In Reply to: Re: Does divorce equal adultery? posted by Pastor Don on February 03, 2010 at 12:35:30:
I like the ideal of being bound to someone for life, but I also know that we don't live in an ideal world.
The textbook phrases and clichés about two-way-street forgiveness and making provision for imperfection in your partner really do not help in my case, and I'll give you a short example of why below. Asking me to forgive my ex-wife is pointless, as she no longer matters to me. It's all water under the bridge. She is no longer relevant, and I am happy that years can go by without my even remembering her. What I do feel sad about however, is how my ex-wife affects my children, now.
There was a point when my children were growing up, when I used to try to protect them, telling them for their own good, with heartbreak and angst, things about her that were hard to bear. I stopped doing that when I realized it was wrong of me to talk bad about their mother, that I was doing more harm than good. But nowadays, it saddens me deeply, when my children go visit her with big expectations about seeing their own "loving" mother, and they come back telling me how horribly evil she is. I tell them that I'm so sorry that they have to know all these things about their own mother, that I wish they didn't have to know that she is a bad person.
One short example of why I call her a witch, why my children are horrified, as I don't want to honor her with too much time spent:
A few years ago she remarried a 65-year-old multi-millionaire husband she met through prostituting herself. He took her on round-the-world luxury trips, living it up, showing her off as his trophy wife, and alienating his own chldren in the process. (She is a real spoiled high-maintenance type that needs lots of money and attention.) He neglected his business so badly that within 2 years, all his company branches around the world had to shut down. Finally it was down to the last branch, the company HQ, and the staff got together and found some obscure union law that allowed them to protect their jobs by firing the CEO. As soon as he was ousted he proceeded to have a heart attack and was sent in for a triple bypass. When he got back from the hospital, he found the locks to his house changed. It turned out my ex-wife had forged some checks, spent the last of his money, and bought the house under her own name while he was in hospital. He turned to his family but they wouldn't have anything to do with him. So he found himself out of medical insurance, jobless and homeless at 67. He pleaded with her, but she refused to take him in, until she found out he still had a life insurance policy. He assured her she would be the sole beneficiary and she made a deal with him.
He is now in his 70s, has been sleeping on the couch as a semi-invalid the last few years, and both he and she talk openly about how she is just biding her time, waiting for him to die so she can collect the insurance money. But the problem is just he stubbornly stays alive.
My children were horrified to learn about all that on one of their visits a few years ago. They feared she might try to kill him off out of greed and impatience. And they thought the irony was that she is a deeply religious person. It broke my heart to hear them talking about her. I know what it's like to have a horrible mother, but at least mine wasn't evil.
And all that, was just one story out of many many many about her!
To repeat what I wrote above, there is nothing to forgive my ex-wife for. She no longer matters. She is no longer relevant. I couldn't feel any better. I'm glad she is no longer a part of my life, just sad that my children have such a mother. If anything, I forgive myself for being stupid enough to feel I should rescue women all the time and to have attracted such bloodsuckers in my life. It had a lot to do with my mother, but that's another story.