Why I Forgive My X-Husbands for Their Violations
And why I forgive myself for mine.
The first one had a full blown midlife crisis complete with the much younger woman and 5 years of lying, but without the red sports car.
The second one was a cheap, selfish, stoned twelve hours a day dude who didn’t believe in working or helping out at home but did have a penchant for sexually-trafficked prostitutes as a way to assure himself that he could stave off death.
Sheesh, I knew how to pick them.
But I played a part too. I still held on to my undeserving, unloveable beliefs, which matched me with unavailable and ungenerous partners. I had had an abusive father and was still working it out.
Besides, I was too focused on working and caring for the kids and my feminist assumptions about relationships, to see what was happening.
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It is a whole lot easier to forgive now that I am firmly in my 60's.
After 25 years of silence, my first x-husband and I spent about a year unwinding what went down all those years before. The conversation began with my email to him apologizing for my way of pushing him away. He got to apologize and release his guilt and shame that he stated he felt daily for all those…
