Wednesday, January 20, 2010

# family # life

About ex-husbands

Life is a matter of perspectives, I've found. I received a note this afternoon from Peter requesting that I take down my post entitled "A Different Kind of Birthday." I won't be taking it down because for me, it needed to be written. I will, however, write this post. I don't know if it will sooth his anger with me, but these are my feelings.

Peter doesn't feel that he was ever cruel to me during our marriage. I can understand that because again, life is a matter of perspectives. I won't rule out the possibility that what I took as cruelty was simply a way for him to release some of the hurt and pain that was buried inside of him. Even those who bottle up emotions must have a release valve and perhaps this was his. It is also very possible that because I was in so much pain, I took his comments and actions far more personally than they were ever meant to be taken.

All of this happened 11 years ago and as I said before, neither one of us is in that place anymore. Peter and I have been divorced for 3.5 years now and it's a good thing for both of us. I don't resent him for ending our marriage. In all honesty, I'm thankful that he did. He did what was right for the both of us. Neither one of us was happy. Maybe he doesn't know this, but I've often given him a lot of credit for having the courage to end it and start a new stage of his life (and mine). I know how hard it is to step out of your comfort zone and ending a marriage is way outside most people's comfort zones. He did both of us a favor.

And, I'm lucky in more than one way when it comes to him. He's a good father to our boys. Do I always agree with how he does things? Of course not, but that's not unusual. I know married parents who don't always agree on how the other parent handles something.

The honest to God's truth is that I miss his friendship more than anything else. When the divorce was actually being processed, he actually came to me more than once and said that just because we weren't married didn't mean he didn't care and that we weren't friends. He's right. I still care about him and I'd actually like us to be friends. He really is a good man, he just wasn't the husband for me. I'm happy that he's found someone who makes him happy and I hope that we can continue to be at least friendly, if not friends. After all, we share two of the greatest miracles.

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2 comments:

Peter said...

The reason I find your comment about me being cruel so unfair is that as you pointed out life is about perspective. And as I recall, I wasn't the only person in the wrong during our 7 continuing years of marriage down spiral. You can't paint me as the bad guy for something that I wasn't always the bad guy for. Just keep that in mind.

Deanne said...

I like this post. And I can read the emotion in it.

I think the relationship you two have is a really nice balance. You two have the co-parenting thing down better at this point, than a lot of married parents I know. :)

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