Hi Hurting: What you're coming up against is something you were supposed to have handled even before your son was born. Your son is mirroring you and your addiction to abuse, blaming, spite, and manipulation. You are experiencing the effects of years of your leadership-communication model. That you have reached out is commendable.

What's missing is the truth from each of them, and from you. From her you need to hear what she did to destroy her marriage. From him you need to hear what he did to destroy his marriage. He's the one who attracted her; he's the one who used her to "destroy" his military career. In other words, if I were him, I'd have to be willing to tell the story from the point of view of what I did to drive my wife out of my life. Instead, you have trained him to lie. Worse yet, you are passing these lies on to others, "She divorced me." That you didn't see/catch this lie and nip it in the bud reveals that you agree that she divorced him. On paper and legally she did. However, he's going to have to tell the truth someday, about how he manipulated her into initiating the divorce so that he gets to look like the good guy. Who taught him to blame? Who failed to teach him how to select a supportive partner? I assure you he had many indicators of what was in store for him up front during the first and second dates.

I'm betting that you stuffed some thoughts about them and their relationship at the very beginning Whatever thought, whatever intuition or sense, you had, that you did not verbalize to everyone, became the unconscious hex on the marriage. They were counting on your wisdom to guide them as they learned how to communicate an upset. It's for certain you didn't communicate to them—

There will be no sanctuary for blamers in this house. Call me the first time you have a communication that doesn't end mutually satisfying. I'll not be party to accumulated blames and make-wrongs. I don't want to hear, "She's divorcing me." That would mean you hid some things from me, that you deceived me. Your relationship is either magnificent or one of you is on the phone to me.

While it may appear ". . . the issue . . . is loyalty . . ." that thought hides another truth.

You ask, "What would you do in our shoes?" I have no reality that you, not you and your husband, will do what it will take to bring about a transformation. Your use of the word "our" reveals your resistance to accepting responsibility for creating and cleaning up the mess. You created the problem and only you can disappear it.

Re: ". . . it kills us to know she's suffering the consequences of her decision to break up the marriage." For certain she's suffering but the source of her "suffering" is not her decision to divorce; there's something underneath that. Notice the con that you're running on both of them? You've conned her into conning you into rewarding her for trashing your son. You've conned him into actually thinking that you can be conned into not seeing her after he manipulated her into trashing him.*

If you keep communicating as you have been, with your leadership-communication skills, you will predictably teach your grandchildren how to blame. One or two conversations with you is all it takes for the blame-pattern to be imprinted—that's how powerful you are. Although you and your husband have mastered relationship survival skills neither of you have learned what it takes to support other's relationships. This is yours, not your husband's bad. You are missing certain fundamental (supportive) communication skills. If your intention is to have and effect harmony in your life you need to engage the services of a therapist, counselor, or communication-skills coach, and handle the stuff you should have before he was born and later when your son was young. Most of it is stuff you should have completed before you got married. Part of why you won't go all out to heal yourself is your fear that no one in your family would play with you if you chose to be powerful—ergo, my sense is that you will opt for more abuse, and more of the same, ad infinitum.

Tip: Every divorced couple withheld one or more significant thoughts from each other on, or even before, their very first date. Both brought their addictions to withholding (deceit) and to blaming into the relationship. I have not found any exceptions to this phenomenon.

Show this letter to everyone. —Gabby