My Divorce is 6 Months Old. Am I Changing My Mind or Am I Losing It?
How do we make peace with the finality of our decisions or find the courage to change them?
No Confidence
Following my husband's infidelity and desertion, he made it clear that he wanted a divorce. This was a blow to our four-decade marriage and my sense that through it all, we had a pretty good relationship.
In addition to the devastating pain of abandonment was the explosion of my self-confidence. How could I be wrong about so many things? My reaction was all emotion, no cognition.
As I calmed down, with the help of my therapist, I began to explore the contributions to the marriage’s collapse. To me only one thing caused it. He was unfaithful to me. Period.
Men who leave their wives, who substitute with a better model, and who desert their children are lower than pond scum.
Once a fairly decisive person, I now found myself second-guessing everything. Echoes of one of my favorite poetry lines haunted me from T.S. Elliot’s The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock:
"Do I dare to eat a peach?”
It became my uncertain mantra. I couldn’t commit to anything. I wouldn’t dare for fear of being…
