julietsierra
Posts: 1841
Joined: 9/26/2004 Status: offline
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Y'know.. .I can take a lot. An awful lot. And I'll even accept a lie or two providing that we work through whatever problems the lie has caused and are able to rebuild. I'm a great one for second chances... and third chances. There have been times in different relationships where I've EVEN convinced myself of the reasons I was involved with someone who had proven himself to lie within a given set of circumstances, and was fine with that... But when the lies became non-stop; when the lies began to encompass all parts of that person's life with no rhyme or reason for them... then I knew we'd moved beyond the workable stage and there wasn't a whole bunch left other than to maintain my integrity and move on. But that's so darn easy to say. Doing is another thing altogether. The thing I try to remember is a lesson learned from my ex. I was struggling to keep my family together and always thought I was doing the right thing. Keeping my family together was the single most important thing to me. I couldn't understand why he didn't understand what I was doing and why he kept treating me worse and worse as time went on. Finally, I couldn't do it anymore. On the day we got divorced, as we left the courthouse, I came right out and asked him. "All those times I could have left and didn't... I thought I was doing the right thing for us and for our family. And all that time, you didn't see it that way at all, did you?" His response was enlightening. He said, "No. You may have been doing this for our family, and maybe I should have seen it that way, but I just always wondered why you didn't respect yourself more. And if you didn't, then why should I?" Of course, the strangest thing about all this is that by divorcing him, I regained his respect, and through that, his interest, but by that time, I couldn't trust him at all. And he's proven to me that just because I see things one way, doesn't mean he understands it from that same perspective. He worked hard to get me to come back. And while it was really enticing, and even harder being away from him, I just remembered that buying into his lies were what caused him to not respect me and me not to respect me, and I stayed away. But I do know how hard it is to walk away. Sometimes though, if you want to respect yourself, you just have to do it. I wish you well. juliet
< Message edited by julietsierra -- 2/21/2008 1:17:24 AM >
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