I liked what Mud said about marriage, and I believe that's the ideal, yet I've been divorced twice. The first time I was very young and had no idea what a marriage commitment meant. The second time I was married for almost 23 years, and hung in there even though the last ten years were miserable. Finally, I was put in a position where I don't think I had much choice. XH was basically dating another woman who he was obviously infatuated with, and wanted to start a business with her which would have had disastrous consequences, in my opinion, to our family. (He eventually went bankrupt.) I was being destroyed emotionally and, as more and more revelations came as to his behavior, just couldn't stay married to him anymore. I was also terrified of what would happen to all of our children if he brought us down financially. When you have 6 children still at home, that's a pretty big consideration.
I talked to my pastor about the whole mess, when trying to make some decisions, and he said I should have divorced XH years ago. Yet, the sadness and sometimes guilt still catch me unawares. Sometimes, it just hits me--how my children now have divorced parents, how their parents won't be a unit when they get married and have their own families, how hard I have to work to keep us in decent shape financially. It's so far from what I wanted for my family and I get moments of doubt--could I have made it work if I just tried harder? Then, reality rears its head and I realize that I didn't have the choice of staying in a decent marriage or getting a divorce. The choice was trying to cope with an intolerable situation emotionally and watch all of us go down the tubes financially, or get a divorce and save my sanity and have the best shot at supporting the children.
Now, to think I actually filed a police report after a phone call from XH that the officer called a terrorist threat, just seems surreal. Every once in awhile, when XH calls the kids, and I hear his voice, I remember the man I once I loved very much. But, there's the unpaid medical bills, the car he owns that I have to make payments on, the awful names he's called me, his lack of follow through on important responsibilities, the things he says about me to the children, and I remember how crazy he made me when we were still married.
Just feeling a little low tonight I guess. I'm tired and I guess I'm reliving some of the trauma for some reason. Two of the children were upset about something totally unrelated to XH, and I handled it OK, but it was a trigger as I started feeling badly about how the children were affected by our divorce.
Gail
