Hi Gary,

I’m sure she loved you (at the time) but keep in mind you guys were ONLY in your early to mid twenties. Babies by comparison to where you are now. All babies look cute and adorable, especially to each other. So here she is, a young mother, and she got swept off her feet by the guy next door. Classic cliché. She was overwhelmed and selfish. That’s about the extent of it. This baby raising babies made a very grown up, very serious mistake. Then karma bites her in the butt with marriage number two. Then husband number three dies. Now she’s a grown azz woman.

Now you’re going to call her and she’ll tell you… what, exactly? This is like a 21 year old calling someone they were best friends with at 7 and asking, “Why wouldn’t you play with me anymore?” Or something like that.

We are all getting older. We are all going to die. Give YOURSELF closure. She can’t do it for you, no matter what she says. Label it “My First Love. Mother of my Children.”

Best,

Inky

Dear Gary:

You are welcome. I will repeat your share and follow with my thoughts:

When you were 21 you met an 18 year old woman you married and immediately had two children. You got very busy with full time work and other activities and didn’t spend much time with your young wife. She shared with you that she was bored or lonely and you suggested that she “gets a job to break up her daily boredom”.

While the children were 2 and 4, your then 22 year old wife did get a job and worked night shift. Instead of returning home around 8 am, she returned around noon day after day for several weeks. She lied to you and told you that she worked overtime. You hardy saw her and felt neglected and lonely. Next, you had an affair with another woman.

At about that time, your four year old daughter directed you to Rob’s boat, your wife’s lover. Your four year old got in the car with you and directed you to arrive at Rob’s boat (“she directed me to a house. I shut off the car and gathered the kid…”). There you witnessed your wife “riding piggyback” with Rob. Following punching Rob in the face, once with your wife again, you told her about your affair, hoping the two of you will put an end to your respective affairs.

You ended your affair but she continued hers. You then called an attorney to seek immediate custody of the children and was granted that. Following a few months separation from your wife you discovered she was living with Rob. You then filed for divorce and she counter filed. You rethought the divorce, feeling love for her,  and withdrew your divorce papers. But she didn’t and divorce was granted.

Two weeks after the divorce was granted she showed up at your door and told you: “You were the best friend I ever had”. You asked her to leave. She went back to Rob, eventually marrying him. Her marriage to Rob lasted 2.5 years and he left her for another woman. She then called you but you were remarried at that point and you “cut her off of communication”. She then married again and that (third) marriage lasted five years. Her third husband died and widowed, she now lives in the general area where you live.

You got remarried at 28 to a young woman who accepted you and your two young children. Now married for 35 years, your two children are about forty years old.

You are struggling with the following: you don’t remember your ex wife ever telling you that she loved you and you are not sure she ever loved you. She never apologized to you for hurting you by having the affair with Rob. You now “need absolute closure” and would “like to talk to her to answer these questions” but you don’t want to hurt your wife of 35 years by talking to your ex wife of long ago.

My thoughts: Let’s say you met your ex wife and asked her: did you ever love me? If she said Yes (or No), would that be the closure, will that be all it takes to achieve that closure? If you asked her: why didn’t you ever apologize to me about your affair? And she would then apologize, almost forty years after that affair, will the be your closure?

If your answers are affirmative, that is all it would take to close that hole in your soul, then it is a good idea to talk with her. But if the answer is that it might not suffice to provide you relief from that  pain you are experiencing, I think it is way better that instead of talking to your ex wife of so long ago, that you talk to a good psychotherapist. In therapy you can examine the nature of that hole in the soul, the nature of the closure you are seeking. There you are likely to discover that the closure you are seeking cannot happen in one conversation with… anyone.

anita

Dear Gary:

“She seemed so callous and uncaring and it cut me to the bone”, you wrote in your original post. Then you wrote, “it just periodically hurts to this day”- her betrayal of you almost forty years ago still hurts.

It reads to me that you did all the right things in spite of that pain, getting custody of the children, ending any and all efforts to resume the relationship  once the divorce was granted, getting remarried to a good woman with whom you’ve been married for 35 years, and you did all that despite the hurt.

Betrayal hurts, a whole lot. It may still hurt. There is no undoing of betrayal, undoing of the hurt that results. But I o hope that this thread is the closure you have been seeking. If she reads it, like you wrote, she will know it is about her. If she doesn’t read it, I read your story. Others have. Your story of betrayal and hurt has been read and acknowledged.

anita

Dear Gary:

You are now 64. Your ex wife cheated on you when you were about 24, this is forty years ago. You divorced her soon after and got remarried. And yet, your anger is still intense and relentless forty years later. Coming to the “narcissistic sociopath” label for her is not likely to end this “pain for nearly 40 years”, or close that “hole in (your) soul”.

There is more to your anger than what this woman did forty years ago.

anita

Dear Gary:

You are back almost 3 years following our last communication. You found out that your first wife suffers from an aggressive brain tumor and you feel badly for your shared adult children. How are they reacting to this terrible news, and how are you feeling about it?

anita

Dear Gary,

something else occurred to me – she opted for a night job, which seems like a pretty radical way to “break up her daily boredom”. You then practically didn’t see each other, because you were busy the entire day (full-time job plus rehearsals in the evening), while she was away the entire night.

Her choice of job also might have been her way of showing protest to your not paying attention to her, to letting her work in the night shift instead of stopping her and showing that you care about her. But you didn’t pick that up, but rather got involved in an affair yourself…

It shows you both made some rash, immature decisions at that time. The difference is that you’ve later realized your mistake, regretted it and apologized, while she hasn’t. You wanted to repair what was broken, she didn’t.

I wonder if you’ve ever apologized to her for not being there for her enough in those first few years of marriage, and for suggesting she should find a job, instead of spending more time with her?

Dear Gary,

A long while has past since my original post , and although I’ll never forget those days and events of long ago , I’m in a much better place now.

You started this thread saying you are in pain because you don’t know if she ever loved you, and that you need to know before she passes away. You now say that she indirectly told you she didn’t marry you out of love but because she got pregnant with your child (“What else was I suppose to do.”)

You sort of have your answer (and had it years ago), but are you at peace with it? To be honest, it seems to me that a part of you wants to put all the blame on her for your breakup (and in the recent weeks this part got stronger and more convinced that it was completely her fault). But another part of you has doubts, and that was the part writing the original post.

In your original post you wrote:

About 3-4 years into the marriage I got caught up in activities that required a large time investment plus worked a full time job. What followed was my blindness to my wifes needs for my attention. And I basically dismissed it as an overreaction and suggested she get a job to break up her daily boredom.

You acknowledged that you were blind to your wife’s needs, that you dismissed them and suggested her to find a job to “break up her daily boredom.” I can hardly imagine a woman with 2 small children (and no full-time nanny service) to be bored during the day. Raising 2 small children is a full-time job, so I don’t understand what you were referring to when you described her problem as “daily boredom”? I cannot match raising 2 small children with “boredom”, but rather with “exhaustion”. That’s why I said that when she opted for a job in the night shift, she might have done it out of spite, protesting against you accusing her of boredom.

You now say that you gave your wife everything she needed:

I was there , all she had to do was open up and talk about it. I recommended counseling , therapy , whatever it took … she was just not interested.

So when she first complained and asked for more attention from you, did you dismiss it and suggested she should find a job, or you were there for her, showing compassion and understanding? I think that if you want to heal the pain you are occasionally feeling, it would be important that you answer this question honestly for yourself…