Ziggee,
Your "inner-arguer" serves you well so don't worry about it! LOL!
We all do that. I still bristle at the thought of having to work on myself. I don't at all mean to be arrogant...I have at least one million faults...but again, I maintain that I was a good wife and we had a good marriage...not perfect...but pretty good. The fact that my H flipped out over turning 45 and whatever else was/is bothering him had nothing to do with me and in fact, he will be the first to tell you that as he has told me many times. I'm sure alot of people here would say the same thing about their own relationships too.
I will tell you this too: Whatever work I did on myself was out of necessity to survive this thing myself and try to keep my marriage together...it was never out of some inner deepness that I had and again, some of the changes to me may be good in the long run, like, taking off the rose colored glasses about my husband, but with that said, I think if my husband realizes how I've changed now, or when he does, he will regret those changes much more than I ever will.
Before, were he dangling from a cliff, if it meant losing my own life I would save him, no question I would have. Now, not so sure about that. Time will tell I guess. And that's too bad because I think he had a really good thing with me being 100% devoted and pretty selfless when it came to him. I guess he still has that since I've "stood" but not in the same way...not with the 100% it was before.
At any rate, I think it's good to question what you've questioned. Part of saying to yourself that no, you did not need to change is just as productive for yourself as some of those changes that ARE made...that sounds convoluted but what I mean is that in this nightmare, there is a part of one's self that should be held on to....I call that standards, self respect and so on. In the beginning of this madness, I told myself and told my husband I would do anything, anything at all to make him feel the way about me he had prior to all this. About a year after that, I turned that all around and that is when I told him if there were issues in our marriage he wanted to work on together, great, let's get on with it. But that if he wanted me to change simply because he thought I should be more this or less that, then go to hell...NOT going to happen. I like myself, warts and all.
So that's why I think it's good that you question why any of us should have to change...
You feel that you have changed because you hadn't envisioned yourself standing...that may change too and you say, no, I will stand for this but I won't stand for that...its all a process.
I'm delighted you are closer to your kids. Excellent. My faith has deepened immeasurably and I'm positive about that change in myself for sure.
Hope I've made sense. Whew...didn't realize I was going to write so much!
"I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me."
Mark Twain