[Helpnewc]

Dear Colleagues,

Thanks for your kind messages in my last thread.

I am glad I tried hard. I will never understand what happened but our Australian Prime Minister’s comments about the end of his marriage continue to help me. He said I will never understand it but I have to accept it.

I will never understand where my beautiful, kind, empathetic wife disappeared to. For so long, I thought she was still in there but she is gone. I will never understand it but I accept it.

But I don’t accept her taking my kids. And although it is hard, I will have to trust the process. Because if I consented to the present arrangement I could not live with it. If some federal magistrate sticks it to me, well I will accept that but I won’t have consented to it.

But how I miss her and my old life. But I will forge a new one. I will also continue to be the better person I now am.

And how I wish I did not love her. But I do. And that’s ok.

[Baxter1]

Help-
How can you not still love her? Sounds like you have a good attitude of acceptance. There is something to be said about how this changes you. You become stronger and more in touch with yourself, and that’s not a bad thing.

[MadLuv]

I think that is the number one acceptance is to understand that they are no longer the same person and you also will never be the same. It is the heartbreaking realization to acceptance, yet the one thing when understood makes acceptance a little bit easier.

[mama4]

Your insights are assisting me in framing the love I had for MLC and what that love feels like now.
You love her still because your love was what it is meant to be, unconditional. Not everyone has that capacity for love.
My love will always be my love but I have arrived at a healthy space of detachment so that I can be protected and have a firm boundary. Understanding the love for myself was a most important part of this journey.

[Helpnewc]

Hi, it’s been a while.

It has all been pretty hard. The property settlement has been filed and in about a month I will refinance the house. It is pretty financially devastating but my earning capacity is significantly greater so it was always going to hurt. Rich person problem.

I am glad I chose to be sensible about the cash so I can have the strength for the fight about the girls. I filed the application about a month ago and waiting on the response which will say I am the devil incarnate. I think I won’t read the Affidavit.


My children are going very well. We are very close and I have just had them for two weeks. It makes the irrationality of fighting about the 50/50 custody more profound.


But there is nothing rational going on. She has indicated she will tell the girls about her knew man next week. It is funny how hope is so resilient. But I am managing my thoughts and understanding it is her decision.

But I always wonder where she went. She told me when she decided to leave and it was 3 years before bomb drop and over something tiny when I corrected a word when my daughter was learning to read apparently. Rather than talk about it she festered on it for 3 years.


But there is little truth or reality. My continued focus is simply obtaining access to my daughters.

I have met someone I like at work but she is in the process of
Leaving her husband. I cannot be that man and I am keeping my distance and asking her to work on her marriage. Her husband is ignoring chances I would have begged for.

But I will continue to survive and try to be a good man. It is all I can do.

[UrsaMajor]

But I always wonder where she went. She told me when she decided to leave and it was 3 years before bomb drop and over something tiny when I corrected a word when my daughter was learning to read apparently. Rather than talk about it she festered on it for 3 years.

This is simply an excuse. If it wouldn't have been that, it would have been something like you didn't vacuum the car correctly or you let the dog get fat or you didn't cook dinner one night  when it was raining and there was a full moon or something else just as non-sensical. Anything they can grasp on to in order to avoid responsibility/accountability for their own actions.....

[Helpnewc]

Thanks Ursa,

I agree it is all a backward looking fairytale to justify behaviour.

[Treasur]

Please don’t, even for a moment, let yourself believe this kind of BS.
No sane adult ends a marriage and upends a family over such small unimportant things.

No LBS here is a perfect human, spouse or parent bc that’s normal, isn’t it? But none of us vowed to be perfect when we got married either. And the false equivalence of these kinds of ‘reasons’ (I call them bagged salad justifications after a story I read when this was the reason given to an LBS, their egregious purchasing of bagged salad obviously warranted an affair, lies, the distress of their kids and financial abuse, right?… ..) compared to the actions our spouses took to destroy their marriage, usually beyond repair…..

I could give you even now a pretty long list of my xh’s flaws as a far from perfect human or spouse lol. Yet strangely, I never considered ending my marriage over them or having sex with someone else as a way to address them. I’m obviously a bit weird….i tended to choose conversation or a bit of tolerance for difference first. 

It just isn’t about you. It is her choice, made for her own reasons whatever they are.

You did not cause it, you would not have chosen it and you probably could not have stopped it happening. In a normal marriage, or even a long term friendship, we accept that none of us are perfect and that people may do things that annoy or disappoint us, that there are fun times and not so fun times, but we choose to see the good way more often. That’s a choice too, isn’t it? At some point, our spouses chose to start doing the opposite and that’s on them. And often - although it would have been possible even if you wanted to end a marriage to behave with kindness, grace and decency - that’s not what MLC types do. They burn down the house and then keep setting fire to anything left in the rubble. Often while acting as if you set the fire lol. It’s a strange thing to witness and exhaustingly painful to be running around the rubble trying to put all the fires out, isn’t it?

I susoect that’s why, for many of us, although we never imagined we would choose it, there can be a sense of relief when they leave, when we only need to have very limited contact or exposure to them, and even when the legal messes are finally resolved.

This was never your choice (or mine), but we have to live through the consequences of someone else’s choice anyway….but we don’t have to listen to any BS and we don’t have to deal with it in the way that suits them best. Bc choices naturally come with consequences for departing MLC spouses too…they just work hard to avoid that reality or paper over it for a while…but the normal cause and effect of life shows up for all of us eventually, doesn’t it? So both parents end up having to lose some time with their kids, or having less money, or living differently than they used to despite what MLC folks like to think lol. Ending anything big may bring you new things you value, but it also inherently involves some level of loss. For a while, we LBS probably just see the loss not the good things that come further down the line, whereas the MLCer is probably the opposite.

The MLCer often looks like the Hare, and the LBS the Tortoise….but often the good LBS seeds you sow now, as you reshape your life, flower into something lovely given a little time. And strangely quite often in stories here that is just about the point when the MLCers reality starts to bite and look a bit less shiny even to them, let alone to us.

Keep going. There is an other side to this….it just takes a while to get there.

[Helpnewc]

Thank you both.

You are right. I find the avoidance of consequences hard but time will do its work.

[Helpnewc]

I continue to recover from my heart failure. It is odd to go from being healthy to having a chronic health condition. But the tablets are working.

I find it hard not hearing from my children. I struggle with why my former wife won’t just agree to equal custody and we can start our new life. I suspect it is because if I had equal time that does not agree with her narrative that I am the devil.

But slowly we are getting there. I told my daughters that I had asked for equal time and there will be a process. They just said but dad why won’t mum just give you the two days. I just said I don’t know.

She has still not told them about the boyfriend. I suspect that is because she things it may adversely impact on the court case.

I find it hardest that she gets in the way of my girls calling me. It is clear they are afraid too. But they are little girls under pressure and they don’t need pressure from me.


I know I will have to wait 12 months for a hearing. I know she is just buying time. It is just hard.