Quote:
Originally Posted by wayner
Well, the best thing that come out of this self reflection is unravelling all of the brainwashing and blame etc, that when heard often enough you begin to believe
While I still have a ways to banish some of those now ingrained beliefs, I realize clearly that while she tried hard in many areas and in some ways was the perfect woman, that I was alone in working on improvements
All she could do was more of what she could do
(Cook even more fabulous meals etc, but her main improvement mechanism was to wait and see)
Self reflection was not a tool that she seemed to possess, and I couldn’t be the only one to do that.
I started off a strong confident guy who would not take **** from anyone, but
By the end there was nothing left of me
The boiling frog analogy fits well, it snuck on me and I guess in hindsight I did not do enough to look out for me. I didn’t think I had to, I thought we were a team, and by the time that I realized I had to, it was too late
I wasn’t perfect, but at least I knew it and was always willing to do something about it
I’ll close this off with this:
1) I took on too much responsibility and it took its toll
2) She listened to the wrong people and squandered our happiness
I’m off to reinvent ME
Wayner out
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Wayne, I'm glad you're making progress moving forward. Anything in the positive direction is definitely worthwhile.
However... dude, you are really beating yourself up over this. I get that people have different levels of introspection, and the need to "figure things out" before moving on, but at some point, you just gotta click your heels together and say to yourself, "Today is the first day of the rest of my life!".
I'm one of those lucky people who wakes up as a new man each and every day. Is that good or bad? I have no idea. I do know that I choose to spend every remaining day I have looking at the world thru the eyes of a young boy, rather than a jaded old guy with a ton of baggage.
For sure, if my wife left me, or I found out she was having an affair, I would be completely destroyed. I would mourn, and think of all the "what ifs" for awhile, but then reason would take over and I would move on. Like flipping a switch.
At your age, you've probably learned about all you're going to learn. You are the person you are... not much that can be done to change you. Endless introspection isn't going to change anything. Stop focusing on blame. It doesn't matter. Her fault, your fault, it doesn't matter. Focus on building good relationships with her and your kids and move on.
My (probably worthless) $0.02 that you didn't ask for
