When Trial Is the Answer
Some seasons do not resolve through agreement. I trust that walking the longer path is sometimes the right path.
Have you spent enormous energy trying to make the shorter path work? The fact that it did not work is not a verdict on your effort. Some things cannot be agreed into. Some processes require someone outside the conflict to make the decision because the people inside the conflict cannot.
You did not choose this. You did not want this. There is a grief in accepting it — the grief of letting go of an ending you imagined, the grief of the time and resources the longer path will require, the grief of having to keep being someone who shows up to difficult rooms when you so badly wanted to be done with all of it.
Let the grief be there. It is honest. And then — gently, when you are ready — set it to one side and put your hand on the longer path. The longer path is also a path. It is not a failure of the shorter one. It is a different shape of the same work — the work of moving toward an ending.
You have walked harder paths than this. You have walked the path of the years you were inside the relationship. You have walked the path of the choosing to leave. You have walked the path of the long aftermath. The path in front of you now is a known path, and you know how to walk it.
First the trying for the shorter path. Then the grief that it was not available. Then, slowly, the steady walking of the longer one. One step. Then the next. Then the rest of them, in time.