Sometimes I have recurring fantasies about STBXW coming back to me and saying how sorry she is and how much she fucked up. For some reason though, in those fantasies, it’s like she says that she apologizes for everything and then I tell her that those apologies aren’t enough. They’re not specific enough.

Apologizing for “everything” isn’t specific enough for me to believe that she really understands what she did wrong, how bad she hurt me, and how much she damaged everything.

To me, she tore down her family and our friendship. You don’t mistreat people who treated you well. It does make you a pretty bad person in my opinion. Sure we all make mistakes, but the difference between good and bad people in my opinion is that good people recognize their mistakes, feel bad about them, and try to make them up….. even if the most they can muster is a sincere apology. Repentance is only possible with understanding.

However bad people never recognize their mistakes and either ignore what they did, use mental gymnastics to justify them, or simply live in denial.

To this day, I don’t understand how she could do such terrible things…..to her own family and yet feel good about herself. How could she think that she deserves a ‘happily ever after’. How does she think that she’s a good/decent person who deserves a good/decent man if she was able to destroy her own family. I never received a real apology outside of the “sorry for everything” apology…. she treats this like she accidentally dropped my phone or something.

I’m thinking that this helped create a sort of trauma bond where I feel that I am owed a real apology. In my mind, she destroyed our family and (I can’t emphasize this enough) despite me not being perfect…..I know that I did not deserve this from her. Our family deserved at least a chance to survive before she single handedly ‘pulled the plug’. From where I stood, our marriage wasn’t even on ‘life support’ or anything. It was as if it went in for a sprained ankle and she decided it was better if she euthanized it.

I was stuck/bonded because I feel that I deserved to be treated better and a part of me thinks that all would be somehow fixed if she ‘came to her senses’ and told me that she was wrong for treating me that way.

I have had to come to the conclusion that either she really doesn’t get it…..or she really is selfish beyond her own understanding. I still don’t understand how, in so many areas, she seems to understand the difference between acceptable and unacceptable “moral” behavior, yet she cannot seem to recognize this within herself. How does she sleep at night knowing that she is the cause of another broken home and an active participant in yet another generational curse. How can she claim to champion ideals of “black excellence” and “power couples” when she willfully chooses to abandon her own responsibility as a wife and mother.

I think that a part of me still doesn’t want to believe that she could be so wicked. Yet despite her showing me time and time again (it’s been at least 6 years of this shit), something in me still finds it hard to cope with the idea that she indeed is capable and willing to jump out the windows like that….with no remorse no less.

Even from a perspective of karma, what you put out there comes back on you, you’d think that she could recognize that if I did this to someone, I can’t complain if someone does it back to me.

I’ve come to the point to realize that she is dealing with other men and there is nothing I can do about it except divorce. I finally have the paperwork and will complete it this week. Yet what kind of man would accept this behavior from a woman. At least insofar as taking her seriously above anything more than a side chick. She has no honor or respect for her own family. Is she lying to them about the nature of our marriage? Does she tell them the truth about how things went down between us? What kind of woman feels that it’s ok to be a side chick. If she has no empathy for the main woman (as she has proven at least twice already), has no empathy or respect for her own husband (who by most accounts is a decent man), and no regrets about blowing up her own family for own selfish wants…..then how would any man fall for such a woman.

If anything, he may use her for the benefits, but he’d probably never take her seriously. Then again, if he is so degenerate as to cheat on his woman, then his mentality could be as such that he would take a chance on such a woman. My best conclusion is that like attracts like and even though they might start off good, eventually their lack of morals would catch up to them. Either she’ll cheat on him or he’ll do something dirty to her. There is a good chance that the relationship cannot sustain itself.

Had she pulled such disrespect on some men and she caused as much pain to him as she did to me, then his emotional instability could cause him to go ape shit on her ass. I’ve had bad thoughts about her and at one time, I did want to make her feel the pain that she inflicted on to me. Especially considering that she was unapologetic about it. The protector in me wanted see her as an enemy because not only is she hurting me, she also risks our child’s mental health. But I’m a glad that I was able to internalize all of that without emotionally responding. Not all men have that and if she does end up with an emotionally unstable guy who acts out of his hurt….she may be in for a bad time.

In the end though, I don’t feel bad about losing her. If she is capable of such vile acts and disrespect to her own family no less, then she isn’t worth keeping. I take solace in knowing that I did not lose a ‘good’ woman. Good women don’t destroy their homes. They don’t cheat, they try to save their marriages and families, and if they couldn’t they’d leave. If they made a mistake, they’d recognize and try to either fix it. Something in them would not allow them to go to the extreme measures that she did without provocation. And even if they felt provoked or if they ‘had’ to commit these acts, they’d still feel some remorse. She would have sympathy for other women and not try to ‘steal’ a man from his home…and take them out of their children’s household. Then again, if she didn’t even see the value of her own nuclear household, why would she see value in another?

A good woman / wife loves her family. She would have done something to try and save/ salvage it…..not leave it based on superficial / materialistic/ lustful desires. This female I that I married wasn’t a wife. She belonged to the streets,but hid it from me. She is a chameleon. So in hindsight, I guess that it wouldn’t be surprising if she could trick/trap another guy into thinking that she is indeed a “wife.”

Perhaps me thinking that she’ll once day see the error in her ways is just a fantasy. If she had the capacity / wisdom/ or understanding of a real wife, then we wouldn’t be here in the first place. She’s not young and she’s set in her ways. She must protect the false image that she has of herself. Her ego won’t allow her to see/feel the damage she has really done in order to protect itself…. so that apology may never come….

How could I have made such a mistake? How do I move forward without exposing her real side to our kid? I don’t want to teach him that you simply give up on marriage and your family. That as a protector, your duty comes to your family first. I want him to know that marriage isn’t always easy, but cases of repeated infidelity or abuse are deal breakers. Yet I cannot teach this to him without implicating her. How would knowledge of what she did affect his mentality. She created such a fucked up scenario that I see no clear path. She doesn’t seem to understand the difficulty she created….and quite frankly probably doesn’t even care.