I'm reminded of a prayer that I heard and has stuck in my mind since:
"Lord, help me forgive those who sin differently than I do..."
I heard another interesting 'sermon' recently, about how we do many things, in most of our cases here - get married - in spite of the problems that are right in front of our faces. Here's the original link: (Notice: This is a Christian minister with a Christian message. If you don't like that kind of thing, I'll summarize below. Jump to about the 1/3 mark where he speaks of marriage - he is standing by a flip chart at this point)
The point he makes is that many times we never really get answers to satisfy all our reservations about something before we make a decision to move forward with a decision. There's something else that comes into the picture that just makes all those 'issues' very small in proportion, so we take the step anyway. In most of our cases, the thing that made all of our issues look small was love. It's easy, after the fact, after 'love' has now seemingly departed, to look at all those things we minimized as huge roadblocks we never should have passed.
Guess what? - there's no Mr. or Mrs. perfect out there. Everyone has shortcomings that love will cause us to gloss over and take the step anyway. We're wiser, sure. Yet don't be so brash as to think that it won't all happen again.
me4faith, Do you know if and when FIB plans to come back to the board & his thread? Please let him know that we are all concerned for him, and please tell him he is in my thoughts & prayers.
I spoke with FIB this morning. He's doing better and he's kind of keeping off public boards since he feels his anonymity / security has been compromised.
I wish to agree with many here. I think, that, perhaps, the 'alien'..or 'sick'...or 'MLC' terms....may be labels that help us rationalize the very painful position that we are in with regards to the disruption in our marriages.
Having been at this for awhile, I believe that several facts are clear:
many of our spouses have occurences in their past that have caused some 'damage', or, cause them to carry unresolved issues forward that affect their mental health
that, under duress, they make suboptimal or illogical decisions
that some of these decisions cause many people pain
Is my W bad? Hmmmm. Does filing a false police report make someone bad? Does lying make someone bad?
Or does it just make them selfish and a liar?
As 4kids intimates above...are WE really to blame? In many ways, I choose to believe that perhaps we didn't totally 'fail' as spouses, but, we failed to know ourselves well enough that we CHOSE THE WRONG SPOUSE. Our spouse-o-meters were wired with the reverse polarity.
Sometimes, I don't fear the divorce...or the possibility that my STBXW will try to have me arrested falsely...but....I fear whether or not I will learn how to choose better in the future if I am fortunate enough to fall in love again.
The real difficulty..is to learn enough about yourself....to grow enough....to be able to see if you are in one of those 'some marriages can't be saved' categories....and save yourself from years of pain and 'toxic love'. I know one thing is true...."only YOU can determine that".
BTW, FIB's W HAS calmed a bit....and his MIL was nice to him today (dropped the kids off at his house), but, that seems worrisome. She continues to try and intimidate him by 'barging in on him' when he is having time with the kids.
Tomorrow, 4/25, would have been FIB's 9th wedding anniversary. He always planned on renewing his vows for his 10th...always talked about going to Paris with her....
The pain of what is lost...well, I can only say that it fades with time. Very much like the pain from a surgery I would suppose, in that eventually it goes away completely and all that is left behind is a little scar that reminds us of a painful moment in our life.
As for the rest of the ponderings on this thread lately, I can't really participate.
I still choose to believe that this phenomenon was an emotional shift in my former spouse. It's too depressing to look back on twenty years and somehow believe that all those moments were lies. Something happened inside her and suddenly what once mattered, stopped mattering. What was once important, was suddenly unimportant.
You can't forsee that kind of thing.
I guess I'm saying, I didn't make a bad choice.
She did.
The good news for FIB, and others who are moving through the very difficult final days, is that life gets very good again. And much more quickly than you would think. I'm as happy as I've been in a very long time. More importantly, I am as at peace inside as I think I've ever felt.
Yes, there are details of this new life that are worrisome at times (money and kid schedules top the bill here!), but there are also great opportunities to move in directions you might never have gone. It's a real chance to change your course and maybe move it back in line with where you always saw yourself heading one day.
If you're reading FIB, stay strong.
I'm glad she is calmer lately. Know that there will still be rough spots, but maybe we can at least hope that the pettiness is done for a bit.
Blessings,
Bill
"Don't tell me the sky is the limit when there are footprints on the moon."
I agree that some marry down. it's just a simple fact that not everyone brings an equal amount to the table.
if you find your spouse limiting your personal growth due to their insecurities, using manipulation to control you, and cheating on you. chances are, you married down.
it's not a bad thing to realize that there are bad people out there. sometimes you don't find out they're bad till you marry them, lol. I think labeling behavior such as cheating, abuse, lying and worse as mental illness or mlc is the ultimate in using justification to rationalize one's situation.
yes virginia, there are some bad people out there..
Having lived though my W's MLC to - wonderful marriage and having seen my exW continue on down the MLC path 7 + years later....................The labels MLC and Mental Illness DO fit.
1st - I have not talked to a single post MLC person who did NOT admit to Depression - which IS classified as a Mental Illness.
2nd - You can swear the sky in Purple all day long - it doesn't make it purple. If you don't believe in MLC - why are you posting here?
I guess everyone who's ever been in a Mental Institution was just "faking it" for a vacation - right? Mental Illness is just justification for bad behavior..................so Charles Manson is perfectly sane - just a bad person?
Yes there are some people who will blame their bad behaviors on MLC or any number of things - but my exW never thought ANYTHING was wrong with anything she was doing and did NOT use any excuse other then she "fell in love" and wasn't happy in the M................Never did she blame MLC or Mental Illness.
This has been a turning point to a better M. In 25 years will either of us will remember much about this time? Because in 50 years neither of us will remember much of anything.
