Wow! So, I just realized... this year would have been my 20th anniversary with my X if we had not D'd.
Why is this realization important? I hadn't thought about it until now, and even then, it was only because I was reading another thread where someone was talking about what anniversary it would have been for them.
It's July... the anniversary would have been in the beginning of May.
In other words - what would have been an important milestone went by completely unnoticed by me. Which is great!
This year will be my 6th anniversary with DH. We got married about 4 1/2 years after my D. Like anyone, we have good days and bad, but overall, things are so much better this time around.
I just thought I would comment on all this because... even though I know I was healed enough by the time I started dating DH... there are levels of healing all the way along when you go through this.
DH and I used to joke about my "baggage"... that we were throwing it out of the car on our way down to our wedding/honeymoon. But even when healed, there can still be some "baggage" left behind.
I still have a few areas where I tend to be over-sensitive with DH because of things my X used to say or do (there was mental/emotional abuse). But those are getting to be further and fewer between.
And I find it quite encouraging that I didn't even remember that this would have been a "big" anniversary until well after the fact, and only when reminded because of someone else talking about it. It wasn't that long ago that I would have at least been a little melancholy about a missed milestone like that - even though I'm happy that I've moved on and have a much better life now. It was just a sadness for "what might have been".
But now, I don't even miss the "might have beens".
The point? Well... I know we all talk about going through D and NB as a roller coaster. And maybe at the end it sort of is like one.
But I think a better analogy is a pendulum. The swings can be really big at the beginning, but eventually, they get less and less until they finally die out completely.