Midlife Crisis: Support for Left Behind Spouses
Archives => Archived Topics => Topic started by: Anon on December 07, 2019, 08:19:46 PM
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I’m in one of those weird reflective moods tonight and started to wonder,,,, would I do it again? If I could go back to pre-marriage days or even further back to pre-dating days with h, would I make a different choice knowing what I know now? The question scared me,,a lot. I didn’t want to know the answer. But,,, my mind wouldn’t leave it alone.
Despite not wanting to know, a big part of me had to know. This is what my answer is to that awful question and I’m horrified: I would NOT do it again knowing what I know now. I had what I thought was a beautiful and happy marriage. My life and marriage gave me incredible joy for 21 yrs. I’m appalled to think it wasn’t worth it, that if I could have a re-do I wouldn’t have anything to do with him. No dates, and certainly no marriage. The emotional, psychological and financial devastation I suffer from for the last 2.5 years and will likely continue to suffer from in some manner for years to come far outweighs whatever happiness I had from being his best friend and wife. It’s not even close, really. This realization is pretty hard to take. No wonder I’ve had no desire to revisit happier days with h. I think those memories are all so badly tainted that I may as well not even have them. The last 23 years of my life are now a complete and total loss. Nothing remains of those years that makes me smile. Nothing.
To complicate it a bit, the fact that I would choose differently in a re-do doesn’t mean I no longer love my h or that I’m not standing. In my re-do I would choose to not love h in the first place. The fact that I did love him and still do is what makes this a devastating realization.
Anyone without kids together with their MLC spouse want to comment on their own thoughts about this? I realize this is an impossible question if you have kids because no parent would change any decision that would lead to not having their children. Generally I’m curious if how I feel is extreme or more the norm. Also wondering if anyone has also felt this and if it was temporary. Could it just be my current seasonal depression and pessimism? It feels pretty permanent.
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Quite normal imho for some of us. Imho it is part of the process of grieving. I wrestled with it for a while. What I found in the wrestling is that it is the feelings and beliefs behind the thoughts that actually matter most.
Why?
Bc it is an impossible question. Unless you have a time machine. (And if you do, a few of us might want to cadge a ride lol). It doesn't matter if you might have made a difference choice bc you can't unmake it.
But
You can wrestle with it logically and emotionally until you find the conclusions behind it.
And anything useful to learn that you can use now.
So, logically...
You are assuming the path not taken would have been better....but how could one know?
If your h had died, would you have felt the same? If I had asked you five years ago, would you have felt the same? If not, what is in the space in between that makes it different now?
Which experiences from those 20+ years are not linked to your h or marriage so you can tuck them aside?
What did you value before that you see differently now?
What is the lasting cost and how do you know how long it will last? Can you change any of that? Are the costs more about concrete things or intangible ones? Get specific....what are they? And what would you need to have or see now as benefits or fruits from those years that would make you feel significantly different?
Based on the facts you know...either observed directly or concrete facts...when does the taint period begin? Or end? How do other (reliable) sources see it?
What would need to change now or in the future outcomes that would change your POV if anything? And how much control do you have over any of that?
And given that you can choose your thoughts....that your perception is your reality...how does thinking this way serve you? What would it feel like if you mentally experimented with some different ways of seeing it?
What if you just can't ever know for sure? What if you are wrong?
And emotionally....
Scared...don't want to know the answer...horrified....appalled...tainted....loss....love. What are these emotions really about? And are they more about you or your h? And what are the strongest emotions? Fear? Anger? Blaming yourself? Feeling foolish? Doubt? Vulnerability? Self-worth? Grief?
And why do you feel so never/always about both the past and future? That nothing from the past is worth smiling about and that how you feel now feels permanent. What do you get from feeling that way do you think?
What is the essence of the taint, do you think? What does it look/feel like? Either/or or a spectrum? More associated with some things than others? Triggered by some things more than others? Less about some things than others?
What are the differences if any between what you think, what you believe and what you feel right now? And how much of that comes from you or from what you think others think, believe or feel? And can you quarantine yourself from any of that?
And if there were a doorway to the possibly untainted, what do you think that might be?
I have no answers bc they are your questions.
But I can reassure you that I was in exactly the same place and wrestled with exactly the same questions. For me it was like a jigsaw on a table that I kept cycling around to see if I could find a missing piece that fit. For me it was a mixture of grief, acceptance and finding my own reality.
And I found that there was useful stuff that was part of my healing process that came from that wrestling.
I seem to be currently doing what feels like a last circle around the jigsaw pieces now but it feels different. Less emotion and doubt, a kind of process of picking bits up, looking at them closely in a way I couldn't before and deciding what to purge, ignore or pick up and put in my pocket. Onevof the biggest differences now I come to think about it is that it no longer feels like a process which needs any input other than mine. Which is just as well lol.
Martin Seligman, the positive psychology guy, talks about the three Ps that get in the way of resilience - personalisation, pervasiveness and permanence. (Sheryl sandberg talked about these too after the death of her husband). That what eats our resilience is believing that something was our fault or that we could have prevented it; that it seeps into every bit of our world view so it defines us; that we believe how it is now and how we feel will not change. These are normal beliefs in grief, trauma or depression. But they are rarely objectively true and we can train our brain to think differently. And we can look for the small bits of evidence that challlenge our thinking.
Which of the three Ps speak to you most right now, Anon?
How much of what happened was bc of you rather than happening to you?
What are the things about you and your life which were/are separate from it?
How have you/things stayed the same or changed (for good or bad) since it happened?
So I send you a wrestling hug, some encouragement that this time too will pass and a reminder to up your basic self care if you think you are lingering on the edge of depression and find this time of year hard. :)....mostly I just send you a hug x
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Anon there isn’t anything useful to add tonTreasur’s post but I was talking about this aspect to my Therapist. I said I had started to re write our history negatively. Realistically, since I was incredibly happy for much of it and satisfied for most, it surely couldn’t have been that awful, even if my perspective was awry. I said I didn’t want to ‘split’ in this way and I was hoping I’d come to a halt at some time with a stable and coherent narrative that was accepting of good and bad.
i think a precis of what I came away with is that my thinking is destructive. Destruction of the marriage is what seems to my mind to enable me to move along. I pretty much know intellectually that this won’t continue long term. My feelings won’t remain the same because our feelings are fluid and so are our relationships, even when over in a practical sense. Our relationship to our marital history will continue to be fluid and change. It will never remain static unless we become rigid and unchanging. She said that our relationship continues to change even after one of us dies.
I am pretty sure that you will eventually know inside that there has been plenty to celebrate in your marriage. The question of whether we’d do it again is simply unanswerable.
So I agree with Treasur that this will pass as we continue to find our way. Perhaps it’s related to the sadness and retreat you are experiencing. I read recently a definition of a healthy mind. It said that differing states are completely normal - even drifting into states like personality disorders/disturbances. What defines us as healthy is that we are fluid and move out of these states again. It is when we become rigid and stuck in one of these states and are unable to leave it that we are not in a normal state. I found that comforting.
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Difficult for me as I do have children, but let's assume for a moment, that I could have the exact same children with someone else if I so chose. That will make this whole exercise a little easier.
I think I fell so in love with Beast because we were so similar and connected, but also there was a huge chunk of escaping my life in the USA, and also a duty to try and help him. Fantasies about a new life, building a whole family, being myself, and ''if someone just gives him a chance, he will love me forever''. I assumed he would match my level of loyalty. It was a powerful concoction that all got jumbled up and felt like the strongest love I had ever known. I suppose it was for a time, but arguable how much was real feelings of love, and how much was other things mixed in.
At any rate after the initial honey moon high wore off there were obvious things that were wrong. His inability to be emotionally supportive, high levels of anxiety, insecurity...no long lasting relationships around him..depressive episodes and emotional coldness. But of course I glossed it all over. Excuse and excuse. I just needed to love him enough. He was just tired. Whatever. ::)
While that feeling we had was amazing...a deep level of connection. Being on the same page. Virtually reading each others minds and living in a little bubble just us... That is what I loved. That feeling of knowing, connection, and safety. That feeling of being at peace in each others presence.
But I think...if I could go back in time...and still have my kids and all the rest... I would have taken my time to pick a better person to invest in. Someone who was much closer in line with my character and values. Someone reliable and trustworthy..driven...and with a loyalty that matched my own.
Because there were red flags, and I did see them, I just excused them for love. We all do that to some degree. But I was extra young, and naive, and he was so much better than where I was from.
So I do not regret my decision at the time, because it was the only one I had, and lead to 14 mostly good years and 3 amazing kids...
But if I could have 14 good years and these 3 amazing kids if I had picked someone else? I probably would have.
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I was going to post But Mortesbride put it very eloquently.
I would have paid closer attention to actual character (and not potential) in my choice for some one to have kids with. I thought it was just a matter of him maturing. Nope this is how and who he is.
Can't say all the years were amazing. A ton of red flags..due to my own issues I just dealt with them, ignored them, made excuses for them. Made the best of it.
But if I had a chance do it all over again, I most certainly would have chosen someone different to have kids with. I agree Mortes I would have liked to have taken the time to pick a better person to invest in.
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I can honestly say I never regretted all the years I spent with my H, I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat, but I would never have married him. (2nd marriage)
I was perfectly happy not remarrying.
Main reason for me is financially I would be better off today. I would never have retired early (his idea) if I had stayed single, so I would still have been working when BD happened. I had a good income coming in. Plus all the money the divorced cost I ended up owing my family a lot of money for helping me.
So yes HE was worth it, but not what it costs me in the end, money-wise.
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What’s the phrase? It’s better to have loved and lost, then never to have loved at all?
Hm. I think I’d need to know if the alternative would be having been alone for 17 years, and I’d say no. If I would have met someone else, I’d say yes.
Of course this would be assuming I’d never had my son.
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We can't change the past so what is the benefit of asking such a question? It just brings about regret for many. It's like flogging oneself with a chain.
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This is a great question and one that I have asked myself and even explored in therapy at various points. There is obviously no single answer depending on circumstances and the nature of the relationship before MLC but for me the answer has always been the same: absolutely. Knowing how it would play out I would have still done it all again. And we have no kids.
For me it’s because we were such a great match in so many ways, not the same, but complementary. And to me my wife WAS a very unique person (she is not the person now that is why the past tense) and it is not likely I will meet someone like her again. So all the years of us together far outweighs the pain and damage of the last three years.
But again my experience has not been nearly as bad as others here, so that is a big part of it. I have no idea what my answer would be if I had experience even 1/10 of what others have endured.
And I believe we should always examine our past to learn from, not to dwell, but to understand and grow. Ignoring the past can be fatal.
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Was it worth it?
Yes. I thank God for letting me know what it's like to love someone with all your heart. That is something many will never know.
I thank God for letting me go thru LBS, because now I know the hurt others have gone thru/are going thru and can understand and empathize with them whereas before I'd have had no clue or frame of reference.
I thank God for the growth I'm going thru as I am and will be a much better person than I was before: I will be much more usable by him going forward.
I'm also thankful for now being able to understand what a healthy relationship looks like and that I don't have to live, love and put up with emotional abuse (something I've only ever known). Now I can identify it for what it is. Before I'd have just thought it was my cross to bear and not understand WHY i felt as I did.
Finally I'm thankful for being taught patience (which is still being taught to me), what TRUE unconditional love is, better understanding how we are loved thru our problems and childlike behaviors, the beginnings of real forgiveness, learning to live my life, becoming emotionally independent, getting mature and strong, learning to treasure what is truly important and prioritizing the important aspects in life.
So many lessons and so many more to learn. It's hard, it's painful, it's testing..... but the end result is someone refined and a glittering jewel of a person. What a deal for the LBS. We don't have to sacrifice our ideals, morality, or self to learn all these things if we allow ourselves to learn..... whereas our MLC'er is destroyed in order to learn. I'm so thankful (everyday) I wasn't on the other end of the stick. How do you even come back from that? I honestly don't know if I'd be strong enough to.
-SS
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And coming to the conclusion you wasted half your life can be fatal too. So better to just not go there. better to look forward and see how you can make the best of what is to come. And how do you know what you would have done differently if you hadn't married this person? You could have chosen someone worse. It is all just self inflicting misery and regret on yourself. It is what it is. That's enough to know
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Anon, I think this is a question we all face at some point after experiencing the brutality of MLC - we have kids so I am one who would do it over and over again.
I have heard it said, focus on the lesson, not on the loss. I hope at some point you can look back at your marriage, find the sweet memories and release the rest. Your life is not and was not a waste.
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There is more than one question here. "Was it worth it" , to me, means was the time you had together worth the pain at the end? It is, of course totally subjective. You don't even have to rewrite how your marriage was to answer.
The second question is "Would you do it again"? The questions are different. A person could think it wasn't worth it, yet still choose to do it again for various reasons. Same vice versa.
For me, was it worth it? I'm not sure. Emotionally, no. I'm not one of those "better to have loved and lost" kind of people. Sad for me, I suppose, that I have never loved anyone so "completely" that having had them in my life was better than their loss was worse to me. I acknowledge my perspective is likely not very common. Logically, yes it was worth it. Everything that happened led me to where I am now, and I'm quite content as I am.
Would I do it again? Maybe. If I had the knowledge I have now, probably not. I do have kids, and I love them beyond measure, but they have now been set up for their own MLC when they get older. They have been convinced "this was normal", blindly still "love" a person who Would be cruel to another human being because he happens to be their father, all while either not caring how he ignored them for a time, refused to help support them or considering how their mother was hurt, or being conflicted about it and will pass that onto their own kids, should they even have them. Had I known I was setting my children up for all they have experienced and what is to come, I would definitely have thought it over considerably more.
But in the end, the question is really: What would you do differently if you knew then what you know now?
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For me it wasn't worth it, and I have kids. I believe I would have had the same kids with someone else, they just would have looked different. And they could have had a family to celebrate Christmas with, parents to witness their graduations, a father to lean on, family meals, not have had to witness their mother's gut wrenching pain, their dad disappearing on them and not supporting them financially, and choosing OW over them. I wouldn't need to work like a dog still at my age, would have had money to fly to see my daughters, to look after my S.
If I had known, I would definitely not have married my H. To me the emotional and financial cost of BD can never be repaired. I am not able to think about any part of my marriage and believe that my H was really happy with me. I feel like I was a plan B for him until plan A crossed his path. Maybe I am not yet healed enough, but I fear that I will never reach a place where I will be able to look back at my marriage with any kind of joy. So I don't. I don't look at photos, don't want to have any memories of our life together. It all feels like one big scam. And even if there were genuine happy moments during our marriage, it doesn't make it worth what's happened to me and the kids since.
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Thank you Treasur, Nerissa, Morte, NYM, Mego, Thunder, 3 Boys, SS, Marvin, InIt, OffRoad, Milly. Oh my,, there is so much I can take from your comments. You have ALL given me food for thought and made me feel better at the same time. I'm happy to hear that a lot of you believe this is normal grief processing and that one day I may be able to set it aside and no longer dwell on it. I don't want to get stuck on this but it does feel like something I must contemplate further and get to some peaceful place with it. Right now, I'm not there,,, to say I would do it all over again. I may never be there either and that's okay as long as I can lay the issue to rest and move on.
I can't go back and choose differently. I get that, I really do,,, but IF I could, right now I wouldn't choose my h. I look back on our life together and there were red flags along the way. Flags that were there way before MLC that should have given me pause. Like the addiction to pot. It upset me when I first found out but somehow I was able to look past it and pay it no attention. Or like the relationship he had with a woman when we were just friends. It was a 'friends with benefits' type relationship but she was married to a guy who was a 'dud' so they thought it was okay. So way back before I married, my h was the OM and God only knows what grief he inflicted on her LBS. I'm especially ashamed of that one and I had forgotten about it completely until I started to consider this 'would I do it again' question. I could go on, but suffice to say my h has always lacked moral character and has always shown that when it came right down to it,,, he is and always has been selfish. I never saw that as clearly as I do now. So,,, I still say right now,,, no.. I wouldn't choose him again. No way, Jose. All along, I was in love with the person I thought he was,, not who he really is. Now that I see him clearly, I see someone that I wouldn't have given a second thought to back then if I had my eyes wide open.
I'm still left with a lot of pain for someone I believe now is not and never was worthy of my love. Is it love that I feel or is it attachment? Or what? I don't really know but it's something. And that something keeps me hurting about the betrayal, rejection, and abandonment. If he's such an @$$hole, then why do I feel anything at all?
Treasur, you have given me a months worth of homework questions. I will go through it all and see what answers it brings me. Thanks for putting it all together for me to focus on.
Thanks again everyone for your replies - have a great day!
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And those kind of reflections (which some of us need to do and some don't as NYM says) will hopefully edge you towards a bit of peace with whatever your conclusion is. Don't worry if it is a bit 'ish' and imperfect though bc this stuff is messy. When we change out the old glasses for the new, most of us have a time when we rewrite history in a negative way before we swing back to something that instinctively feels close to the truth imho. But maybe all part of the process of acceptance and forgiving yourself if not yet him.
Mostly I feel a bit like Thunder. Loving and being loved by my h was worth it. It was a good experience in my life. But being married gave him the power unbeknownst to me to destroy me financially and practically if he chose to, so being married was not worth it. My regret and learning is about self protection and what material wellbeing does and doesn't give me, bc I could have organised things differently and trusted him less wholeheartedly. And marriage meant something more to me than i realised actually when I said yes. I had no reason to doubt the safety of the man I married but I did not build in contingencies that I could have done bc probably I was a little too complacent about my own strength and abilities.....my life had been very sunny up until then lol.
I cycle occasionally but most of the time I don't regret those years with my h even if I regret what happened to end them. And still find it a bit shocking even now bc some of it was very extreme and crazy and my h became unrecognisable to everyone who knew him then. None of us saw it coming. But it wasn't my crazy. I didn't have a life filled with regret before this, so for me the gift of looking hard and honestly at the question was part of making peace with myself about my own life so far. And peace is not chump change!
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I do have kids and love them endlessly . However, that aside, I never would have married him . Ever. My marriage was extrodinarily happy for good stretches of time and at times we struggled. I never saw any red flags and trust me I was watching in the beginning. I had already been married and I was less than trusting for awhile. I believed he was the most honest, committed , family focused man I ever met and I was very lucky indeed. It was a very long "2nd" marriage, it was like we beat the statistics as we were married 30 years at BD. Thirty years of reliable, trustworthy and committed behaviour creates incredible safety, trust and security...until it utterly blows up with staggering consequences for so many people.
One of the worst things about this kind of intimate betrayal that totally blindsides you is that you no longer know who you are.It guts your identity in ways few others can even begin to comprehend. You are no longer certain of who you are and where you fit in the world. To add to the misery, you have no idea where you are going, but the worst examination we internally do is that we no longer know where we have been. To look "backwards" is very normal and it is our souls or hearts trying to calm and make sense of this staggering trauma . Where did we fail to protect ourselves and our children? What did we not see?. I believe it is a stage we must go thru to make all the pieces fit into a whole new picture and I spent much time analyzing so many past things. My husband has travelled for work all of our marriage. It has been an incredible sacrifice on my part to allow him to do what he loves to do. I was a single mother of 5 girls , worked professionally fulltime etc etc. To no longer "KNOW" him opened all kinds of speculation and anxiety . Maybe he has been having affairs for decades and I finally caught him? Maybe this lifestyle is how he lives a single lifestyle. Maybe I am an idiot married to a stranger and on and on and on...I have never in my life experiences such sheer bloodied hatred as this loss of my entire belief system, indentity and feminine self ...I could not get back on my feet. My husband is back in this marriage . Had he clearly understood the deep trauma he inflicted on 6 women that depended on him, loved him and thought he was the guard at the gate of our lives, he NEVER would have came back or done it again either. He blindly and naively had no idea the true damage that was done by his actions during his " loss of self. " For many women ( myself included" we want our husbands to return, we want our lives back, we want our marriages etc etc. We want it so desperately , we will do anything . I prayed to god outloud , I promised to be a far better wife ( because it must have been MY fault) . We want our spouse so desperately, we have no idea how excruciating it is to come back from this tragedy of 2 utterly broken people. I am not even certain if I would attempt to reconcile again.
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I agree with Milly. I still would have had the same children with someone else and they would have just looked slightly different.
My IC told me that I really needed to look at her parents before I married her. That was the indicator of life ahead for the both of us.
Yes I knew her parents were gamblers and always behind on their bills. What did that have to do with their daughter ? BIL escaped and as far as I know he is not a gambler.
I can't rewrite all of our history as there was a combo of good and difficult. I would say no I wouldn't have married her knowing what I know now.
I do see where I was difficult myself at times however now I wonder if I was just in survival mode throughout our marriage. I always referred to MIL as the boys father. This behavior I see from W now also shown itself at times throughout our marriage. She needed control. She had bouts of jealousy and paranoia.
She started gambling in 2009 from what I know now. Basically we survived on my salary. She met financial obligations however they slowly began to erode away.
If we wanted to go on vacation then I had to fund it. Birthdays, and holidays were also funded by me. Meanwhile she complained that we didn't have such and such or didn't go places like everyone else she knew.
Well I wasn't the one always gambling or getting countless tickets. Yes the woman always had a knack for getting summonses.
Was it worth standing ? For me yes but for the overall big picture absolutely not. I was used and abused and drained financially.
I have to divorce in order to sell the house in order to rid myself of the parasites. The parasites only know the term eviction and so I have to evict them from my life.
Meanwhile they have damaged 2 boys in the process with their need for isolation and control. My W chose the parasitic life. That was her choice.
At this moment in time, no it was not worth it and that's all that really matters. That life has already been lived. Now I have to move forward.
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I would do it all over again. Not a bit of hesitation now. I have run this question through my head so Many times.
My answer a year ago??? It would have been no!!!
My M was good. Almost fairytale good. I have picked through every little thing in my marriage over the last 3 years. All I have found is it was good. $h!t happens I guess.
I don't think we could answer this question honestly until we are healed emotionally. Atleast some anyway. I'm still trying to get there. But now I look back daily on the good memories we had instead of the bad since BD. I used to think about the bad daily and QUESTION all the good ones.
So now , yes I would do it over. In a heartbeat .
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I would say it was worth it. We had a lot of good times and adventures together and generally enjoyed many of the same things. He had his problems though and I guess this was a long time coming. I don't know if I would have picked someone better or worse but I know now I'll never pick someone who has issues with his parents.
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I hope that lots of readers, not just Anon, can see that there is no right answer to the question just the one that feels right for you. I suspect we may each need to have reached a certain point before we can do that though....maybe detached enough from the chapter but close enough to remember how the story was? Idk.
Barbie, one of the things I love most about you is your searing honesty. It may be an uncomfortable gift to live with, but I see it as a rare and beautiful one. And one that helps others a lot. Your description of how this experience culls so much of ones own foundation was how it was for me certainly. Nothing made sense to me including myself. And that is very frightening as a place to be. We make choices in that vacuum the best we can don't we? In your case eventually to allow your h back, in mine to stay as far away from him as I could. I am often grateful that God didn't answer my early prayers bc if he had I think it would have killed me or I'd have lost my mind. He knew more than I did lol...I did not have in me whatever was needed to stay connected to my h as he was then. I have always assumed that they, even post crisis, have no real grasp on our experience as indeed probably we can't grasp theirs entirely either. But life is different once those paths diverge whether we like it or not and we figure it out as separate people I think. Those two separate people may be able to reintroduce themselves to each other and even reconcile, but there was a time of two paths. I have often wondered whether part of your experience is that in reality you had less of a reconciling h for a few years and more a livein MLCer - with the timescale of that - who ran home as quickly as he ran away from home.
I have often wondered off and on if there is a peculiar symmetry in the stages of an MLC and in an LBS crisis. Is our obsession with MLC a kind of LBS Eascape & Avoid? Can GAL become our version of Replay? Both seem to take a remarkably long time lol. If the psychological goal of both, in an ideal world, is some kind of Integration of who we were and are and want to be, perhaps these kinds of questions are part of that process for some of us.
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I have often wondered off and on if there is a peculiar symmetry in the stages of an MLC and in an LBS crisis. Is our obsession with MLC a kind of LBS Eascape & Avoid? Can GAL become our version of Replay? Both seem to take a remarkably long time lol. If the psychological goal of both, in an ideal world, is some kind of Integration of who we were and are and want to be, perhaps these kinds of questions are part of that process for some of us.
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There is profound truth in these words...I believe it is indeed what I have and continue to experience.
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For me, I would say it was worth it. And not just b/c of my S. I did have a good marriage. We had some good times--many in fact. Until he lost his sh!te anyway. LOL. But I was a different person then. I can see it now. It took this crisis for me to wake up. Has it been excruciating? Ummmmm, yes. Extremely. But would I have learned the lessons I needed to learn if it hadn't happened? Maybe not. Maybe I would have proceeded forward in my life, doing everything for the "family", always being the one to make all sacrifices and letting life unfold without my wants/needs taken into consideration. I don't think H necessarily drove me to this. It's just that he has always been on the self-centered side, and I am a fixer/planner/doer. I tried to make everything perfect. And in the process nearly killed myself. Cancer and a MLC jettisoned me onto a different path. I am more patient, humble and kind than I was before. I appreciate every moment with my S. But I also do things for me now. B/c I know that I need to put the oxygen on myself first before I can help anyone else.
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Was it worth it? No. Not today anyway. If not for my son, I might say it was not worth it at all. In a funny way, h’s MLC might have been the making of my son – taking him from a charmed life and teaching him about love and commitment and responsibility.
I have read all of your answers and I see myself in your words. Like NYM said though, it might not be healthy to ask this question now (like flogging ourselves with a chain), yet this is the spot my IC brought me to, in her quest to get me to accept the death of my M.
If you asked me at BD, or the day after, or the month after, or six months after, I would have said, yes, definitely. A month before he left, I remember thinking that we found “happily ever after.” Our marriage was not perfect, but it was good and it had many seasons. But 2 years in, I am now thinking of all the sacrifices I made, personally, professionally in my career, and financially. I lost myself in this marriage. I might have been the only one of us trying to hold everything together. I saw some cracks before we married, but I believed that love would triumph. And maybe there were many many good times over the 30 years, but my IC has brought me to a low place where I, too, have re-written our history negatively. And, in turn, I regret the paths not taken, and I am sad and often feel worthless. And, now I am left to rebuild, without all the tools and all the pieces.
I am taking to heart Nerissa’s comment that maybe like a motion picture, there is fluidity in this answer. But not today, today I am angry and regretful.
Until my story is finally over, I will never know if was truly worth it. So every day, I will have a different answer to this question. My little auntie who is well over 100, says that life is like a long walk and we see and do many things along the way…..
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I have continued to ponder if it was worth it since I posted this yesterday. The comments all give me another perspective to consider and Malificient,,, it was interesting to read that your IC intentionally brought you to this point so you could accept and mourn the death of your M. I never thought of it from that angle but I think this could be exactly why this question just recently popped into my consciousness. It's my mind perhaps finally willing to pull whatever life support is left on my M and just let it die.
It's been a awhile now since I could visualize a reconciliation. My h has shown me over and over again in various ways that he is not someone that deserves to be in my life. But then,,, I am still so damaged, and the pain continues. Why still so much pain? Especially if I see him as someone I no longer want in my life, not that he's asking right now but I believe he will one day. I definitely don't like him, and probably don't love him either. I see him as the scumbag he has likely been his whole adult life.
The only answer I can come up with is the on-going pain has nothing to do with him being gone from my life, but all the other things I lost when he blew up my world. Tangible and intangible things. The damage is extensive. I will recover but I'll never be the same. He's gone but many of the wounds he inflicted are still open, raw and bleeding. I'm not even sure how to heal those wounds. All I know is the wounds were caused by him but it has nothing to do with the fact that he is gone and I don't miss him or want him back. I think it has a lot to do with being collateral damage for someone so selfish that what it did to me simply didn't matter to him and wasn't even considered. It was a completely inhumane act against me that I never in my wildest imagination could ever happen. Sure, it's always possible a marriage will end but I never in a million years thought it would be this way and I surely didn't appreciate the horrible wounds that are inflicted when it does end this way. The inhumanity of it,,, whether it comes from someone you love or someone you have never known who treats you inhumanly,,, is an incredibly deep wound that may bleed for a long time. The realization that MLC or not, my h had it in him to do such a horrible thing to another person is horrifying to me. Even more horrifying is he did it to me,,, after giving him 21 years of my life when he was my world and I treated him as such. How on earth could I ever go back and say anything other than,,, I would not do it again,,, not in a million years. Whatever other choice I could make would unlikely lead me to anything as dehumanizing and painful as this choice was. I keep coming back to the same answer. I would not do it again. This has to be one of the worst outcomes ever and I wish I had a crystal ball back then, because I wonder if I will ever get past the pain of being dehumanized and tossed aside. I will get past it but it will take a long time, and a lot of patience from anyone who is interested in me enough to try to gain my trust. I'm old enough that what's happened to me could be a life sentence. I hope not, but I know I still have a long way to go to get over the pain I'm feeling right now.
And,,, ugh,,, I know this is wrong and I have to work on this,,, but I hope he and she rot in hell for all they knowingly did to me for their own shallow pleasures. I need to forgive them both but in reality,,, I actually hate them both with such intensity because I was simply collateral damage and it almost destroyed me.
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Anon
I posted the perfect meme today for our situation(s)...it read:
"Forgiving you means I no longer dwell on what an @$$hole you are.
It doesn't mean you're no longer an @$$hole."
Yassssss ;)
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Oh Anon, how true your words are. I am 5.5 years post BD. I was married for 23 years at the time of BD. Like you, I am past the point of wanting reconciliation. I don’t miss him or want him in my life anymore. But I still feel this deep pain every day. What they did to us is soul destroying. For me it is still the picking up the pieces of what was once a comfortable life. The finances are still recovering and a big worry to me. Both my kids are in university and have loans. I am helping them as much as I can. The house I am trying to keep which has had to have many repairs done all of which I have been responsible for. The way they leave without a care in the world still is inconceivable to me. The complete lack of responsibility for their former life. For a long time post BD, years, I saw the depression and thought he would eventually come out of it. I have seen glimpses over the years. But now I believe he is this person. I have finally accepted this is who he is and like it or not I have to GAL and move on.
But back to your question. Would I do it again if I knew? Absolutely not. Never.
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Anon
I used to scream out I HATE YOU!! As loud as I could. It may have been at my mirror or just driving down the road. Is it right or wrong?? Who cares. We are not perfect.
At the time I really though I hated her and OMa$$ and trust me I wished things on them like burning in hell and alot more. I think it's part of moving on. I had to get to that stage to heal myself. So don't worry about being wrong(ever) just keep moving forward.