October 3rd last year I posted my thread about my marriage ending. It’s been a year since we decided to separate and divorce. An anniversary of sorts - it snuck up on me.
It’s odd both the things that have changed and the things that feel unchanged. Hurts and wounds I thought would be healed are still painful if I “prod” at them. Other things seem like a lifetime ago.
I came to a realization a day or two ago. It was prompted by a posting here on the SDMB in a thread about cool things your parents had done. In it, Cyn’s mother says her ex-son-in-law didn’t deserve her daughter.
Wow. That really made me think of what I deserve from a relationship
Perhaps it’s the quiet voice in the back of my brain, the one that tells me that I’m not good enough, that little self-esteem destroying monster that lives in my brain’s dirty corners, it’s that voice that lays all the doubts. All her lies, all her justifications, I kept feeling like somehow, someway, I’m at fault. It’s hard not to play the “what if” game and second guess all the events and decisions that lead to the divorce.
Cyn’s posting, though, just sort of lit-up in my brain that I didn’t deserve this. I deserved to be treated better than she treated me. I deserved fidelity in my relationships. I deserved to be respected. I deserved to be loved by my wife.
You, my lovely wife, violated the covenant. You took from me what I was due. I deserved better than that. I deserved better than you.
Why did it take a year to realize this?
I want to walk up to my ex-wife and scream…
I deserved better that what you did!
…except that would be helping nobody.
Our lives have diverged but still have to interact because of the kids. Keeping the peace is important.
She’s moving in this week with her new boyfriend. The kids are happy, they’ll have a place to ride bikes and they’ll each have their own room. Ron, the boyfriend, seems a decent man but I can’t speak to him. If he’s in the room when I drop the kids, I just ignore him.
I’m still dating my lovely lady friend. She sent me a note late last night that speaks of her love for me. I’m twitter-pated with the sentiment.
She writes, “You beg me to breathe when I am with you since I have all but held my breath when we are parted. I long to talk to you and be with you and think about you and us…”
“Love you, adore you, need you, desire you,” she says.
The poetry comes hard for me to respond much beyond, “I love you, too”. I’m limited in my expression but I’m hoping she feels it in my touch and sees it in my eyes.
We’re good together, my lady and I. We’re comfortable in each other’s arms. There’s no pretense, we’ve long ago dropped our “presentation selves” and see each other warts and all.
It’s an effort to remember that, for the kids to come first, we have to throttle our relationship to keep from leaping into emotional decisions. That part has probably been very good for us. For all the logic and reason that drives my daily life, when it comes to love, I’m quite the emotional fool.
The pain slowly fades and maybe the year’s passing will mark a change from looking back to looking forward. I’m hoping it will. Some comes from deliberate effort, some from natural changes. I’m hoping that more and more will feel more natural and less like deliberate effort.
I wonder what this posting will sound like in another year.