Hey Rocco, I wrote a letter to God, at the suggestion of my pastor and my friend. It took me 5 days to write it. In it, I put everything I could remember that hurt from my first 22 years of marriage. Everything I could remember, and how I felt when it happened, and how badly I felt mistreated when it happened. I poured out everything and I asked God to take it for me. I said 'God, You forgave man for every sin he has committed. You forgave them for the sins of the holocaust, for every cruelty man has ever done to one another. When You bore that cross on your back, and died, this was the weight You carried. If You can forgive all mens sins, You can forgive my wife, too. And You can give me the strength to forgive. Please bear this burden for me, I cannot hold it in anymore'. This exercise helped me tremendously. It is there if I want to add to it, but this exercise was primarily to put the past in God's hands, where it belongs, and to put it in a place of safety. When I relate things from my marriage on this board, it is not out of bitterness but out of my desire to show I have been there. I have no bitterness left for these things. And this exercise, though it is in the past, helps me now as these things keep occuring. I have a much better ability to forgive and move on than I had before.
So, verycrazy, if Rocco is numbering his wife's failures, maybe he needs to do so, one last time, to give them away, one by one. This will help him to be free to move on and do as you and I are saying - to take positive steps forward in his situation.
