So now the Ex told me she's getting back together with the car salesman she admits is abusive

[villager]

Verbally abusive, for what the distinction's worth.

And an alcoholic.

She had a breakdown last fall, and went to the hospital for a couple weeks. I stayed in "our" old house -- now hers -- to live with our boys, get them off to school, etc. Right around election time, actually...

Our marriage -- the anger always trumping any tenderness -- ended when she had an affair with a car salesman. She's broken up with him, and gotten back together, half a dozen times since then.

After her hospitalization, she seemed serious about dealing with her depression, and other issues that went untended -- or were cast as being entirely "my fault" -- during our marriage.

I told her, after that, that for the first time since our marriage ended, it seemed like some sort of "friendship" (or at least, some non permanent war footing) might be possible.

I mean hey, if humanity can do it with the Cylons, right? ;-)

So, things have okay-ish with her, relative to how they usually are between us.

Then today she lets me know she's been seeing the Car Salesman again.

I was able to talk to her about it, rather than screaming -- told her she was sounding a lot like Rhianna, with all her equivocating, and that frankly, she deserved better -- someone who could treat her with kindness.

I also told I realized I was powerless over her choices, but I thought this was a particularly poor one, even from a parenting standpoint. I also was finally able to tell her I always resented that I bent over backwards to please her, and wound up sleeping on couches, and this guy abuses her and abuses her and she can't wait to rush back.

She said she understood. I said she couldn't, but then she said, well, at least she was able to listen.

In any case, I'm really realizing there's nothing I can do about whatever shitty choices her depression and low self-esteem cause her to make.

And I have been stuck -- emotionally, geographically -- trying to protect my boys against them.

It's time to move on. Not from my sons, of course. They're the loves of my life.

But from any notion, or at least expectation, that my wife will "wake up," or suddenly "be better..."

I mean, that's out of my hands. As are her destructive decisions.

Nor do her decisions require me to be enraged at her all the time.

All I can do is tend to my own healing, in order to be here for, well, myself, and thus, my sons.