we have given of ourselves.