Sometimes the guilt I still carry from my divorce hits me on a random Sunday morning when the house is empty and quiet. There have been many times when my eyes have teared up in the grocery store while watching another couple. And of course I’ll have pangs of longing during the holidays.
It’s been years – eight to be exact – since my ex-husband and I decided to go our separate ways and I still carry so much guilt. At the time, it was what we both wanted, what we both thought was best. We couldn’t make it work and knew we’d exhausted every possibility.
I look back on when we separated and wonder if I could have tried harder, although at the time trying harder was impossible. Maybe the guilt is there because my ex and I are still great friends who co-parent well, and at one time, we were so good together. It’s not like things were ever awful between us. Wecut ties before we started to resent and dislike each other, which was a choice we made together.
Maybe it would be easier to accept that we’re divorced if my ex-husband was an awful man, but he isn’t. And honestly the dating experiences I’ve had since my divorce have shown me that he’s one of the good ones.
But the truth is, we fell out of love, grew apart, and wanted different things out of life. He wanted more out of a relationship and so did I. We were getting to the point where we were taking each other’s happiness and neither of us wanted to do that to the other.
I’ve often wondered if we could’ve repaired us for the kids. I think about how if we’d stayed together, I’d get to see my children every day. There’d be no back and forth and all holidays would be spent together. And I have to keep telling myself that staying together for the kids isn’t right. It’s not what they would’ve wanted, and as strange as it is to say, I don’t believe kids are enough to keep two people married. To me, you have to stay in a marriage because you want to.
That’s why this year, my only resolution is to finally shed the guilt that I still carry. It’s kept me from moving on and finding a new relationship. It’s kept me frozen in time. I think I’ve let myself believe that if I did let go of the guilt and let myself move on, it would be selfish. I’m not sure where I got that morphed belief, but it’s time to let it go.
My kids are over our divorce; they’ve told me several times. My ex is over it; he says he has no guilt and that I need to move on like he has. My friends and family have begged to try and let it go because I’m only hurting myself by reliving the past and trying to change the impossible. Maybe it’s worth noting here how the guilt manifests itself, like what you noted in the beginning?
This will be my year. It has to be because I’ve spent enough time beating myself up for my marriage ending. After all, there were two of us in it and at the time, we both did our absolute best.
It’s going to take some work, but the way I see it, it can’t be any harder than the guilt I’ve decided to lug around with me.
Diana Park is a writer who finds solitude in a good book, the ocean, and eating fast food with her kids.
This article was originally published on scarymommy.com.