Yesterday I shared the worst 2 week period of my life, I have been asked if we ever tried counselling or if I suggested it prior to this breakdown.
We got married in 1990… we had lots of ups and downs like all marriages do. I did a lot of personal therapy throughout the marriage but my mother truly took up most of that energy. The traumas from my childhood were so much more severe than the insults and problems in my marriage.
Over the years my ex constantly criticized the therapy process. Said it was a total waste of money. Always harassed me about why I couldn’t just get over things, why I couldn’t just cut my mother out of my life.
For a lot of years I thought my mother was the real problem in our marriage, that if I could just get over the problems she created I would be a better wife to him. When I noticed marriage problems I would blame myself, i was too fat to make him happy, I was too lazy , I was not giving him enough in the bedroom. It did not occur to me that he was part of the problem.
So once my mother was out of my life in 2000 I expected things to improve. But reality is that he had already exited into an affair and was closed off from me due to that. I was unaware of his affair at a concious level but I knew things were in deep trouble and he would not go to counselling.
See my post the dangerous road to an affair to see how I chose to cope with this breakdown.It was a mistake I should have demanded therapy for our marriage at this point. I allowed his criticism of the therapy programs to make me look inwards for a solution.
At the end of the day. I did not even LIKE my husband anymore and only wanted to keep things together for the kids by the year 2000.
2 years later …everything crumbled in the perfect storm….
Hindsight is always 20/20 vision isn’t it? Often you can only learn by going though what you go through. If only we could jump to the wisdom without going though the pain, but sadly reality isn’t that easy.
My twin sister is a master manipulator and it took many many events and half a world of distance for me to finally realise that the fault wasn’t always mine even though she told me it was, over and over and over. I was not responsible for all of her wrong choices, wrong relationships and I was not responsible to provide constant loans to enable her to have the lifestyle she wished for without working since she was was I might politely call ” professionally unemployed”.
When you are “in it” all can be fog and clouds, and having people around you to remind you that life can be different (and better) by not just believing what one negative person constantly tells you. I’ve moved on and she has not… it doesn’t make things easier, I can’t change her, but it does make me SO much better equipped to deal with *my* reactions to future.
Believe in yourself and resolve to be forever looking forwards.. living in the past is a waste of life right now… you sound like you are doing well… Bravo!