A month or two ago, I posted about the importance -to me- of forgiving Dave. Everybody said that I should cool my jets; the time is not yet right. Elisa said the most prescient thing -that there was probably more stuff to accumulate that I would have to forgive, so I should just hold on.
Seriously guys, I don't think I'm doing this whole divorce process right. I keep finding more things that are plain hateful -or unspeakably cold and dismissive, to put a nicer spin on it- that Dave has done. Yesterday was a slam of horrifying information. It was mostly discovered accidentally, so I wasn't prepared for it.
And I'm STILL not mad. I just become more and more beat-up. How can a person DO that -simply not care that his actions are this destructive? I don't mean this to turn into a "let's support Andrea" thing. I'm really more curious about him. How does it feel to sit in that big apartment in Swarthmore and plot these things? And before he ever went to Swarthmore he was plotting. (That's part of what I learned yesterday.) I've had to learn -yet again- that he is willing to leave me literally homeless, so he can have his life of freedom. I feel like every time I start to get my feet under me, I find out something new and I'm flattened again.
Does he think it's fun? Does he think it's not important? Don't tell me he doesn't know how destructive he's being. His children know, and he visits this blog almost every day. I couldn't be so dismissive of a person I didn't even know, much less a person I lived with for so long. I have a fine mind and I just don't understand what could be happening here.
Or, to turn it around, was he always this way. If that's the case, I should be posting something like "How could I have been so dim as not to notice?". It's all just so sad.
6 comments:
These are really interesting questions, Andrea.
My guess is that once he was the guy you thought he was. To some degree. He probably was the narcissistic jerk to some degree, too. I think we all overlook a person's weaknesses when we can see their strengths. And it may be the case that his strengths were what was present until the last few years, and you weren't prepared to have to look for that. Who would?
I think you aren't getting angry yet because you can't afford to. I don't think you've been given a chance to get beyond the shock of any particular revelation. My guess--once everything is settled and he's as far away from your life as will happen, when you're safe, you will become enraged. (I'm just thinking about my job last summer--I was dealing with shit I didn't have a chance to emotionally process. When I got home, bouts of serious anger. And that wasn't a fraction of how serious your stuff is).
I can't imagine how hard it must be to keep finding out just how far he is from who you thought he was. I don't think there is a "right" way to do this that you can use as a standard. How can you possibly do it "right" when you don't know who you're dealing with?
Everyone's divorce is different. There is no "normal" when this type of crap breaks loose and we all deal/dealt with it differently.
Anger and forgiveness come at different stages of the whole bloody mess and sometimes at exactly the same time.
hang in there and thinking of you.
p.s. the "Dave" voodoo doll just got a big ole pin in the "suffer erection dysfunction" spot :-)
Kimberly is probably right, but I am still thinking head injury or brain tumor. I learned in my nursing home training this week that personality changes usually have a medical cause. He may be suffering from dementia. (blame Blogger if this shows up multiple times)
I don't know Dave (I actually don't know you, really...) but you have dropped little hints, even before all this divorce stuff came down, that he was sort of an asshole. We all learn to airbrush the assholey parts of our partners, I suppose. The longer the term of the relationship, the more we learn to do that dance.
That said, it looks like he was learning something entirely different than you were for all those years...
I think you're right. The issue isn't so much that I can't (and couldn't ever) trust him. He's gone. What difference can that make now? It's that I can't trust myself. I made a choice -once upon a time- that has had horrendous consequences for me. I don't feel confident that I would do any better in the future.
So you made one bad relationship choice. So what? Doesn't everyone? Those bad choices can lead to relationships that crap out after a few weeks, or last many years.
Women are especially prone to, shall we say, glossing over? the negatives of a relationship, while trying to dwell on or enhance the positives. We try to make it work. It's what we do, consciously or unconsciously.
That doesn't mean you can never trust your own judgement again on anything. It just means you've learned a (very hard!) lesson.
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