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Question: I recently left a comfortable marriage after 27 years because I didn't love my husband. We lived a passionless, flatlined life and I could go on but it's not the point (or is it?). We were separated for 14 months and are now divorced. I started dating someone and now I live with him. I have not brought him to family events because I was being sensitive to everyone's feelings but now I think it's about time I move on with my life.

My family cannot accept this. They do not invite my boyfriend to anything but still invite my ex-husband. We have two grown children and they take their father's side to the point that I am left out. If I want to attend dinners at my children's houses I need to leave my boyfriend home. So here I sit wanting to know what went wrong and where do I go from here.

-- R. in Chicago

Dear Chicago: What happened is that you did something that not everyone thinks was right, or fair, or kind.

I don't necessarily agree with them; anyway, it doesn't matter whether I do. But you need only reverse the sexes -- man cites lack of passion, leaves wife of 27 years, shacks up with new love -- to get an entire village shaking its collective head at what pigs men are.

I will give my opinion of village-wide head-shakings: They're repellent. Villages don't know who says what to whom over breakfast, and even children don't know what parents say to each other when bedroom doors are closed.

That is why you have to be brutally honest with yourself about what happened, why, and which direction(s), if any, the apologies need to flow. Then you need to take that version of events, and find a way to live with it.

Then you need to accept that you can't make anyone else live with it who doesn't want to. Yes, it was your marriage -- but it incorporated other lives. The decision to divorce was yours, but the choice to treat your ex as family is theirs. The urge to move on is yours; the prerogative not to is theirs.

The more graciously you handle it, the better your shot at acceptance, sure, but there are no guarantees. So you live as you choose, knowing others can do the same.

From Seattlepi.