Epic Comeback Starts Right Here

What a great game.

Two veteran quarterbacks way beyond the NFL’s average age for professional football players, battling it out for the AFC Championship title and a spot in Superbowl L (50, for those of you not up on your Roman numerals).

Holding true to form, it’s a given that you can’t just lead by a touchdown when playing either of these teams.  The New England Patriots have Tom Brady and the Denver Broncos’ habit of scoring with less than a minute left in the game started around the time of John Elway. Peyton Manning is no slouch either.  At age 39 I watched him run for a first down, no longer winning games with his arm, now his feet are involved.

In between plays I read Husband #2’s petition for divorce, which arrived Sunday.

Technically, the divorce papers arrived in Saturday’s post, but I wasn’t around to pluck the big envelope out of the mailbox. It sat outside overnight because no one knew it was coming.  Husband #2 was supposed to keep me apprised of the filing, but hey, it’s par for the course that he just drops surprise announcements on me out of the blue.

“The petitioner and respondent have made efforts at reconciliation prior to filing this petiion…”I bust out laughing when I got to the paragraph and I think I peed a little.  Eh, sign of the times for my 50 year old bladder.

Too funny.

Sure, I went to marriage counseling, which was a waste of time. Two people battling each other, telling a third party how he/she is wrong.  I went. I made changes. I heard the counselor tell Husband #2 that he would have to acknowledge my changes or else I would get discouraged and give up. I started personal therapy and hit it hard. Husband #2 went to one personal therapy session and stopped.

That’s what I got out of marriage counseling.

I suggested reading Boundaries in Marriage after our little book club for two finished Boundaries by Townsend and Coud.  “Nope, I’m not reading it. You can read it if you want,” Husband #2 informed me. And so I did.

Another time I told him that I would like us to participate in the Marriage Max program put together by Mort Fertel. While Husband #2 said he noticed a change in me for the better of our relationship, he himself wasn’t interested in hearing about or participating in Marriage Max. Well… I soon got the picture that if it wasn’t his suggestion, we weren’t doing it.

As John Gottman said in a recent video, you can do everything to fix things but if the other person has already made up their mind to leave, there’s nothing you can do to change that attitude. It has to come from them.

So, yeah, I laughed. Outloud. Really, really hard. Through my tears of laughter, the nice people at Nationwide flashed their Peyton Manning commercial and it fit.  Sing along with me:

Epic comeback starts right here

Instead of playing ping pong with the neighbor kid, I’m celebrating my future.  Optimism. Hope. Courage. Excitement. And you’ll need more than a lucky shot to bring me down.

Thomas Edison:  I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

Deja Vow:  I have not failed. I’ve just found 2 people out of 1,000,000 available single men between the ages of 45-55 who don’t want to be married to me. 

I think that 1 million number is conservative based on census data. In the US only. I haven’t even included Spain in my numbers. Or the Hot Scots living on the moors.

Furthermore, while I miss Husband #2 and some of the great parts of our relationship, I won’t get drawn into his assessment of us being toxic.  If he wants to be toxic, he can, but I’m not. I don’t intentionally run around hurting people and manipulating strings.

What I am is human, prone to make mistakes, while also capable of learning, changing, and becoming a better person, partner, being. I may have flaws, but none of them is fatal. Which means I’ll move along quite nicely as I head down my path.

And research shows that people with this attitude will recover faster from a breakup.

So my epic comeback starts right here and that will be my theme for 2016.

And let me just finish by saying, Crawfish Shorts, I like your style….