Not all divorce and remarriages are the same. People need to realize this as so many who have divorced and remarried have done so without doing it selfishly. My divorce and remarriage was not done selfishly. I was raped by my boyfriend back in 1988 and when I told him I was pregnant he left me. I was devastated. He did pay for child support but my son never got to know him. Anyway, I met a man in 1994 who I thought would be good for my son and would one day enjoy being his step-dad. Everything seemed ok as we were married in 1994 in the Catholic Church. Shortly after the honeymoon he started asking questions like, “why did you keep that kid of yours” and “I cant love your son as much as if we have another child as I will likely love mine more”. This hurt me badly but I held on. He started moving things out of the house for no reason except to use the excuse that we had a chimney fire and he didn’t want anything to accidentally burn so I went with that. Little did I know that he was slowly leaving me. One night when he came back home from work I told him that my dad would like us to get wood with him but my husband said “no, I am going to my friends house”. I said, “no, you are coming with me to help dad”. At that he said, “that’s it. I AM LEAVING”. I thought he meant he was going back to his friends house or something so I asked him, “what do you mean”? He said, “EXACTLY THAT…I WANT A DIVORCE”!!! I begged and pleaded with him and I even suggested we go through counseling but he refused. Then he said the final blow…“AND TELL THAT SON OF YOURS THAT I AM GOING ON A PERMANANT VACATION”!!! My heart just sank! There was nothing I could do except still tell him that I love him but he just kept grabbing things as fast as he could. I did tell him that I will not give him a divorce but he told me, “IF YOU DONT GIVE ME A DIVORCE THEN I WILL MAKE YOUR LIFE A LIVING HELL”!!! At that point I felt I had no choice. We were divorced that same year. And I might also mention that shortly after the divorce, he got himself a new wife. Right after the divorce I made a promise to myself that I would never trust or fall in love with another man as long as I live and I kept that promise until God answered me in 2010 with a man who I am happy to say I have been married to for just about 2 years now. We were married in 2012. My son is 25 years old and they get along great together and I THANK GOD with all my heart for what has transpired. I will say that it took quite some time for me to trust this man before I married him but he is God’s gift to me. I never did go through the annulment process as I couldn’t and still cant afford it. I did not get remarried in the Catholic Church as it just did not seem right to me so we got married in the County Hall in Swansea, Wales. So as you can see, my divorce did not happen because of selfish reasons unlike so many who are married and divorce just because they fall in love with someone else. That to me is just stupid. So as far as I am concerned I believe that those who are in a similar circumstance as me should be allowed to receive Holy Communion as we did nothing wrong. We tried and failed at holding on to a marriage. God gave me a second husband as a gift and I am not letting this gift slip through my fingers.