SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

It's been 8 months since DD and 4 months since the divorce, I stopped coming to this site thinking I no longer needed it, boy was I wrong! after months of staying away I just felt compelled to log back in and read some thread under the divorce/separated forum. I'm so thankful I did! I didn't realize this stage also should be NC but now it's with my XWH! I tried to convince myself that we should try and be friends, yet over these past few months every time I had contact I'd feel guilt and start to question my choice for divorce. It made me miss him, I even have agreed to see him a few times. How do you find the strength to keep NC to someone who was once your best friend? I know he hurt me, beyond belief, I have NO DOUBT that our marriage could not be saved (after MC and a brief stent of reconciliation) but why can't I let go of communication? Can you ever get to a point that contact is no longer damaging and can be achieved. I don't want to be the divorced parents that hate eachother and never talk. can divorced spouses ever be just friends again?

Yes, I have this wish too, NWOF. But it's bitten me in the past, in a really big and painful ways, so I don't generally bother to contact him anymore.

It makes me have withdrawal symptoms so that I am never really free of pain, but those are pains I trust, in an odd way. They are consistent and constant and something I can understand. The pain from him, not so much.

Every time I am tempted to write something, I make myself remember enough pain he has caused me but without it being a trigger. It's really hard sometimes, but just remembering a feeling of that pain makes me put the electronics back down again.

Remembering who he has become, in current times, helps, too. He's not my friend, he doesn't give a damn about me and I get that now. He too, was once my best friend and confidant and if I speak to him now, he has thrown things I say back in my face. Another lesson.

So this is how I find the strength, though its a lot harder when I am low.

I, too, had hoped to be not friends, but civil, is the word that comes to mind. I feel all these things in my mind and the bitterness and anger, but do not say them. I have a friend who does and it's really, really terrible to hear and a lesson for me.

So, FWIW, I do not contact nearly ExH no matter what...I go to great length not to and I pat myself on the back every time I've stopped myself.

notwarmorfuzzy, I had a previous relationship where I lived with someone and we broke up "naturally" (still painful, but not the result of an A). It took us AT LEAST *7 YEARS* of intense almost daily effort to learn to become friends without fighting, pain, etc. It paid off because he is now my best friend again, I'm going to be the godmother of his child (who will be here soon!) and I'm very good friends with his new wife and there is no "weirdness" between us at all... but that was one hell of a road and, again, I didn't have the pain of an A to have to contend with.

By contrast, I do not predict being able to be friends with my WS (who I think I need to start calling my XWS). Part of that is just out of pure self-respect. Friends don't treat one another the way he treated me... never mind partners. And I told him flat out on DDay#1 that if he broke NC with OW it would kill the possibility of even a friendship with me (which he wanted as an "at least")... and he slept with her again. So to be friends with him would be going against my own word.

And, frankly, after the effort with that previous relationship-now-bff... it's too much work to do it successfully.

[This message edited by PhantomLimb at 7:14 PM, July 26th (Friday)]

I don't want to be the divorced parents that hate each other and never talk. can divorced spouses ever be just friends again?

I don't hate ex. I can be in the same room with him and have a conversation with him. But friends? Nope, not gonna happen. I don't choose to have friends who treat me the way he treated me.

As far as NC goes, I haven't talked to or seen ex in over a year. It really helps that my kids are young adults now, and they manage their own relationships with their dad. Besides, I learned that if I have contact with ex it just invites the crazy back into my life, and I'm so done with being on that train. Not to mention, I suspect ex is on a short leash with the wifetress since she seemed to ramp up the crazy whenever I talked to him. I hear she's more than a little insecure. Can't imagine why...