<BR>I have really tried hard to get beyond all the messiness and bad feelings of my divorce. I managed to get to a place emotionally where I could accept that I'd been left behind and the xw was moving on with OM. I've even been predominantly pain-free for the last couple of months. The good days have outnumbered the bad days for the last month. I'm busy, and life is getting better all the time.<P>So why this post? Because I'm still taking bullets in the back.<P>Xw announced a week ago that she had plans to spend this week in "training" for her work. OM lives a short drive away from this class. The last 2 times she has traveled to this city for classes, OM was with her. Now that she is divorced she's free to do whatever with whoever... but the reason I have a problem is this: Tomorrow, July 18th, would have been our 20th anniversary.<P>In addition to that, she also has plans to take the kids to the same area in a week for a weeklong vacation. OM will be introduced on that trip.<P>I know intellectually that these milestones are survivable. I'll live through this and someday it won't hurt so much. I'd just rather not have to go through it. I know I don't have a choice... and I know I'm just whining.<P>Since I was in a whiney mood, I wrote xw a letter. I'm going to paste it in here just to make myself feel good. I probably won't ever send it to her because I don't think any good would come of it.<P>*************<BR>It's great that you have a "friend". For that friend, you've given up:<P>1) Your marriage<BR>2) The respect of your children<BR>3) The respect of the friends you left behind<BR>4) Your personal worthiness<BR>5) The association of people in the church who genuinely cared for you and your well-being<BR>6) The possibility of being a stay-at-home-mom<BR>7) Your self-respect<BR>8) Your clear conscience<BR>9) Every standard of moral behavior that you ever claimed to believe in <P>It's a good thing you've done a good job of hiding the truth. Imagine how your children and your family will feel when they realize what you have done!<P>I hope he's worth it. You two deserve each other. Hopefully your association with him will last, because the only way you could worsen this situation would be for you to become bored with him, find someone else, and wreck yet another marriage.<BR>*************<P>I know there really isn't anything you nice people can do to help. There's so much pain here already that I feel guilty for posting this and not helping others more. I just wanted to vent.<P>Thanks for noticing.<P><BR>--<BR>o2bsane@hotmail.com<BR>

Anniversaries of various things are tough. The 19th will be the anniversary of the final order that ended my marriage. I too was abandoned by my XW. I don't even know for sure whether there was an OM, though I have learned too late to heavily suspect. There was a man in her office who had a bad marriage to a latin woman, quite similar to our situation. She softened her attitude toward him (originally had been dismissive of him for that reason, and because he had attended a rival university). It's probable that there was more going on (there had been an EA in the past). <P>She left to Milan, but returned to that same office, where she had <I>not</I> wanted to be (the divorce seemed an effort at complete revolution, but she settled back to the old situation, minus me--of course, I had moved on quite quickly after the divorce, so she didn't really have that option easily available). <P>The letter is harsh, but likely no <I>harm</I> would come from it either. It wouldn't penetrate your XW's skull at this point in time. <P>On the other hand, I'm holding myself back from dropping a couple of CD-RWs in the mail to my XW's boss. At one time, she made clandestine copies of almost everything in her office. She accidentally left them in my possession. For the price of a stamp, I could crush her career. The temptation has been strong on more than a few occasions. <P>I do have an innocuous DVD that just today I put in one of the CD-RW boxes. I'm mailing it to her lawyer as an item I am returning it to her. With any luck, she'll have a sudden flash of insight as to her vulnerability and it will drive her to be more forthcoming on the final details of wrapping up the divorce ... she and her attorney been a bit of a pain lately, and it's been a thorn in the side of my new relationship, although my GF is very patient. <P>But as you're finding out, anniversaries are tough.