There are so many things I wish I could say to my husband as we approach this life-changing moment. I am further along in the process so could say these things rationally but from the heart. He is too immersed right now in anger and hurt, and is probably surprised that I am not simply going to get past it this time, that life will return to normal within a week or so after this emotional reaction has waned. He could not hear this at this moment. Perhaps someday, he will be able to read this and take in the words. Either way, for me it is important to write them. 

To my soon-to-be-former husband and long-ago-lost best friend,  

As we start down this path towards separating out all the pieces of our life together, I have to let you know that this is not an easy process for me, as much as it seems that way to you. I am sure it feels that I am unfeeling at times, or indifferent to the pain I am causing you. Please know that this could not be further from the truth. It is precisely because I am not indifferent that we have had the past few years, such as they have been, and during that time I have tried all I can to reconnect with you, to find a place to rebuild, some little  corner of the foundation we put in place 20 years ago that still feels secure and stable. At each turn where I feel optimism rising, something happens to make it vanish into mist. I will always be sorry for that, for not finding a way to nurture that hope when it surfaced, ever so briefly.

This has been a year of tremendous introspection and transformation for me, too. While I know you resent it when I say this, my reflection on our marriage and how we have come to where we are keep bringing me back to the same realizations. I never doubted that you loved me, but it has been many, many years since you liked me. I feel this started just weeks after we were married and until the past year, when our son disclosed his cutting, I annoyed you endlessly - by chatting with people everywhere we went, not having dinner ready when you came home, the house not being tidy enough. I disappointed you - by not making enough money, by gaining weight. I made you angry - by confronting you or questioning you when I felt you were being overly harsh with the kids, or with me, by asking you to drive more carefully and more slowly, by commenting on anything since you so often took things as confrontation.

I cannot count the number of times I said, "We can't live like this any longer", yet did nothing effective to stop it. I would just hold back from confronting you and let things lie - you got less angry that way - and time would eventually ease the tension and we would fall back into our regular daily existence again. I knew that our family could only be harmonious if I chose not to respond to feeling hurt by you. This had a serious impact on me personally, and definitely took a fatal toll on our relationship. 

I am seriously asking myself why it is that I can no longer find it within me to try again, to do the necessarily painful and hard work of trying to rebuild our relationship again, brick by brick from the ground up. This is why I began seeing a therapist. I could not live with myself if I did not try every avenue to uncover a new approach or find a path that has been overlooked.

What I have learned is that comes down to an issue of trust, on several fronts. There have been too many experiences over too many years where I have trusted that things are getting better, only to have a sudden shift back to more hurtful patterns. When I would try to address with you how hurt I felt by your words, your tone, and your actions, I really do believe that your angry response came not from a lack of caring that you had hurt me but a sincere belief and perception that you hadn't. The problem for me, though, is that you did hurt me. Very deeply. Sometimes profoundly. And many times. 

What I need you to know is that I will always love you, and I will always feel a deep sense of loss about the end of our marriage. You are not simply imprinted onto the fabric of my life, but woven right into it. Since I was 22 years old, you have been an important part of so many of my experiences and memories. You were the reason I could never go out with the handsome veterinarian, to whom I was so grateful because he was the person who first suggested that I should take a good look at my feelings for you, saying that I was fooling myself when I said that we were "just friends". That encouragement led me to the realization that you were the person I wanted to be with, to grow old with. It was very difficult when it seemed, as time went on, that while you enjoyed our relationship, you never seemed quite as taken with the idea of a long life together as I was. The movie "When Harry Met Sally", that we watched every New Year's Eve, always brought me to tears at that moment ... when Harry says, "when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start right now!". 

I have always worried that I pushed you too hard to make that commitment and to marry me all those years ago, overlooking the reasons you may have had for not wanting that. You always said it was never a question for you, that you had always wanted me in your life and that marriage was what you truly wanted, yet you were so reluctant for so long. I was so focused on how much I loved you, and how many people say they married their best friend but for us, it would be absolutely true. The night we became engaged, I had come to you planning to end the relationship. After two years, and 10 years of friendship before that, I had come to feel that if you didn't know by then that you wanted to marry me, then you probably didn't. As Bonnie Raitt sang so poignantly at the time, "I can't make you love me/ if you don't/ I can't make your heart feel/ something it won't". While it was the last thing I wanted to do, I realized that the short term pain of ending the relationship would be better than continuing on knowing that you didn't want me in the same way I wanted you. But when we talked that night, you already had a ring, and had made your decision. 

It is just about killing me to do something that I know is causing you so much pain. When we have come close to this over the past few years, it is what has pulled me back. But we have to take this path this time. The impact on both of us is too great, and it is nothing short of destructive to the kids. There has been enough of that for all of us. Bonnie Raitt is still right. 

While I will be seen as the "instigator" to some, and the "villain" to others, I know in my heart this is where we have to go. Please do not think I am not feeling tremendous guilt and sadness. Just driving past our favourite restaurant, the one where we spent so many special evenings, puts me into tears every single time. Seeing ads for events and places that were important to us, that were part of our traditions, is so hard. These are things that will bring happier thoughts in the future, I am sure, but right now just cause a wave of grief to wash over me. 

I know you feel I am giving up, quitting. I guess I am. But I feel strong in my belief that I have done all that I can do over many years. It was 2 months into our 20 year marriage that I felt I'd lost my best friend, so I know well the feeling you are describing when you ask how I can expect you to go on after losing yours - I have just had a longer experience with it. I so wish there was another way. I wish, with all my heart, that I could find it within myself to tap into something that would show me a new path, one we haven't yet taken and that might lead to a better place. But I don't see it. And so much damage has been done already to each of us. I cannot express how desperately I tried to find another way, and how deeply I wished for one to appear before me. There is just too much hurt for me to trust that we could start over. We are now in the final third of our lives, and I do not want to live out my days in this emotional climate. And I am deeply sorry.

It is time for the kids to have a different kind of life, and to experience a better role model for good relationships. 

It is time to be happy. It is what I wish for you, and for me. 

With love always,
Your soon-to-be-former wife and long-ago-lost best friend

Songs have never let me down. When I am in a state about something, or there is a burning issue in my life that is needing my attention, I will turn on a radio or put on my iPod, and a song jumps up and says, "LISTEN TO THIS ... " And when this happens, it is almost always an important message that I need to pay attention to. I remember once, years ago, feeling so angry and upset by something my husband had said to me that I left the house just to drive around and regain my composure (I never wanted the kids to see me at that degree of distress). I was so angry that I was hyperventilating and actually finding it impossible to take one big breath. I turned on the ignition, and a song I had never heard before kept singing at me to "breathe, just breathe, breathe, just breathe" - it was Anna Nalick's song, "Breathe, 2 am". If I ever got a tattoo, this would be it ... "breathe". 

I sometimes wonder if Sarah McLachlan has any idea of how much she has touched my life, to the point where I almost feel she is my alter-ego. There are so many of her lyrics that have touched me, or have brought important things from the fog into focus. When I was struggling, trying to figure out why I couldn't do what I absolutely knew had to be done, she helped me. On my way to a therapy appointment (the focus of which was trying to figure out what was stopping me from doing what I knew I had to do) ... I turn on the ignition, and the song "Stupid" comes on the radio, and here is the line that was on ... 

"sleep has left me alone/ to carry the weight of unravelling where we went wrong/ it's all I can do to hang on, to keep me from falling into old familiar shoes.

And now, here I am feeling like everything is being shoved onto my shoulders. I feel like I have done this terrible thing to my soon-to-be-ex-husband, destroying his life even when he was "trying to fix things" (this is in quotations because there was never any real, honest-to-goodness effort). So I am sitting feeling terrible about how I have ruined his life, and although I know the reality of what led us to this point I still feel so responsible for ending things - I really do feel myself carrying the weight of this unravelling. It is such an internal fight for me to rally against the messages I have heard from him for so long - that I am irresponsible, unreliable, lazy, incompetent - and that he had to do and say what he did to balance out my shortcomings. That we are now coming to an end because I am unwilling to work it out, that I don't love him enough to fix things now that he is ready. That I am carelessly throwing away our family and that what I am choosing to do will be so harmful to our kids. That my decision to end our marriage would have killed his parents were they still living, because they loved me like a cherished daughter. That I have actively and systematically turned our children against him, and that that is the reason he is insisting on staying in our family home and forcing us out ("thanks to you, the only way they will want to see their dad is if it is the only way they get to come home"). I sit with the grief of knowing that he has chosen to turn two sets of very dear friends against me, and very likely against our kids. He has told them things that are simply untrue and are so distorted, even for him. I sit with the sadness of all of this, feeling that the weight of it might just crush me, feeling that I am doing something so profoundly hurtful and awful to my family, when along comes Sarah again! Here are the lyrics I just listened to, having heard the song, "Perfect Girl" for the first time ...

Am I faithful, am I strong, am I good enough to belong
in your reverie,
 a perfect girl
Your vision of romance is cruel and all along I played the fool
all your expectations bury me

Chorus:
Don't worry ,
you will find the answer if you let it go
give yourself some time to falter
But don't forgo knowing that you're loved no matter what
and everything will come around in time

I own my insecurities, I try to own my destiny
And I can make or break it if I choose
But you take my words and twist them 'round
'til I'm the one who brings you down
Make me feel like I'm the one to blame for all of this...

Chorus

You need everybody with you on your side
Know that I am here for you but I hope in time
You'll find yourself alright alone
You'll find yourself with open arms
You'll find yourself you'll find yourself in time

The riot in my heart decides to keep me open and alive
I have to take myself away from you
'cause I can't compete I can't deny there's nothing that I didn't try
how did I go so wrong in loving you

Wow, Sarah. Again, you have read my life. 

As we pack up things to take with us to our new house, it feels like we are surrounded by pain. I am trying not to stack boxes, because I am aware of how upsetting it is to my husband to see this. I get that in the cycle of grief, I am further along than he is. I experienced my sadness, anger and the bargaining phases long ago and have moved on to acceptance. I try to keep this in mind when he becomes so hateful and vengeful in his words. Not always easy, though.

Tomorrow is garbage day. Tonight, getting things ready to take out before bed, a few things happened that were really quite devastating - not just because of what he did, but of how strategic and deliberate he was in hurting us, and how despicably passive aggressive he is. 

I could see my daughter was upset about something, but she wouldn't say what, just "I'll tell you later". But I saw it for myself. In the doorway to our kitchen, a large and quite full recycling bag sat fully open at the top, as though someone had pulled the plastic to make a perfectly round opening as wide as it would go. Right on top of all the garbage, there were two strategically placed items that had clearly been seen by my daughter (as planned, no doubt). A few years back, my husband went on a business trip to Prague. Along with a tour guidebook for the city, we'd given him a card we made - on the cover a heart framing a photograph of me and the two kids. Inside, it said that we would miss him, and couldn't wait to hear all the stories when he came home.The card and tour guide were strategically placed on top of the garbage so it could be plainly seen. As I tied up that garbage bag, my husband called from the family room, saying he'd forgotten to get the garbage from the ensuite bathroom, and would I please get it. My daughter begged me not to, holding my arm so I couldn't go. I assured her it was okay, that I do that all the time (forget one little pocket of garbage) but she was adamant that I not do it. Finally, she said she knew why he'd asked me, and that there was something in the garbage he wanted me to see but that I shouldn't have to look at. I went down and opened the garbage can and found that she was right. A friend had taken a lovely photograph of my husband and I with the two kids at my 50th birthday brunch, and I had it made into an 8x10. This was crumpled up and thrown on top of the garbage, but opened enough that you could see which photo it was. 

My daughter was beside herself. "He just wants to throw our family away", she cried. I tried to explain that he is hurting terribly with all that is going on, and that he would never have done something like this with the purpose of hurting anyone. She disagreed. She said, rightly, that "I get it that he doesn't like me now that I am a teenager. But I wrote that card when I was a little girl. My printing in that card should be something he wants to keep but he has thrown it away. This is the meanest thing ever. And don't tell me he didn't want us to see it, or for you to see the one of our family in the other garbage. That is what he wanted, to hurt us by throwing us away." She was inconsolable, and would not speak to him for the rest of the night. I expressed my dismay to him that he would have done this, especially to the kids. One thing to put it in our bathroom garbage, but the other one was so clearly to hurt the kids. Of course, he denied it all, saying he hadn't even noticed what he was throwing out, he was just clearing out things that don't have meaning for him anymore. He is mean, and nasty, and this is exactly why I cannot continue to live with him or subject my kids to this kind of mind-messing crap. I never thought I could say this about him, but I can't wait until he is out of my life.