Was it all bad?

 As I look back on my former marriage, I am trying to see the good in it. This is hard for me as I still see it all bad except for the kids and the memories associated with them. About 18 years in, to my 27 year relationship with my ex I changed and started putting boundaries up at work. Little did I know that when that made my life better there, it would end my marriage. I started seeing how life could be better and I didn't have to put up with unacceptable behavior from people.

My ex had been doing a home daycare for several years and had poor boundaries with the parents of the kids she watched. She let them show up late for their children and expected me to help her when I came home from work. I got burned out and pulled away from her and instead of coming to me to work things out, she chose to cheat.

It was painful for both of us as I changed and unfortunately, it was the end of our marriage. While she got more consumed with the affair, I let the pain motivate me to grow and move on eventually 5 years later. On the eve of our 20th anniversary she told me she wouldn't date me if we were both still single. That is when I knew it was over and I decided to stay until our youngest finished high school.

Looking back now, I realize that even though I was kind of happy with her before I got wise to the unhealthy dynamic in our relationship, that I would have rejected her if I knew back then what I now know now. Even though what she said on the eve of our 20th hurt me deeply at the time, it was true and insightful on her part.

So the trick now is how to put the past in a less resentful perspective. Of course it's all bad now in my eyes, especially that I see all the years of manipulation and abuse. I did get 3 awesome kids out of it and it all wasn't bad either. There were some times when I was happy with her during a love bombing phase and had hope things would get better in the future during the devaluation/discard parts of the cycle.

I am glad the affair happened as it caused me to have the motivation to change my life and live more in line with my values. In some ways I want to leave my past behind me, but I know I can't fully do that.

Stayed way too long

 As I grow tired of continued nightmares and flashbacks, one thing is becoming painfully apparent: I stayed way too long with a toxic person. I felt all of those years like I was trapped financially, also wanted to be able to see my kids and she couldn't take care of herself. All of which were legitimate concerns and by waiting for the kids to grow up and her to finish school, I don't have to deal with her any more. The problem is when you stay, you are being traumatized by having the toxic person in your life. Their demands, the abuse cycle, and the lies and the fact they are stealing from you by betraying your wedding vows, makes for a lot of harm. Now that I have healed a bit, I can look back and see what a mistake I made by staying.

I think a lot of my suffering was due to a lack of emotional intelligence by primary caregivers as a child. I was conditioned to being treated poorly by a woman and sought that out in my marriage. Also, the Christian faith I was raised in gave poor counsel regarding sex and marriage. I had the understanding that if someone was a Christian they would become more Christlike and they had the ability to become a new creature. All of the marriage seminars we went to never addressed emotional abuse, or toxic controlling behavior. In my opinion, the church condones it, as it is the hook that keeps believers devout and narcissistic leaders from having unhappy spouses leave them.  I always found it amazing that as a man, I had the same issues in my marriage that the unhappy women were having. It took years for it to dawn on me that my ex was probably on the cluster B spectrum and so were most of the men that these seminars and books were catered too.

I knew fundamentalist Christianity was false but still tried to get it, instead of just trusting my doubts and leaving for good. I knew early on dating my ex wife that she had issues and I stayed and tried to make things work. Both were toxic situations that traumatized me and still haunt me today. The take away from this is, is to leave a toxic situation and not try to fix something that doesn't work for you. It's unfair I had to waste so many years of my life realizing this and terribly expensive lesson. I get it now and hope my body is done with processing all of the trauma it stored over the years.