was it inevitable? overseas: The realization that divorce is real for us has been very recent. I moved overseas to work in poverty alleviation (my lifelong dream), and we thought we could make the long distance relationship work for the two years of my contract. We had survived long distances before, in fact, our relationship had often been long distance during the 15 years we have been together on and off. We are married almost 5 years now.
We are both Christians and were trying to make the most of it. But we discovered that our new separate lives had many features that we liked. I love my overseas posting and don't want to move back to the USA. He loves his new job and doesn't want to leave it to move to my impoverished country where I'm living. So we were stuck. We started drifting apart, when before we had regular communication. I fell for a manipulative man living here and cheated on my husband, much to my own horror and dismay. I told my husband immediately and broke off the relationship with this affair man. My husband, hurt and shocked, began dating other women. For me, it was a sign of the end times of our relationship! We thought we might be able to salvage the marriage by getting together, talking about it, and looking for a solution.
Finally, I decided that it would be a replay of the old story of fight-hurt-break up-get back together....cycle that at least 4 times and that is the story of our relationship. We have grown apart. We were high school sweethearts, but our careers and interests have taken us in such opposite directions, it seems we truly do have irreconcilable differences.
I feel moments of certainty about divorce, but hope always creeps back into my mind. Half my life has been with this man, and he has many nice qualities, but it seems we'll be throwing away more time, effort, and emotions by trying once again. We have already done counselling during other crisis stages, and we came to have a civil marriage, but still with lots of incompatibilities. It's all so new, this divorce idea,....any advice??
Re:was it inevitable? totallyclueless: I guess i will be honest with you. It was inevitable. It sounds like both of you have put your careers before your relationship and if thats the case then it can never work. Relationships are about give and take and if you communicate properly and share the same lifes philosophy than mutual understanding about what you both want out of life should enable you to have a lasting and valuable relationship and get the things you want out of life. But this takes total honesty and commitment and not a superficial understanding of what these mean.
Cheating is never excusable, but i recognize its sometimes difficult to say no and we are sometimes weak creatures who make mistakes that hurt the ones we are supposed to love. But don't make excuses for it, you should try not to do that again to anyone as i wouldn't hurt a stranger as much as that hurts (just happened to me).
Sorry if this post has sounded negative but you really should move on and find somebody with the same philosophy on life as you do. Secondly you should properly consider that relationships are all give and take affairs and you can't just do whatever you want in them. This doesn't mean that they are chains though, it just means that you need to establish a meaningfull dialogue with your mate and develop an understanding of eachothers hopes and dreams. That said sometimes even this doesn't make relationships infallible. It sounds like this work experience you are getting is something that you really wanted and he didn't share that with you. You either come to a comprimiise or you move on, but before you can do either you need to know where the other person stands.
Good luck
