CarmenIbanez Posted October 14, 2005 Share Posted October 14, 2005 Sorry to rain on your parade. I didn't expect for you take me quite so literally about falling back in love with your SO. That was more tangential to the fact that misery is a state of mind. It was a lucky coincidence that I fell back in love with my spouse, and yes we had been in love before. It was a coincidence, however, of the fact that I had decided to be happy for myself for doing the right thing. I guess my question to you is, could you have a cordial companionship with this person that would at least you in a positive enough state of mind to treat your kids well, and live your day to day life? Are your kids old enough that you could do this until they are grown, and/or old enough to understand the situation? I figure children are mostly grown by the time they hit high school. Not that parenting is over, but their desire to have you around as parents diminishes with age through the teen years. Whether you are there sleeping in bed with mom at midnight when they get home from the homecoming dance matters not as much as when they are 8 or 9. I don't believe in subjugating what you want from life permanently. I just believe in hanging on a little while longer until the kids have a better foundation. The reality is that what propels most kids into negative or destructive behavior is too much unsupervised free time. And kids of divorced parents tend to have more unsupervised free time. Look at it this way, you want to be happy for your kids. Being away from the SO would make you happy. BUT living your new happy life will inevitably take you away from your kids. You won't mean for it to happen, but you can't take up with another person who is unconnected to your kids and expect to be able to fit it all in. I looked at it like this: if I left, I would still be alone, because in order to be a decent parent, you can't be going out on dates all the time, or having someone in your home and spending time with them instead of the kids. And if I was going to be alone, would I be THAT much happier? I decided no. What I really wanted (and at times still do) was to live my own carefree life. See who I wanted, when I wanted and be without burden. But you can't really be without burden AND be a decent parent. So, if you can make it last a little while longer WITHOUT being a total miserable bastard, then I think it is worth a try. But I don't judge you one way or the other. Link to post Share on other sites
Ditherer Posted October 15, 2005 Share Posted October 15, 2005 Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I feel I shouldn't have moved away from my main thread ( http://www.loveshack.org/forums/t68535/ ) onto this one, but this point hadn't come up there yet - although I've seen people mention before that it's possible to somehow make a decision to love someone. I don't know what my answer is yet.. but I WILL be waiting for a while to see if things become any clearer before I hurt so many people. And thanks tablesalt, the issue of misery is one that's a problem to work out. Trouble is, just how miserable am I? Staying at home I still get to see the kids each evening, which isn't always that great but is tremendously valuable to me most nights. When they're in bed it's tedious until the wife turns in too. Then I finally get some time to myself, mostly frustrated that my life is slipping by. So it's dull, but not actually terrible. I can enjoy enough of the rest of my life.. enough that I can put up with dullness at home, but I can't shake the feeling there must be more to life. I fairly sure things will never be how I want them, and will get worse and worse.. I just haven't been 'tipped over the edge' to do something about it yet. It's an unpleasant limbo I find myself stuck in! Many thanks Link to post Share on other sites
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