What if....

What if you meet the love of your life and you are already married to someone else........ I saw a movie tonight and in one of the scenes, Drew Barrymore's character tell this to her friend who has met a married man that she "can't stop thinking about".  This encouraged her friend to call this man even knowing he was married.  They met innocently enough and it grew from there. This question is pretty thought provoking.  The whole involvement of these two characters, the girl and the married man.  It showed how this man struggled against his attraction to her.....he did try to fight it.  He told her he can't do this......but in the end he gave in to it.   Although it didn't work out in the movie for them, the question still remains in my mind. What if you meet the love of your life and you are already married to someone else. I ask myself is this what happened to my husband?  I know now that we didn't have a good marriage.  I know we could have had a great marriage if he would have tried, but as it stood the day he told me he was done, it wasn't a good marriage.  Did he meet the love of his life while he was married to me?  I know at one time I was the love of his life, just as he was mine, but over the 23 years we had together that chemistry changed and the joy in our marriage was replaced with anger and resentment.  So, was he so wrong to find happiness with someone else?  I know what he did was wrong.  And I know that him lying about it made it worse.  But, can I fault him for finding the happiness with someone else that was missing with me? This question in this movie really made me stop and think.  What would I have done if the situation was reversed?  What if in my unhappiness (and I was unhappy too) I found someone, innocently, who stole my heart.  What would I do?   Looking back now I can see everything with more clarity.  So at 48 I have to admit that half of my life is over.  Do I spend the second half of my life unhappy just to keep the commitment of my marriage.  If I know in my heart that I don't love my husband like I should....do I stay in the marriage anyway even if I met someone I know I could be happy with?  These are tough questions and I don't really know what I would do because I never put myself in that position.  But, can I honestly fault my husband for allowing it?  I know he should've told me about it before it got too involved.  But what if in his eyes, there was no way to fix our marriage.  What if he really believed this to be true.  What if meeting this woman gave him the courage to finally walk away after years of being unhappy.  What if he asked himself the same question.....if half of my life is over, do I really want to live the last half being unhappy.  Can I really fault him for this?   I know a lot of people will totally disagree with me on this.  I know that everyone wants to place blame on someone, as do I, but now that I am emotionally untied from my husband, I am seeing things, as I said, with more clarity.   Does this mean it doesn't hurt....no.  Does this mean I forgive him....no.  I know he went about this all wrong and he is still making huge mistakes with me and the kids, but I realize that he didn't set out to hurt me on purpose.  It's that old cliche....."I didn't mean for it to happen".  Does that make it OK.....no.  But it is what it is. So I propose the question to myself.....what would I have done if I met the love of my life while I was unhappily married.   It's a tough question but it puts a different perspective on things for me.