Sadness Part 5

The divorce of my in-laws became final sometime in October 2008 I believe. My father in law has moved to another state and is working at a job that he doesn't much like. He's looking for another job, and he seems to be feeling the pain and trying to turn to God for help from the little we hear. It's still hard to find the right level of involvement with his personal life because he still spends a lot of time dealing with and thinking about his ex-wife.

We've heard rumors that my wife's mother was getting married, and we heard from her father today that it has happened. Again, we're trying to find the right balance of maintaining a relationship and not getting too involved. In the past few months, things became so difficult with her that we had to call a break to all contact with her while we recovered and worked to know what kind of a relationship might be possible in the future.

At this point, my wife wants nothing to do with her mother, as, in addition to the existing problems they had, she feels that her mother was AT LEAST having an "emotional affair" with the man she has married for over a year now, if not a physical one, and this sort of "falling in love with another man" has happened more than once in the past. She is willing to consider that, maybe, some day, she will want to have some contact with her mother, but she has no idea if she will ever feel that way.

We have been reading a book called "How to Hug a Porcupine", and we've tried to be sensitive to the things that we do that make us porcupine-like. Even so, the descriptions given in the first part of what a porcupine-like person does has sounded very familiar to how we have been treated by my mother-in-law. Hopefully we can learn to not be that way ourselves, and maybe even be able to deal with people who are that way.

This is the most closely I have ever been involved with a divorce, even though I've had siblings go through divorce in the past. I appreciate the support from those who know what we're feeling, and as bad as this is, I know it could always be worse. I'm glad it's not. We'll start working on building the relationship with her father again for now, and we'll depend on the Lord to help us going forward.