Dear Nan:

Nan- she deserves to be happy: calm, centered, loved.

I was hoping to read from you before New Year. I never understood, in all my reading of your posts, why you think R-2 will be violent. I didn’t read any evidence to him being inclined to be homicidal or suicidal or otherwise bring about physical mayhem as a result of you leaving. It is possible, as any person has the brain that can conceive of violence and carry it through, but seems to me improbable, as far as R-2 is concerned.

This is how I assume he reacts to you leaving, and again, taken from my reading of your posts:

He will complain and approach others for sympathy: poor me! My terrible wife left me! Oh, poor, poor me!

Pretending in the meantime, living with R-s, must be very hard, as used as you are to it, isn’t it?

anita

Dear Nan:

You wrote that “there are many shocking stories out there” – so I did a tiny bit of research:

https:// en.wikipedia. bborg/wiki/ Domestic_violence_in_the_United_States
says: “1,181 females were killed by their intimate partners in 2005.”

infoplease. com/ipa says there were 879,000 divorces in the US in 2005.

Divide 329 by 879,000 and it is about 0.1% IF all murdered women were newly divorced in that year. The percentage is less than 0.1% for you because of your and R-2’s ages, lack of history of domestic violence, etc.

Now, notice this,
https: //www.cardiosmart. org/Heart-Basics/CVD-Stats, reads:
“35.3% of deaths in American women over the age of 20, or more than 432,000, are caused by cardiovascular disease each year.”

This means, according to my unprofessional understanding, that your chance to die of a cardiovascular disease (caused or aggravated by the anxiety of living with R-2, planning and pretending and so forth…?) is about 400 TIMES your chance of being murdered by R-2. (1,181 as opposed to 432,000)

What do you think about this?

anita

Dear Nan:

Please promise me that when you make the move you will write about it here? It’s been a long time… even for me and I am so curious to know how it is going to work out.

You wrote that you can’t control anything but you sure have been trying, sure are trying, to make the move just at the right time and the right way to avoid the different catastrophes you envision: your son not graduating, R-2 falling apart into paralysis of sorts, suicide or worse: causing mayhem.

And yet, again, as one reading your posts over time, your son and R-2 don’t read to me, from your sharing, as sensitive or likely to not graduate or fall apart. It reads to me that they will be fine. Reads to me that R-2 will lie to you and to others about how badly he will be doing, so to manipulate you.

Remember that, will you: anita said R-2 is likely to tell you (directly or indirectly, through another) how badly he is doing.. maybe how badly your son is doing, and you will be inclined to believe him because you already predict such catastrophes, but check the truthfulness of it before believing.

Back to the title of your thread: yes, you do deserve to be happy, and the good news: your happiness will not bring unhappiness to anyone at all, says I!

anita

Dear Nan:

Yes, Francesca maybe thought it would be better to her then teenage children that she stays with their father, and she stayed. But her daughter ended up in a bad marriage. The daughter, at the end of the movie, decided to leave her bad marriage after reading her mother’s story. She, the daughter, decided to make the choice her mother was too afraid to make. Hence, the message is- go fro it, Nan- Nan she ran, this time toward something good.

anita