Seperations

Something happened recently. Someone I love dearly told me they were seperating. My heart felt like breaking yet I refrained from expressing emotion due to the greater circumstances

In the aftermath I've thought about a bit -

One - how weird it was to not reach out and touch them, provide comfort to someone I love. How uncomfortable that made me.

Two - how different my reaction was when my brother had told me he and his girlfriend had broken up...I wanted to kill the bitch for cheating on him.

Three - how I felt when I was a new mother and had processed that my husband was actively looking for someone else...the extent of his activites remain unknown to me 15 years later, but I knew he was in contact with other girls while I was pregnant - I just thought it was going to end.

He had to brag to me about how desirable he was, what a sexual being he was - insatiable and what not. He has a bit of an ego issue. Narcissist doesn't begin to cover him.

Unfortunately that isn't the type of thing people get over. He has the same problems today. In fact he's screwed up subsequent relationships by his inappropriate behavior - and I'm not even referring to any potential sexual activity. He told his ex-wife he'd cheat on her with someone he found more compatible sexually because she just didn't do it for him - she was fine and fun and all that, but she wasn't the best he'd ever had. WHAT A MORON!!!

He remained verbally innapropriate towards me up until a year or so ago. I think hanging up the phone, and refusing to speak with him finally got it through his thick head.

Yet, I ramble.

Here's Four - I have found myself confused at my reaction to my friend, this one in particular, but also another friend who had a cheating partner and ended a serious relationship this year - I have been confused as to why I was so extreme in my reaction towards my brother's situation when a WOMAN cheated, and have felt so resigned and passive about my friends when it is a MAN cheating - even my own life, I have been cheated on repeatedly, almost every relationship I've been in, and never wanted to "kill the guy". My ex even got someone pregnant - we were seperated yet still married. He never told me when we reconciled. Yeah, found that one out the hard way. (I've got a lousy picker, I know, I'm not dating at the moment cause I need to fix it first.)

Is it age? Maturity? Society? Complacency? Was I brought up to believe that's how the world works? Am I just that jaded? Have I passed this fatalistic attitude on to my own daughter?

Cheaters are cheaters. It's a choice - not a passive choice, an active choice, and even though I may not be as outraged as I was ten years ago I find the behavior today even more reprehensible. Rather than rage I feel disappointment and dissolutionment with the world as I know it. People I trust, the people whom the people I love trust, friends and family - they should never betray you like that.

So, over the years, and after experiencing divorce myself, twice, when people tell me they're seperated or divorced rather than "Oh, that's too bad" - which it usually isn't - I try to say "Oh, that must have been hard" because making the decision to leave something you've committed to isn't necessarily a difficult choice, but it's not an easy thing to do, either.