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"Losing a marriage forces you to completely redefine your life - whether you want to or not. You spend a lot of time wondering (or rehashing) where you went wrong and second-guessing all the decisions you now have to make on your own. Some of that can hold you back and keep you wallowing, but a little introspection is a good thing, I think. Here are a few of the things I&amp;#039;ve learned about myself in this process:  I own my own choices. First I blamed him for our problems. Then I saw how so many things he griped about in my behavior were due to me trying to avoid confrontation. I enabled a lot of the bad behavior I saw in him and the bad behavior I displayed myself. In short, I made those choices, and they weren&amp;#039;t good ones, for either of us. I didn&amp;#039;t &amp;quot;fail&amp;quot; at marriage. Yes, our marriage failed. There were things we both could have done, across many years to have possibly made it work. But we had twenty-two years together, and a lot of it was good. We grew in very different ways across those years, and while I&amp;#039;ll always feel we could have done more, I don&amp;#039;t think we were a complete failure. It just is what it is. It&amp;#039;s okay that I needed more than he could give. We were so young when we started out - I didn&amp;#039;t even know what I wanted out of life and in retrospect, neither did he. I felt guilty for a long time about not just getting over all thing things that made me sad or angry or miserable about our relationship. I wondered if I shouldn&amp;#039;t have just &amp;quot;sucked it up&amp;quot; more and concentrated on him and his needs to a greater degree. I know now that I should have opened my mouth and talked about things more - mainly because he wasn&amp;#039;t ever going to talk about anything. Maybe if we&amp;#039;d fought more, cleared the air more, it would have made a difference. I don&amp;#039;t have to be his friend. I wanted one of those amicable divorces. I wanted us, ten years down the road, to be hanging out at each other&amp;#039;s backyard barbeques. I wanted our future partners to be best of friends with both of us. I realize now that he just doesn&amp;#039;t have it in him to do that. He will never be comfortable around me, ever. Maybe it&amp;#039;s his guilt, maybe it&amp;#039;s anger...I don&amp;#039;t know which, but his discomfort is a palpable thing. The best we can be is civil, and maybe even cordial, but we won&amp;#039;t be buddies and you know what? That&amp;#039;s okay. I need to keep moving forward, even if I have to push myself to do it. When your whole life is derailed, you go into a state of numbness that takes you a while to work through. It can easily turn into hibernating, from life, from friends, from everything. You&amp;#039;re cut loose and all on your own and if you&amp;#039;re waiting for everyone else to invite you back to living a life, you may be in for a long wait. Sometimes, it&amp;#039;s worth it just to make yourself do things. Whether that&amp;#039;s taking a new career or going on a date or picking up a new hobby, you have to keep the momentum going.  Like I said, you learn a lot about yourself in this process, and as time goes by and I&amp;#039;m putting some perspective on all of this, I&amp;#039;m learning even more. What did you learn about yourself from revisiting a past relationship?  [Ellie DeLano is the author of David And Me Under The Sea: Essays From A Decade With Autism, and also blogs at SingleMomtism.com. You can follow Ellie on Facebook and Twitter] "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/relationships/dating-marriage/a48846/5-things-i-learned-about-myself/>