SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I'm not quite two weeks out from DD#2, the implosion of my family and college age kids' lives, and starting the divorce process.

I have twenty-five years of building a family and life with my STBXH, and it's no surprise that the memories of "us" - dating, when he proposed, our wedding, being young and in love and fixing up our first house together, etc. - are incredibly painful.

But even the memories of things that weren't specifically about him - like the birth of our first child, putting my daughter on the bus on the first day of kindergarten, special times with the kids - are completely raw, too. I can handle the idea that my feelings about places and moments that were specifically about him may never bring me joy again, but I can't bear the thought of losing all joy from memories of the kids and me.

For those of you who have been through a divorce, will I ever be able to reclaim the memories of the kids and our family life? In an instant, my perspective on the last 25 years of my life changed. I'm sure I'll get to a point where the old memories don't cause pain...but will they ever bring me joy again?

They are not tarnished forever. It takes time and healing for them to bring you joy again. It took me about 2-3 years to get there.

When your child was born or you placed them on the school bus for the first time, what were your feelings? Were they authentic? Remove your STBXWH from your thought process. While his thoughts & feelings may have been questionable, you know what your feelings were at the time - and those didn't change. Your perception of what was going on around you may have changed, but your feelings didn't.

Yes, jerk-face may have been there and lying about things, but what YOU were feeling was true based on the information you had at the time.