About a year and a half or two years after we separated, my ex-husband became involved with a woman whom he would go on to live with for seven years or so. She (and her husband) and kids were neighbors of his, and she and S were "friends" at first. Whether or not they were the kind of friends that were in each other's pants before she actually left her husband, I dunno for sure. My sense was always "yes" even though S denied it. But we know what a big lying liar he was/is anyway, right, kids? Right!
In any case, her husband was purportedly an alcoholic, and at some point--probably when she realized she had S hooked enough that she wasn't going to be alone with three kids if she made her move--she kicked him out. Or tried to kick him out. There ended up being lots of drama and threats and maybe some actual physical violence. But in any case, she ended up, fearful, having S take her and the kids out of her marital abode and to a motel one night. I remember this clearly because she and I were about the same size and S borrowed some of my clothes for her because she'd left her house with basically none of her belongings.
Eventually her husband came to the realization that he was better off without her and the kids and stopped contesting any legal proceedings, etc, and as I said, she and S were a couple for a fairly long time. But during the initial battling, S looked at me one day in the midst of telling me all about it and asked--I swear, literally quizzically--"Was I that much of an asshole to you?" And when I confirmed that he indeed had been, he apologized. It was as if a fucking lightbulb had gone on over his head. Ohhhhh...
I think it was the beginning of his being a fairly decent human being for a few years. Note the "fairly." Note also that when this woman eventually hurt him, betrayed him, and left him, that was the end of that, and he became the kind of completely selfish person who didn't visit his own son in the hospital for 2 1/2 months that he is today. Not that I'm, like, bitter or anything.
But I was reminded of this recently when a friend divulged to me a fairly horrific bit of abuse she was subjected to in a previous relationship. My reaction was "Well, thank god you got rid of him." My friend said that, yeah, her ex didn't understand why they "couldn't at least be friends." So I asked her if he had ever apologized to her or at least acknowledged that what he'd done was wrong. And she said, no, he maintained that she drove him to it. "Well, fuck him, then," I said. And it occurred to me then, and now, that while talk is cheap, I do not underestimate the power of the honest admission of culpability.
I've got nothing to apologize for yet today. That could change!
xoxo
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