I agree with everything you said about the A and the D, including the public vs. private thing. I just have a couple of comments. It doesn’t really come together as anything but disjointed comments, so I’ll just present them that way.
W says that she’s forgiven me and that it’s all long behind us. I don’t know the truth of that statement.
The public humiliation is a non-issue. Since we’ve moved twice since the D, we don’t know anybody but our own immediate families that even knows we were divorced. Of course it’s quite possible to feel humiliated even if nobody else knows, but the public aspect doesn’t really apply here. Nobody knows.
I don’t know about the punishment thing either. I noticed definite punishment in the first couple of years after we got back together, but I don’t see that any more. She doesn’t treat me any better or worse than she did before the A.
Karen,
I also agree with you. I do believe that I’m rapidly approaching the point where avoiding the conflict becomes more painful that the conflict itself. I’ve just avoided conflict for so long that I don’t know how to face it. I think that’s why I’ve been is such a black mood – the pain keeps building and I don’t know what to do with it. I’ve been trying to suppress it, but it’s built to the point that that isn’t working any more. I really have no conflict resolving skills. I’m very good at it at work, but in my own personal life, I’ve been avoiding conflict basically forever.
