We should all mourn for 2 things
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| Wed, 06-28-2006 - 11:31pm |
The death of our marriage and the death of the man we married. I once heard, I think it was Dr. Phil, that said the man we married is not the same man we divorce.
Despite the fact thatmy STBX is still alive in body, the person that I love, married, and loved me back died. I don't know my STBX anymore. Sometimes I look at him and wonder what happend to the soul that once occupied his body. We had so many dreams and he had ambition not only to advance in his career but also to start our own business. We also had plans to have a family. We were 1 month shy from moving into our new home when he left me. The person I loved had pride in our home and would have done anything and everything for me and our family (we had 6 cats). The person that exist today wants none of that. He is more into hurting people who love him and he's turned away just about all his friends. That is not the man I married because the man that I married had friends. I know because were at our wedding.
One day when I feel ready I'm going to hold a private 'ceremony' where I bury something that represented us and him. It will be my last good bye to him.
What do you think about this?

Honestly, I dont know if thats true.
For ME? I think i married exactly who i divorced. An alcoholic, mean, selfish, childish, insecure, manipulative, lazy, user.
Hmmmm .... tell us how you REALLY feel Rebecca! lol
I think i WANTED to see the "good" in him, so i ignored all the bad.
hey - whatever works for you is fine by me! lol
seriously though. i believe that the person we divorce is EXACTLY the same person taht we married. i think that when we got married - we chose to ignore things, we chose to stick our heads in the sand, we chose to cover their behinds, we chose to paint a rosy picture of our life together - for our sake and for the world's sake.
i know that that's how it is for me. and i think that when you are able to really be totally honest with yourself, do a lot of soul searching and digging in there, you will probably agree with me, at least partially.
you write about your husband's friends. you know - i also believed that my ex had friends. after all - all these people were at our wedding. etc. but they were not his friends - they were people that he knew, some of them were people who 'owed' him big time, or else they were otherwise socially/morally dysfunctional in their own ways. i bet that this holds true for your husband too.
i am sorry for you - i think that what hurts is the loss of the dreams, but you will get past that....
hugs
I think you are right about how many of us likely did ignore things we shouldn't have and that we did paint a rosier picture of what we had. Also, sometimes maybe we didn't get enough 'red flags' prior to marriage and patterns emerged only after being with our ex's for several years. It has been interesting to look at what I did and what I was thinking back then - but it all wasn't just me, he had the same kind of thing going on.
Looking back, I can also see that he was on his best behavior early on - it took a few years before he started to treat my family badly and then a bit longer for me to see that he was treating me badly, too. The way he behaved early on versus how he was later on was pretty different.
I know that my ex kept some things from me and was not very honest about some of his values and life goals. One major thing was that he really didn't want kids, but he never told me that. From comments he made over the years, it seemed to me that he did want kids and he agreed to it. Our son was planned for - it wasn't a surprise - but things sure got worse once we were parents - he really did not want to be a father. Goes to show you what can happen when you try to hold on to relationships that likely were not meant to be.
I think he wanted things to work out, too, and wasn't completely honest about wanting kids and other things as well because he didn't want to lose the relationship. Guess it is a fairly common thing many of us humans do. For my part, I think I was more honest than he was about who I was and what I wanted out of life. So when he ended up belittling me and abusing me and complaining about our life together, I felt so very rejected - I thought he knew who I was, what I wanted out of life and that he had accepted me.
I do think of my ex as being two different men. And I think I will look into this idea of saying goodbye. I know some of it was the dreams and expectations I had that I am mourning, but I am also mourning the loss of who I thought my ex was in those first few years. I really thought I had a thoughtful, intelligent, generous, helpful and caring guy. What I know now is that a lot of his behaviour was oriented around winning me over. Then once he had me, his real self started to come out.
It does get better with time. I was really mourning a lot of things for the past few years and I was worried things would never start to feel better and that I had *maybe* let a good guy slip away. But I do feel now that I am getting to a more peaceful place about it all and I can see my ex more clearly - good points and flaws. I realize now that he is not someone I would even choose to be friends with, so I know I am much better off being divorced - I have a much better chance now at making my life what I want it to be and to be happy.
Hugs!
I concur (sp?) with you COMPLETELY-- my STBX is and has been an alcoholic since before I met him. We got married, not because I was madly in love with him, but because I was 18, had been controlled by my mother all my life, and was pregnant. The relationship should have only lasted 3 months.
I guess if he'd been someone I'd known for more than 6 months before the wedding, maybe if he'd been someone I'd been hopelessly in love with, then I'd agree with the OP. Yeah, we were married for almost 2 decades, and had 2 kids together, but it was because I'd been ignoring his alcoholism for most of that time... it was more thinking that he'd care for his kids enough to change his ways and get healthy.
It's been in the year that he's been out of the house that I can see EXACTLY how he TRULY is, and how he has BEEN all these years. I wonder why no one warned me about him before I married the jerk... it's come to light that he was a cocaine abuser pre-marriage, and I have personally seen the alcohol abuse myself. He is a manipulative, emotionally abusive, emotionally stunted, pathetic excuse for a man. I believe he has a mental illness... he's been physically abusive, and has absolutely NO respect for me, our kids, OR himself.
He didn't have ANY friends of his at our wedding. It was our families, MY best friend, and his boss. He could have cared less about his friends-- they were all just his drinking and drugging buddies anyway. He did have two close friends at the time, and he blew them both off. I was the oe who maintained some contact with these people, as they were boyfriends of my friends. They would always say to me, "STBX never calls us, or visits us. How is he doing?" STBX does not have any friends, just business acquaintances, or a couple of drinking buddies. He's a child emotionally, and just wants to race his hotrod around the town, like he's a 21 year old kid (he's 45). So yeah, he's the same guy he was in 1986 when we got married.
Edited 6/29/2006 6:56 pm ET by susieyippin
In reading your post and thinking about the time I married my STBX. I think I did ignore a lot of his bad qualities and tried to see if not make up the good side of him. Ironically enough a lot of people warned me about him even his own mother and aunt warned me. Instead of listening to them I convinced myself that I knew him better than they did and that they didn't see the good heart in him. I convinced myself that I saw this good heart. We lived together for 6 years before getting married. Having been together for numerous years I thought I had found my soulmate. We always commented to each other that we knew the other like the back of my hand.
The more I thought I knew him is the same amount that I realize now that I had no clue who he was and is. He is a con man and a liar. He told more lies than he did truth. But I wanted to believe in him and us that I chose to believe him over everyone else. Even when the truth was in front of me I ignored it. I thought to myself that he loved me so therefore he would not lie to me and that he would always take care of me. Since he left I've had more time to look at what is really there and to know myself better.
I still mourn the lost of my dreams and idea of the man I thought he was. I realize that what I am mourning may not have been there in the first place but rather it was my preception of reality. Nothing forces you to look at reality than divorce. I have not only looked at the truth about my STBX but also the true person that I am.
It is very hard to see and accept the truth sometimes when you've created such a fantansy in your mind for so long. Growing up in an alcoholic family, I wanted so much to have a loving relationship and a good family. I wanted it so bad that I created it in my head and applied it to what was in front of me. This I have accepted responsiblity for doing. If I wasn't so desparate to find love and loved myself enough to find the right person perhaps I wouldn't have gotten together with STBX in the first place.
I appreciate everyone for helping me see and realize the truth. While it is hard to swallow I am happy that I'm finally going to have a solid foundation to build my life on.
May we all find happiness at the end of our painful journeies.
wow!! you did a lot of thinking, soul searching, and growing in that one message... that's great. very insightful.
of course you are mourning 'what could have been' - that's fine, we all go thru that. but remember to take responsibility for YOUR part, remember to fix the things that you need to fix in YOUR life. that's the hard part - but you are already halfway there.
one of the htings i did with DS (my ex was his step father, not his bio-dad) a while ago was burning some pics that we had of ex. it was definately a very cleansing thing.
You've obviously grown and done a great deal of soul searching. But be kind to yourself!! We've ALL made mistakes and done things for the wrong reasons. I also grew up in an alcoholic family, so I completely understand the need to get away and create a "normal" family life of your own.
Be patient with yourself, and forgive yourself for the mistakes you made.
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