Family Forum / Marriage / Divorce / July 2005

I've always been pro-marriage. I've always been against divorce, to the
point I've been willing to suffer many years of pain and grief over our
non-existent relationship, constantly praying for her, praying for a
solution to her aloofness and coldness, her dishonesty and cowardice.

Tonight she told me she is "done" trying to work on our relationship.
(As if she had ever actually tried!!!) She told me a "story" of sorts
about all the things she supposedly has done in an attempt to make our
relationship work -- all of which was a blatant lie -- I reminded her of
all the emails, notes, and phone messages I have sent to her, all of
which she IGNORED. I accused her of living in a fantasy world, of
blantanly lying. I really coundn't think of anything else to say! She
informed me she is "done" with our relationship.

I've been mourning over this loss for about the past three years or
more, so even though I cry tonight, it is not really any kind of
surprise to me.

She has never been the kind of person who could be honest with me or
with herself; she has never been able to admit when she's made a
mistake, no mater how trivial, and she's never been able to apologize.
I've played that "role," unfortunately, to the point that she has simply
used my openness and admissions of my own faults in my recovery process
as a weapon against me, in the form of making me into the "bad guy" she
has always needed for balance in her brutal world, mostly to allow her
the luxury of not having to admit her own substantial faults.

This is a MAJOR kind of sickness. And I must admit I'm very "sick" of
that sickness.

I've prayed for her everyday, hoping against hopelessness that she would
somehow become an "honest" person who could see her world as it truly
is. Our counselor says that anyone who feels like appologizing for
breathing your air, as in being worth less than the dust of the ground
-- can only get what she needs in underhanded ways, since she doesn't
deserve them (in her own mind) in the first place. Hence her
manipulative ways. It's a sick kind of arrogant "pride."

The truth is: I married badly.

But we were both so dysfunctional, that the broken pieces fit together
so well -- for a time. But after 20 years or so, I had grown out of that
kind of dysfunctional set of patterns we called a relationship. But she
has not!! So now the "broken" pieces just don't fit together at ALL
anymore, and the relationship's only hope is for her to work on herself
with the same courage I have done over the past several years. But she
is not ready or willing to do anything that radical (heaven forbid that
she would have to admit she wasn't PERFECT!).

Damn. As Job said over 6,000 years ago, "What I have feard most has come
uopn me."

Everyone I've know who has suffered through a divorce has appeared to me
as a real person getting ripped in half, with no anesthetic. I don't
relish the thought.

But in my inmost parts, I do feel a spark of life inside me when I think
of being truly and finally separate from her!!!!!!!  -- It's just the
meantime that will be like getting drawn and quartered in the square,
left alone to bleed to death with no help or caring from anyone that can
actually mitigate the pain of it.

Damn. This sucks big time. But here we go, apparently.  :-(  Here's
looking past the forthcoming pain, and toward healing, and feeling the
resulting freedom from having been caged so long and so closely with
such sickness!

Here's to FREEDOM, even though between here and there is terrible PAIN,
it will ultimately be WORTH IT. Or so my weeping soul so strongly hopes
tonight.

Joe