You responded with shock when, in an impromptu conversation that you initiated, I respond to your reference to “what I’ve done to you” with “I didn’t do anything to you”. You need to pull out of your denial like I did, 5 years ago, after making the very painful and difficult decision to stop pretending that everything was normal and healthy, something you pointed out the absence of for the preceding 10+ years. Ours was NOT a healthy marriage. We may have cared about each other based on history and shared experiences and familial connections, but we were not well suited as husband and wife, and it was not working. You know this, brought it up more than I ever did, yet have buried that knowledge since this began.What I did, choosing to broach this topic, leaving my home, initiating a divorce, was excruciatingly difficult and remains painful to this day.
I did not do anything “TO” you besides not saying something sooner, but I was not ready to say anything until that point, I was still trying to find my way and bearing. But when I did I was honest about my feelings, calling out the futility of the situation, going to counseling until it was clear it was not effecting change, and then preceding to back slowly out and to the point we are at today. I returned home at first, routinely, for well over a year, then I slowly started to reduce that presence once I got a place nearby, and I have consistently stayed actively present in the kids lives more than most any other separation situations I’ve heard of. I kept the majority of my income going directly into the family and into the home for well over 4 years, gradually reducing to where we are now, which is what I was providing before the temporary support order.
What’s been “done to you” has been your own doing.
Wayne Dyer would point out that while things that happen in our lives may be beyond our control, how we respond to them is.
You have responded by playing the victim, to our children and friends, in some very destructive ways. You chose to approach two mediation attempts in a manner that wasted a full year and 10’s of 1000’s of dollars I had to pay myself. You chose to hire a lawyer who went on the attack against me, in court and private as if I was a bad person deserving of extreme prejudice and disregard.
I did not want to stay in a marriage we were both unfulfilled in. I did want stay friends. And to this day I’ve never stopped regretting that did not happen. Have I responded well to every instance throughout this? No, there’s been times I’ve been as offended and hurt and angry as you’ve clearly been too. But my baseline efforts have continuously been the well being of the kids, the reasonable treatment of their mother and the consideration of what best serves them through this.
YOU are responsible for how you responded, how you have managed and handled things, how you have opted’d to see the glass as half-empty, and to panic, and to ignore and dismiss my significant ongoing efforts, my presence in their lives as well as the kind things and simple gestures to you, modeling thoughtfulness of their mom to them, extending offers to help out with things like the sink backups or selling the bed frame and swimming pool, so many many things, and you’ve focused instead on ‘what’s been done to you”.
I never wanted or expected to be at such odds with you. I wanted and expected us to be amicable and actually remain on good terms throughout what’s left of our lives. But you’ve missed an opportunity to have had a very positive and successful and reasonable breakup experience and divorce. Your narcissism has prevented your empathy or consideration. You never loved me, you only had needs of me. And while I’ve suffered and ached and undergone anguish over my actions being so upsetting to you, you can not return the same love and consideration and thoughtfulness and acceptance and understanding in return.
This has been an experience filled with difficult struggles and an ongoing disbelief and inability to accept or believe that you still see this as being something that was ‘done to you’ instead of something that was the result of us never really being what either of us wanted or needed for a healthy relationship. Which is OK. It happens. Just, some people handle it with more grace and love than you have. Instead, you’ve set about expressing negative reflections of my character or actions to our children while reinforcing guilt to me about the ramifications my choices and actions have had on you and on their emotional well being as ‘victims’ of this as well.
I’ve been reading the new Robin Williams Bio, “Robin” and a section written about the end of him towards the end deeply resonated…
Robin’s children had always been a dependable source of some of the purest, most natural joy he had experienced. But when he saw them now, they were also a reminder that he had chosen to end his marriage to Marsha and break up their home; it filled him with shame to think that he had inflicted the divorce upon them … even when his children told him that he had no reason to hold on to his guilt and nothing to apologize for, Zak said, “He couldn’t hear it. He could never hear it. And he wasn’t able to accept it. He was firm in his conviction that he was letting us down. And that was sad because we all loved him so much and just wanted him to be happy.”
I have wrestled with those types of feelings and that lingering guilt for some time, due to my own conflicted empathy and ignorance of what you are and are not capable of. But I’ve talked to our kids. They ARE happy. They want ME to be happy. They desperately want YOU to be happy and they know that you are not. I want you to be happy but I don’t believe you’re capable of it. So far, the only person I see and/or hear about holding onto their position of being upset and unhappy is the only person who has control over it. You.