My ex-husband fell in love with someone else; I’m grateful now

• My ex and I were married in 2004, and he asked for a divorce in 2017.
• I was angry with him because he had fallen in love with someone else.
• With hindsight, he saved my life by leaving me.

In 2017, my ex-husband now fell in love with another woman and asked for a divorce. We had two young children, I was a housewife and I collapsed.

I was in therapyI stopped drinking, I looked inward, but I swore to hang on to this trauma to blame him. Until one day, I looked around and I realized that he saved my life.

I grew up with alcoholism at home

I had grown in a house with love and Laughter and alcoholismAnd I was happy, but there was sadness there.

I had parents who loved me and a brother who “brothers”, but there was a dysfunction – as there are in many houses. I did not recognize anything disabled when I was young, but I learned in therapy how it shaped my life.

I was just 16 in 1993 when My brother died suddenlyAnd the crack in my family has become a crevasse. We tried to fill the crevices with what we could to survive; We have all changed forever.

At 17, I started Drink and use drugs to numbAnd these things have led to more impulsive and risky choices. I disguised my recklessness as a good time, like everyone else. I was promiscuity; I made bad choices and I lived with the consequences. Along the way, I grew up, adding to the invisible weight of all the trauma that I did not know that I had.

I got married and I had an apparently normal life

In 1999, I met my ex-husband while finishing my BA in writing and managed the literary magazine in our college. I can’t wait to find an internship in Manhattan to finish my diploma. He was cOmpletate his master’s degree in education And planned to return to his long native Island to teach science. We fell in love, we grew up and got a job. And then, in 2004, we got married.

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In 2010, I left my publishing career and I became a household mother to a 4 -year -old child and a 1 year old child. Even in all chaos and the joy of raising my children, I was alone.

I started my blog, “The Mother Octopus” in 2016 to relaunch my writing passion. I wrote a lot: fun blog articles, real stories about children who roast and other nonsense. Things take off. But I was using humor to hide a dark clinical depression that I did not know.

I drank socially, like everyone else, but I drank to hide the fact that I did not know myself and that I did not like. I was drinking to disappear.

My husband was deeply unhappy. The lack of connection in our relationship had removed it. I knew it in my heart, but in my head, I convinced myself that it was just us. When he announced that he wanted to divorce because he was in love with someone else, I was devastated.

But also, this is where magic occurred.

I was angry

I stopped drinking a little over a year after my ex’s departure. I knew it was finally time to withdraw from this cycle without commitment of numbness, disgust for oneself and shame that I felt by drinking. But just when I got out of this cycle, I got into a new one.

Among the alleged stages of sorrow – denial, anger, negotiation, depression and acceptance – are the most common. My grief did not go in this order.

My grief took place like this: denial, anger, anger, anger, anger, anger, much more anger. I was stuck there until my father’s death in December 2023, and this cycle ended. My perspective on life, love and marriage has changed, and it finally led me to acceptance.

This acceptance led me to do the only thing I was promising to never do. I forgave him. And I forgiven myself.

When my husband left, I chose to be the victim, and by holding my anger, he remained the one to blame. I stayed angry for many years. But fortunately, I knew myself in therapy, I became honest on my games in the problem. Of course, I was difficult to live. I couldn’t lie anymore. I had to assume responsibility and stop treating myself as a victim.

I am at peace without having the perfect family

My life seems different now. The perfect family I planned was gone – now we are two families, and sometimes four families, sailing on many lives, ups and downs and finding us. But I am at peace. My ex and I hear much better now. It’s better for us, and it’s better for our children.

I know that I cannot recover the years that I spent choosing anger, but I can do my best to remember that everything was on my own path to find peace. I will always be grateful to my ex-husband to have chosen this path for me.