All,

Thank you so much for your kind words and advice.

Anita, It is nice to hear from you again. I am not deluding myself that she can just choose to be different and be different without a lot of work. She will likely need a lot of therapy and possibly medication, but the first step is a choice, a choice to make herself better. I am nowhere near qualified to diagnose her, but I suspect a specific personality disorder – there is a lot more going on than verbal abuse. During this time, I have found that my own values will not allow me to stop pursuing her, I have a thing about commitment – I made a commitment and I will honor it until the end, which will likely be pretty soon. I will not allow myself to be manipulated or verbally abused any more, but I will continue to act in loving and kind ways. Now that she sees that I am serious about divorce mediation, she is trying to manipulate me, saying she wants to move into the house and avoiding any conversation about mediation. So, I will give her another choice and a week to decide; couples therapy, schedule a mediation date, or I will hire an attorney and file in court…but through this all I will continue to be a kind, compassionate, and loving person. I will have some type of relationship with her for many more years, we have a daughter together and verbal and emotional abuse is not recognized by the courts as a grounds to not award shared custody – so I will not devolve to her level of disrespect and I will be able to look at myself in the mirror and be happy with my own actions and behavior.

Jane, thank you for your kind wishes.

Savannah, thank you for your recommendations. I will continue to grow, I enjoy becoming a better person than I once was. I guess pursuing her love probably isn’t what I am doing because I don’t want to be with her as she is now. I think what I am doing is honoring a commitment that I made when we married, which is to love her – and show her love. When the marriage is over, then I am released from that commitment, though I will still love her as a person and as the mother of my daughter.

I know how toxic this kind of abuse is and I now know what to avoid in a relationship. It’s been a tough lesson; took me 12 years. Assuming the marriage is over, I will have to learn how to date and how to screen potential partners. She was my first girlfriend and I will always be grateful for the good things in the relationship but I cannot allow myself to forget the bad things, forgive yes, but I need to remember to learn from my mistakes.