Is it humanly possible to drop the rope?

[job]

Antonia,
You've grown by leaps and bounds and continue to share w/the forum...this is what it is all about...learning about yourself and sharing w/the world. You have a lot to be proud of. Please don't ever sell yourself short...you are one classy lady!

[AJM]

There are times I'm angry that I wasted so much energy on trying to stand by him, trying to get him to see that our marriage could work, that I was willing to forgive him. I'm glad that he didn't give in.

Antonia, I think the next time you think about getting angry about his choices, it would be a good time to change that to a hearty "Thanks!" You didn't waste time doing that. Neither did I and I did the same. What I see instead is that I was given the gift of goodbye by somebody who needed something else. Somebody who saved me from continuing that path. From somebody who gave me a gift I can never say thanks for enough. We got a chance to get our life back without that negative person. That fallible human being.

Life is good and gets better every day. Especially when you stop wasting the time thinking about saving them, right?

You are truly a gift and it's always a pleasure to read your writing. Thanks for being you and thanks to your ex for setting for you free. I for one and am truly grateful, even if there was some unpleasantness you had to go through to get here.

Peace,
AJ

[AntoniaB]

Thanks for the responses, everyone :-) I am in a really good place, I have to say. I'm just finding lots to write about and lots of opportunities and feel really open to new things in my life. I'm feeling I'm finally in the "right place" for me.

Anyway I saw something over on Tad's thread from Delboy that I thought was interesting--he asked Tad if Tad could be in a good rel. with his XW since she went into crisis mode. That got me thinking about the fact that I know I certainly could not. (I also think with the many changes to me and my life I couldn't be in a good rel. with my XH even if he went back to "pre-crisis" mode).

So anyway, if that is the case for a lot of us, that if we took our egos and emotions out of the equation and just asked ourselves that question, "Is this person soomeone you could be in a decent relationship with right now", most of us would say "absolutely not." So that leads me to say that for me at least, I think I hung on to XH despite knowing that a rel. with him would be truly bad because of my ego, because of my need and desire to be "right". I have wanted to be "right" for a very long time. To be able to say look, dude, you had a great life with me and you effed up big time. You made a colossal mistake in choosing the type of woman who would see a married man and go after him as opposed to the moral wife who would even forgive what you did to her and take you back when you left her the first time.

There is still a part of me that wants to be proven "right". What's weird is that IF he came back some day and said, "You were right, I messed up really badly", I'd still know that he's not the right person for me anymore, because of what AJM said--his actions set me free.

I actually have a hard time giving XH credit for setting me free. This is where I almost feel like there is evidence for some higher power in the world, whether you want to call it God or karma or just the universe's way of creating balance. I'm Buddhist-leaning more than anything else, and I think of myself as a spiritual person now with some rituals in me still from being raised Catholic, but I'm not Catholic. Anyway AJ is right, the anger at some point has to be converted to thankfulness. And I guess the easiest way for me to visualize things is to believe that some force in the universe saw a terrible imbalance in my world where I was not able to be myself, and I was sinking fast and didn't even know it. Enter OW and XH in the MLC, which created the situation that removed him entirely from my life and forced change that put me in the place where I have balance again.

So to this day, the idea of wanting to be "right" still gets me from time to time. But I think I'm going to try to keep focusing on how I may have lost that battle to be "right" but won the war? Not that it's about winning over him, but about winning for myself, if you catch my drift.

The challenge for me now honestly is going to be in trying to write about the past. The novel I'm writing is of course based on my experience, and my character is going to lose her mate. I have really shut off that part of my life where I was in that nervous breakdown to the point where I almost can't remember it. But to write authentically I need to confront it (I have diaries where it's all laid bare). I was reading this book Wave last night--about a woman who lost her entire family in the tsunami, and just reading the way she was so suicidal really made my skin crawl, because I started to remember what that was like. When AJ refers to the time we were in the worst as "unpleasantness" I find that interesting because I think the human brain can be so resilient that it does learn to forget the worst of things we've been through. And I know in reading this woman's work in Wave, it's more than just unpleasantness. It was unrelenting horror for all of us to undergo what we did.

So the challenge to me now is to find a way to visit that place long enough to write about it authentically but to leave it there, in the past.

Thanks for reading my musings. Now that I'm off for summer I guess I'm all introspective :-)

[AJM]

"I'm all introspective" LOL. You always have been. You just have the time to explore it more now.

I will look forward to reading the book.

For what it's worth, I agree that at the time it was horror and fear. It's just that looking back, I realize that because I can look back, it was an unpleasant time in life where I had to look at many things. Many I didn't want to look at, at the time. But I was forced to, like so many of us. And what I found is that while it was unpleasant and even "horrible" at the time, I am not sorry for that time in my life. I'm thankful for the time and the ability to learn from it. For the chance to be me without the criticisms, or the emotional drama brought about by my ex. It's not there isn't still drama from her. She still writes like it's one of her smut books from time to time. But I'm different. And yet, the same. I'm the same me that likes to laugh, enjoys some downtime from time to time, and enjoys being active and successful. I still enjoy my time with my son. I also enjoy my time with friends, which is something I had given up for a while when I was going through that time so I could focus on what was important to me.

In the end I learned that people are people and do what they do because of it. I learned that I put my trust in somebody that wasn't able to handle it. I learned how much of my ego and pride I would put down to pursue what is important to me. I learned at what cost I would pursue being me. I learned it because of the stark contrasts - the light and dark so to speak.

I learned that I was "right" to face my fears rather than walk away from them. There were times I needed to be "right", but now, I just don't. I know what happened. It happened. I know what I would do. I did it. It's over now, at least for me. There will be more of course, but it's not the big impact it had before. It's just something to deal with (hard to get her to go away; she must be at a different place in this than me.) I know I'll have some things to deal with with my kids. I hate it for them. But I thank God every day for me and my life.

I am learning more and more to forgive. Just when I think I have it, I find that I have too much emotion left. At least that's how it was. It's not easy to forgive somebody who states they don't want to be forgiven. But it is possible. It is worth it.

I learned the value of forgiveness, where before I thought I knew what it was all about. It's clear to me now. At least, it is for now right?

I believe you have come a long way Antonia. Sadly, your ex has not. You are very different now but that's because of the actions you took during a difficult time. Actions that show your character, even if you're not seeing it the same way I am. You equate it to your pride and ego. I say it's your integrity and beliefs that led you to act the way you did. I say it's because you were in to stay. I admire that. I also admire that you were able to walk away and heal yourself. To become better rather than bitter. To be able to remember and yet not feel the pain of it like you did. I don't think we can forget, nor do I think it would be a good idea to forget. I think forgiveness is the only way out for us. Both the lbs and the mlcr.

Life is great, and if I wish it didn't take so long or so much disruption to really appreciate that. But that's how it is, right? Can't really see the light if we don't have darkness as a backdrop

Looking forward to reading the book, girl!

Peace,
AJ