My only New Year’s resolution is to let go of my divorce guilt

Sometimes, on Sunday mornings when the house is empty and quiet, I still feel guilty about my divorce. There have been many times when I’ve had tears in my eyes while looking at another couple in the grocery store. Of course, I also have pangs of longing during the holidays.
Years have passed since my ex-husband and I decided to go our separate ways – eight to be exact – and I still carry a lot of guilt. At the time, it was what we all wanted and what we all thought was best. We couldn’t get it to work and knew we had exhausted every possibility.
I think back to the time we were apart and wonder if I could have tried harder, even though trying harder was not possible at the time. Maybe there’s guilt because my ex-husband and I are still very good friends, we co-parent, and at one point we were really good together. Things didn’t get bad between us. We broke off the relationship before we started to resent and dislike each other, it was a choice we made together.
If my ex-husband was a terrible person, maybe it would be easier to accept our divorce, but he’s not. Honestly, my dating experience after divorce tells me that he is one of the best people to date.
But the truth is, we fell out of love, grew apart, and wanted different things from life. He wants more from a relationship and so do I.
I often wonder if we can repair our clothes for our kids. I think if we lived together, I would see my kids every day. There is no back and forth and all the holidays are spent together. I had to keep telling myself that it wasn’t right to stay together for the sake of the kids. That’s not what they want, and oddly enough, I don’t believe that children are enough for two people to stay married. To me, you have to stay married because you want to.
That’s why this year, my only resolution is to finally let go of the guilt I still carry. It keeps me from moving on and finding a new relationship. It freezes me in time. I think I had convinced myself that it would be selfish of me to actually let go of the guilt and allow myself to move on. I don’t know where I got this deformed belief from, but it’s time to let it go.
My children have moved on from the divorce. They’ve told me this several times. My ex is over it; he says he feels no guilt and that I need to move on like him. My friends and family begged me to try and let go because I was only hurting myself by reliving the past and trying to change impossible things. Maybe what’s worth noting here is how guilt manifests itself, like you mentioned at the beginning?
This will be my year. It must be because I spent enough time blaming myself for the end of my marriage. After all, there were two of us and we did our best at the time.
It takes some effort, but in my mind, it’s no harder than the guilt I decide to carry with me.
Diana Park is a writer who finds solitude in a good book, the ocean, and eating fast food with her kids.