My thoughts on forgiveness, if they help, are that it's the act of letting go of the anger, hurt, and bitterness. It doesn't mean I was wrong to feel angry, hurt, and bitter, and I grant myself as much time as I need to face those feelings and let them go little by little. It's first and foremost an act of kindness to myself to let them go because I can feel their heavy weight and I can't drag them around forever.
And the truth is, to be healthy, I need to let them go whether or not I choose to remain in my marriage. Divorce would remove the person who made me angry, bitter, and hurt, so maybe that would be a quick reprieve, but ultimately those feelings must be faced and worked through. Whether I reconcile as openly and optimistically as possible, or whether I divorce and commit to as amicable a co-parenting relationship as possible, I must choose to let go of the hurt for ME. And I must choose to let others in, whether it's my husband or a new partner, because I value intimacy and I'm smart enough to choose an appropriate partner, and I'm strong enough to weather that partner hurting me.
Have you read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations? They give logic to emotional issues. Here are some quotes that made me think of your situation:
“Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.”
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
“How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.”
“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.”
"Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother (not in the physical sense, but as a fellow creature similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine); therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading. Neither can I be angry with my brother or fall foul of him; for he and I were born to work together, like a man’s two hands, feet or eyelids, or the upper and lower rows of his teeth. To obstruct each other is against Nature’s law – and what is irritation or aversion but a form of obstruction.”
“Receive without conceit, release without struggle.”
“Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretense.”
“It is not the actions of others which trouble us (for those actions are controlled by their governing part), but rather it is our own judgments. Therefore remove those judgments and resolve to let go of your anger, and it will already be gone. How do you let go? By realizing that such actions are not shameful to you.”
“No man is happy who does not think himself so.”
“Live out your life in truth and justice, tolerant of those who are neither true nor just.”
“Do not be ashamed of help.”
“When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you'll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them. Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. In which case they're misguided and deserve your compassion. Is that so hard?”
“Failure to read what is happening in another's soul is not easily seen as a cause of unhappiness: but those who fail to attend the motions of their own soul are necessarily unhappy.”
[This message edited by swmnbc at 10:07 AM, January 19th (Tuesday)]