Mark writes:
When my ex-wife started crying because after 2 years I was sick for no good reason and not getting better, I took the weight of that responsibility and over-reacted. I left to stay with my parents. She took that opportunity to serve me with divorce papers. 90 days later, we were divorced. So easy.
It wasn't my responsibility to make her feel better. That's what the rational part of me says. But we don't view the world in mere rational terms, do we?
It wasn't smart of her to spew emotionally heavy words, like "you're sucking me down." I still don't know whether I should have agreed with her and asked her to accept things as they were. or whether I should have rejected the statement as false, saying "nobody can suck you down but yourself."
12 years and I still don't know what was the right thing to say. I think about it all the time. No mental health-therapist is willing to venture an option. Maybe it's wrong to try to make sense out of an intractable situation, and grace is the best and only solution.
What do you guys, think?
Yours,
-- Mark in Seattle