[Not Applicable]

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

[3Boys4Me]

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.

[OffRoad]

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?

[Milly]

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.

[Anon]

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!

[Treasur]

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!

[barbiedoll]

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.

[Watcher]

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.

[Helpingme!]

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 .

[Penelope2018]

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.