My H did the same thing in choosing the ow over his kids for quite a while. I now see glimpses where he choose his kids over her. I believe he pays for that quite dearly when it happens.
Oh well, it's the life he choose when he ran looking for his happiness.
One thing I don't understand is why they resent having to pay us alimony so much. I guess us being good and faithful wives didn't mean much to them.
Hang in there my friend, better days are coming...
I've been behind the scenes on the Board for quite some time. I check in, read up on everyone, and haven't really had much to say for myself. Tonight, I read a question from Seeking that really set off the Burning Question in my Brain, or rather the cause of the unhealing hole in my heart.
HOW MUCH OF THIS HELL AM I RESPONSIBLE FOR? Honestly, I know I was far from perfect, and in fact, took many things for granted as "not mattering after all the years we've been married". Justification is his balm. Rationalization is mine.
It has been such a long journey of heartbreak and rejection for all of us. Self realization and personal detachment. Hard lessons learned. I can say that I have come a long, long way. I have moved on in a very physical way, and a mental way. My emotional way, however, is still screwed to the wall. I battle myself on a daily basis, "is this because I still love him, or because I still love the memory of 'us'"
Yes, ole Punkin is still scourging herself after all this time. I just can't stop feeling guilty for whatever part I truly played in my personal disaster.
Don't get me wrong, anyone. I don't know how I would have survived without the support and sounding board of this site. Maybe it's just that all this personal growth is killing me.
Punkin, I responded to your posting over on Seeking's thread.
Unless you can see into the future, read minds, read tea leaves, or have a crystal ball, then you couldn't see this situation coming. None of us could...we didn't/or still don't know what happened to them in their early childhood years. We aren't the ones that didn't take the time to validate their thoughts and feelings. We are not the ones that shot them down and gave them heck when they did something wrong as children.
Quite frankly, IMHO, you are not responsible for the hell that he's put you through. Yes, we are responsible for 50% of what goes on in the marriage, but none of us signed up for what happened to them as children and had we known what to expect, I imagine we would have run the other way or had been better prepared for the fall out. You did the best you could, you were a good wife, companion and best friend to the man. What more could he have asked for?
So, my question to you is this...why are you feeling guilty? I think you do love your xh, but also the memory of the man he once was. When I use to feel the way that you do now, I would look at the bigger picture and I soon stopped feeling guilty about the situation. Why? Because I knew that I had done everything that I could humanly do to make this marriage work and make him happy and proud of his marriage. Unfortunately, what transpired long before I came on the scene had really screwed him over...I knew I could not fix what I didn't break.
Punkin, give yourself some time...you are still going through the grieving process.
Sit quietly, the answers will reveal themselves when you least expect them to. The past is gone, the present is a gift and you need to focus on today, allow the future to reveal itself when it is ready.
I appreciate the words and thoughts. It is just so confusing about where the line is drawn between "taking responsibility for your actions" "being totally honest and fair" & being a total and undeniable putz. Yes, I suppose I am still grieving, although if anyone had told me I would still be grieving after 2 full years, I would have said they were nuts. I have done the math in my mind. The longest I ever spent "grieving" after a relationship was about 9 months.
To answer your question, I don't know why I feel guilty. My close friends, family, and even my children would say that I don't. Only here do I, shall we say, spew my deepest thoughts. I guess I was just raised to take responsibility for myself. If I f**ked it up, I owned up to it. No one has owned up to this cluster, so I guess I am trying to be the mature one and take the blame, at least insofar as I am responsible. I JUST CAN'T figure out what and where that is! The not knowing keeps me from moving past it.
I suppose I am looking for a confessor, to which I can take these sins, admit them, and leave them. By the way, I'm Methodist, not Catholic! I've even wondered if hypnotism could just erase his memory from my mind, is that not idiotic?
I know what you are feeling, I think I held the record for taking the blame for everything.
Looking back, I realized I was too dependent on my xh. I did not hold up my end in the marriage in many ways. So, I accept that those are things about me that I needed to change.
Here's the thing. I did not do or not do anything with the intention of hurting him or my marriage. Had I known better, I would have done better.
What I do know without a doubt is that I was a good wife in a lot of ways. I loved him unconditionally and I always had his back.
Were there things in the marriage that needed improvement? Yes. Were there ways that both of us could have handled things better? Yes.
But, I honored my vows. I did the very best I could at the time.
I did not deserve to be cheated on. I did not deserve to be ruined financially. My son did not deserve to be hurt so deeply.
So, I embraced the ways I could improve for me. And I also forgive myself any mistakes I made unknowingly.
Punkin, more and more I am coming to understand exactly what Brookie is saying about doing the best you could at the time. When you think about it, after a huge tragedy like this with all the work we have done on ourselves, we are really at the point where we are trying to sort of birth new selves out of the ashes. I am constantly struck by how incredibly different my mindset is now as opposed to "then" (and by then I mean in the middle of the marriage). It's at the point where I can't say that I'd want my marriage "restored." I would want a whole new shebang, a much better one, and I'm not saying my marriage was bad. I just expect more of myself now and a lot more from a partner--and what's weird is by more I kind of mean less--I mean both of us a heck of a lot more independent and none of this codependent stuff that really came to define us.
And you know we couldn't see it happening, as it happened so gradually over time. I don't think you or I should hold ourselve responsible for what happened so slowly it was imperceptibly. Our marriages were like that whole thing with the frog in the pot with the water very slowly heating up, and the frog doesn't know till it's too late that he's being boiled.
Sometimes I think the new self we have made from all this mess is so strong that she is harsh on the old self--she judges her and says "you should have seen this coming" or "you shouldn't have done this wrong" or "you shouldn't have been so needy."
Here's the thing: we are primed to do that to ourselves because so many of our exes spewed that crap at us to blame us for them walking out and ending it. Over time, we come to realize that we weren't to blame in this overarching way--that we could have done this or that better, but ultimately, they were the ones who BETRAYED us and the vows. We did not betray them. There is a difference between being codependent on them vs. betraying them and lying and cheating. A huge difference. Do not forget that.
And then on top of us being primed to accept blame, our newer stronger selves are trying to not go back to the people we were since we see those people as so weak. And then the new self blames the old self. But the old self didn't know any better.
Maybe the old self we were in these marriages was kind of immature in some ways. The new self is much more mature and self-sufficient.
Try to look at this as perhaps the only way that you personally would ever have really become who you were meant to be. Perhaps you might never would have been able to become the very strong woman you are today (not saying you weren't strong before but you are BETTER now than before) had that marriage continued.
It's sort of like losing your mate to gain yourself. And yes, in a perfect world we could gain ourselves and KEEP the mate. But if that mate is no longer fulfilling ANY of our needs and unwilling to be a partner with us, there is nothing we can do about it.
Perhaps down the road some of these mates will come back if they have completed their "journey" successfully. Perhaps some of us will find new mates and not wish to reconcile. Perhaps some of us will remain single.
IMHO, you probably love the memory of the two of you but not him now. I don't even LIKE my XH anymore, to be honest. I would never tolerate such a flighty, fair-weather, shallow friend to be in my life. So I can't have him in my life either.
I love him in a very deep way, but I don't love him now. I love him THEN. I love his memory and our memories (or rather my memories of us together). I feel like if something were to happen to him now, it would hurt me and I'd want to help him, but I almost think that the only thing that is really left for him now is the feeling that I would still nurture or care for him if he asked or if he was in need. But love? That's really hard to say. If I do love him, it's a very detached sort of love.
Again, I just think that you and me an anyone else, when we get caught up in the "how much was I responsible" loop, have to just tell ourselves that it's pointless and unproductive and energy-draining to keep "going there." If we have really faced our own inadequacies and we are living a good life takingn care of ourselves now, that's what matters. We can't go back and fix the past. We did our best and we must accept that.
M45 Bomb 6/09; EA 6/10; Divorced 1/11 Proud single mom of 7 little feline girls and one little feline boy "Fall down 53 times. Get up 54." -- Zen saying
Punkin - First of all, I am really glad to hear from you. Secondly, I think these haunting questions you are facing are quite normal, expected, and appropriate. I guess I have to come back to this belief:
I married a man who vowed to love me for better or worse...exactly the way I made the same vows to him. Did I turn my back and leave because of his imperfections? No. Is it wrong for me to believe that I was owed the same respect? I readily admit my flaws and actually feel like I own them and continue to work on them.
This was not my fault! This was not YOUR fault! NO ONE deserves the disrespect, humiliation, heartache, etc that we have experienced. Take the time to heal - you deserve it!
Irish
M-48/XH-48 M=25/T=28 years Ds-24,22/S-18 D - 3/11 A Day at a Time
Punkin if you have been following the Passive Agressive discussion over the past few weeks, you will also see that the MLCer is usually PA, and therefore very very good at shifting blame and inducing guilt in others. They have traind us up, whether unconsicously or deliberately, to take the blame. And we learnt our lesson well.
Not saying we don't need to look at our personal responsibility but I also have caught myself repeatedlu wracked by guilt over all of this, when it really isn't reasonable to do so . . .
Thanks so much to all of you; Seeking, Irish, Antonia, Brookie, Beatrice and Snodderly.
I know the wisdom of your words. But as the song says ..."I wish my mind would tell my heart" so I could move away from the niggling doubt in my consciousness.
I do not think that my XH is any happier in his new life than in his old. I fail to see how he could be. His wifey still controls his FB and email. She unfriended on his behalf the one D that allowed him on her site to see pics of the grands, then had the gall to email her and ask her to please not hold their marriage against their father. He loved them SOOOOO MUCH. Who could be happy with that degree of manipulation and distrust?
I truly have healed in many respects. I just want to be totally honest with myself. I've seen the 'faking it until I make it' remark several times. I don't feel I am having that much difficulty, but this is a lingering remorse that I just have to come to terms with somehow.
I guess the simplist explaination is that I long for an inner peace that has somehow escaped me up to this point. Until I find that, I can't put it behind me and move on to the extint I would like.
I believe as Seeking said, that we would not have found ourselves at this site if we were the thoughtless, selfish people our X's made us out to be, but then again, we are the hardest judges on ourselves.
