You cannot recognize and accept true love if you have not yet recognized and accepted your true self. This is my own quote... and I keep telling myself this... not to excuse her behavior, because there is no excuse for what she did to us. But as an explanation of what happened, of why we never had a chance to make it work.
She is now claiming that we are the "ultimate" liars because we said we could accept her for who she is and we couldn't. I know she believes that to be 100% true, too, because that is what she does. She convinces herself - and those around her - of what she thinks should be true or what she wants to be true. It doesn't much matter if it isn't the truth, because for her, within seconds of thinking it, it IS the truth.
For a while, I have thought she took something intangible from us... something we can never get back. I talked to him about it, though, and the more I think about it, the more I realize it's just not true. Our marriage is every bit as whole as it was when we met her. We wanted to share our lives with her, but it wasn't something we "needed" in any way. I know he loves me even more than he did when we met her, and the same is true of me for him. So, what did she take? Nothing, really. What was left behind was even stronger than what she found.
I am angry. I am hurt by the fact that she is now pinning the blame on us because we couldn't accept who she was. All we couldn't accept was the lying. For every lie I know about, if she'd just been honest, we'd still be together - with one crucial exception. She lied to herself and to us about who she is and what she wanted. I am not sure if she even knew what she wanted or who she was, but she morphed into who she thought we wanted. Every change she made that we questioned, she swore was for herself... we may have opened her eyes to the matter at hand, but she wanted those changes for her. I see the things she's doing now and realize how few of those changes were really for herself. I wish I at least believed that she learned valuable lessons in her relationship with us - as she claimed when it ended - but based on her actions and words, I can see she clearly has learned little, and sadly she probably never will.
I'm slowly letting go. I don't go to her profiles much anymore. I blocked her on facebook and took her off my MySpace page. I haven't said a word to her in over three weeks, nor do I intend to again if it can be avoided. I don't think she hurt us intentionally, at least not in the grand scheme of things... but her naivete and her inability to know her true self at the age of 40 hurt us. She let us put our marriage on the line for her when she had no idea who she really was or what she really wanted... and THAT more than anything else makes me angry.
I am no longer sure of anything where she is concerned. I don't know what was real for her, if any of it was. I only know she convinced herself it was real when that mattered most.
This makes me sad. I know what I felt was real. I loved her dearly. Problem is, I loved a version of her she created just for me, and he loved a version created just for him.
Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear.
~Hannah Arendt
We must be our own before we can be another's. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
These are two quotes I think of now when I think of her... and what I want more than anything at this point is just one day where I don't think of her. I'm sure that will come in time. There's no magic wand, and I can't pretend she never existed because that would be ridiculous. So, I wait it out. It gets easier each day. I no longer miss her. I don't look for her at night anymore like I used to. I don't feel what had been the vast emptiness on her side of the bed as anything but some nice open space. I don't get three plates when making dinner. I don't see the time and feel like she should be calling. My time is filled with friends and my husband... and all the love I had before her, combined with the emotional support of new friends I might not be so close to without the end of my relationship with her.
I don't love her anymore. Not on any level. I know I did, once... but that has faded with all that has come to pass, and I have taken back the love I gave her, and it just means more love to give to my husband. He has all that he had before her, and even more than that now.
It gets easier and easier... and someday I will look back and be able to find the good moments that currently elude me because they're rife with suspicion and doubt.
For now, I take it as it comes. I hardly cry about her now. Maybe once a week, and usually they're angry tears, not sad. I don't wonder where she is or what she's doing 95% of the time. Not long ago, I wondered that 100% of the time.
My friend told me today that if she was in my shoes, she wouldn't allow what K did to taint who I am, to take anything away from what I felt... and that was good advice. It is something I will think about when I start to doubt, when I start to feel like I threw a year of my life away. What I felt was real. What I did was real. It matters because of that, regardless of her true feelings - which I doubt even she herself knows.
It is simple, if not easy... it is over, and I am moving on. My marriage remains strong and amazing. I have my best friend wrap his arms around me every night as I go to sleep. I am held in his arms, and protected by his love. I know - without any doubts - that his love is as real as it gets and that he is the true love of my life, and I of his.
So, I allow myself the time to vent, to wallow, and I'm sure, to whine. I get angry, I get sad. I feel every emotion, recognize the truth in it, figure out where it comes from and what to do with it, and I move on. With every revelation, with every step in the process, I grow a little emotionally. I grow as a wife. I become more, somehow, than I already was. I will never be the person I was before her, but I will be a better person because of the shared experience with him. I can't ask for more than that.
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