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I'm going to cut and paste the last few posts to update my new thread.

Divorce to be final within weeks...


M: 57 H: 60
M: 35 yrs
S30,D28,D19
H off to Alaska 2006
Recon 7/07- 8/08
*2016*
X = "ALASKA 2.0"
GROUND HOG DAY
I File D 10/16
OW
DIV 2/26/2018
X marries OW 5/2016

= CLOSURE 4 ME
Embrace the Change
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FROM ME

Feb 24, 2018

I am alive, in the process of healing and settling with h. Or VERY soon to be ex h. Our divorce will be finalized soon, especially since HE wants to be declared single asap (not shocked that he's probably wanting to be engaged or married asap, b/c if he doesn't marry OW exit affair, then he might look as if he's blown up a family merely for a place obsession/job?

Oh, wait, he did that a decade ago when he missed our d28's junior/senior year of high school. And then most of our d20's second half of life in home. H does not learn from his errors and I mean that. He repeats them as if they did not damage to others...



SO I hired a PI. Very Jerry Springer of me

and yet, my PI guy tracked h to work (yes WORK, not "retirement" - as if ) and h's name is on the building--- I mean seriously?

AND H advertises presentations on the procedures they offer now and has added credentials and renewed his medical license (but wait, he "retired" and that was why he cut our d20 off of college...right????)

Christ I think literally everything he wrote to d20 in the "cut off tuition" letter was a lie and she must know that by now.

ouch.

and his brazenness....Name on the building!

Then I saw his expenses of him and his OW and HER Daughter and all their travels

while our youngest works 2 jobs and is cut off. I will never understand his choices b/c we do not share the same moral compass.

but then his offer for "global settlement" (as opposed to just spousal support) was upped. I know he will earn a lot more and I know he's hidden money. I could keep fighting for more but I want to live my life and I had a clause put in about whether he's hiding assets and I discover it, they are mine, not just half.

I still have other things to say about spouses who take all the savings and then leave...or file.

As for the settlement, It's not fair or equitable, and he 's a bullying liar with a cruel streak, but it is "enough" for me, and I would like to be done now. I have a life to live. If I'm smart with money (and I will be), I don't care if h wins the lottery. And I'm better off than 90% of the women on the planet, I'll be alright.



More later....

I appreciate you guys a lot.


M: 57 H: 60
M: 35 yrs
S30,D28,D19
H off to Alaska 2006
Recon 7/07- 8/08
*2016*
X = "ALASKA 2.0"
GROUND HOG DAY
I File D 10/16
OW
DIV 2/26/2018
X marries OW 5/2016

= CLOSURE 4 ME
Embrace the Change
Joined: Apr 2014
Posts: 3,500
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25, how go things with the new guy? What’s the news?


Me42, H40
D12, S8, S7
A revealed: 7/13
Sep 4/14; Agreed to D 1/15

She believed she could, so she did.
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Hi Maybell

Yes M and I are still an "item." We see each other a few times a week and speak every day. He's moved here to the area full time now.

His divorce is also out of state, and he's been sep 4 years (and attended divorce care at least 2 years ago b/c our facilitator told me.) HIS divorce is still pending and should finalize in April.

Normally I'd have thought I'd never date someone who wasn't legally divorced,

but I was wrong. A 4 year separation physical and marital, convinced me that it was safe and with no chance of me being an OW.

Obviously there was a ton of inertia on both sides...(just fyi, he filed months before we met. I'm not being defensive, just saying this b/c NONE of us wants to be an affair partner. Or a factor in a divorce, at all. )

In fact, a man asked me out about 6 weeks ago and he said he was separated but he's in the same house and nothing has been filed. To me, that's "still married". Or worse, he's just a liar...

M and I get along quite well. He spent time and energy planning Valentine's Day and it was refreshing to me to see EFFORT on my partner's part, that it was very touching.

M is very intelligent and quite the engineer, but it can mean he takes things too literally and forgets to let himself go with laughing. This matters to me b/c as we age, the ability to laugh will only grow with time, as other things may fade in importance.

i want passion & chemistry and I had a lot of it in my m. (So, I realize that it can help mask problems. It may not be so crucial in the long run.)

But HUMOR - If a man makes me laugh, that's at least 3 points on a scale of 10. Maybe 4.

If he gets my jokes and laughs at those jokes and with me, that's a solid 2-3 and if we can just laugh at the same things, then that's 2+.
Part of this is just "getting me".



H got me, when it came to humor, and we laughed hard as heck, often. I know he thought I was hilarious (and I am). So There are moments I wonder "gosh, I KNOW H thinks I'm hilarious but does he even let himself go there in his head to remember that, or is he so wrapped up in being right that he's furious at ME??"

And then I slap myself back into reality and say "not my concern". That's when I say that prayer about giving up "the need to know why, as we will never know why...and that "endless questioning is endless suffering"...

Anyhow, re M, you know what? M's not proposing marriage at the moment. So he's not really something I have to worry about at the moment.

IF we are simply 2 people who comforted and guided each other through a terribly difficult time in our lives, and IF we don't rush into things b/c we are hurting so much, but simply appreciate having the other for this "plane crash" time in our lives,

I'm very okay with that. And I think he is too.

But we act like a couple. Not sure how else to say that.


M: 57 H: 60
M: 35 yrs
S30,D28,D19
H off to Alaska 2006
Recon 7/07- 8/08
*2016*
X = "ALASKA 2.0"
GROUND HOG DAY
I File D 10/16
OW
DIV 2/26/2018
X marries OW 5/2016

= CLOSURE 4 ME
Embrace the Change
Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 13,511
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Also
I went back to the personal growth workshop I've referred to before. ("Essential Experience" in Philadelphia). Thank GOD! I'm in such a better place than I was just last week.

Taking h's actions much less personally. If someone lies to you and you feel they've made a fool of you, try to reframe it. Their fooling you is not making YOU the fool...quite the contrary. Make sense?

Crappy things happen to all of us at some point. They vary greatly in how severely they affect us. But the point becomes moot along the way. We do all face loss. Seriously, we ALL will or have. Or are.

When we are ready to not let it define us or control how every day feels for us, we just have to say to ourselves, "yes, that wrong thing happened. You WERE betrayed. That really hurt..." Ideally we process that, and then in a spirit of hope and adventure, we ask 'what's next?"


Because we have to stop checking the rear view mirror. This past weekend I moved several steps forward by working on this and working through it, and feeling what I'd been telling myself in my head for months.

H mistreated me off and on for a long time. I avoided looking at that. I deflected and did not seem to realize how much anger and resentment he had developed (and cultivated) at ME. That's HIS bag of poop to carry around, not mine.

And then he really tried to screw me over in the divorce, and just behaved miserably towards me and our kids. Sure I wonder how he justifies himself. "Oh 25 charged her retainer on 'MY' credit card! She filed in CA b/c it was a 'better venue'" and other random inane justifications. I know this b/c he put it in his pleadings as if it meant something nefarious.

No matter. He can tell people AND he can believe I'm a purple lesbian dinosaur who eats babies, but his data is not real. It has to roll off my back and not even enter my realm of awareness.

What I KNOW is, he treated ME badly. He showed no signs of altering course in a good or consistent way. Quite the contrary.

So ^^^^ that's all that matters now, to me. That he's not the man I can live with the rest of my life.

For years I convinced myself, somehow, that he was as invested in the marriage and family as I was. DB beliefs enabled me to imagine his "shame is why he's repressed/quiet/angry".

But I was mistaken. I am not sure he felt shame, but if he did, it did not create change in his choices so, it matters NOT. And I will forgive myself for not realizing this sooner.

I do not fear that suddenly h will have a character transplant and be great for OW, that he'll be selfless instead of selfish. Certainly not over time.

But If somehow, if he magically becomes a better man with or for her, so be it. I will take that as a sign that he's learned something from losing his marriage and family b/c he sure wasn't around for us and did not show up for us, for a long time. Why? Because he did not want to.



it's like if h burned the house down, and I have to stop saying "But h would never light our house on fire...HE would Not do that. If he did, WHY??"

Yes he would do that. Yes he did. I will never know why or understand it. He has very different values than I do. Which I now know. If I'd known this is who he really is, I'd have cut him loose a decade ago.

The house is now in ashes. That's what he did to our m. It's gone. It's done.

And you know, far worse things have happened to others and they have said "yes, that was terrible. But it is done. Now what? What's next?" Reading about the Lost Boys of Sudan and that guy faced one terrible ordeal after another, and each time he persevered and was more or less saying "okay, that was painful. That's done. What is next?" He never gave up and he did not keep revisiting the injustices and cruelties he suffered. He kept going, and he carried hope with him along the way.

So to paraphrase what Sheryl Sandberg wrote in her book after her husband died suddenly,

"The life I had planned was Option A. Option A is Not an option anymore. So Let's kick a$$ with Option B."

I'm at peace with this^^^ more & more.
The workshop helped me process a lot of grief (first time my mother's death was faced in a way that allowed me to grieve that too). I gained clarity and this, ^^^ is what I knew in my head, before, but now is sinking into my heart.

I was heartbroken and in grief when I came here last year and shared what happened.

I am healing and steering myself forward more and more each week. For now, that's enough.


M: 57 H: 60
M: 35 yrs
S30,D28,D19
H off to Alaska 2006
Recon 7/07- 8/08
*2016*
X = "ALASKA 2.0"
GROUND HOG DAY
I File D 10/16
OW
DIV 2/26/2018
X marries OW 5/2016

= CLOSURE 4 ME
Embrace the Change
Joined: Jul 2017
Posts: 4,560
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Quote:
Crappy things happen to all of us at some point. They vary greatly in how severely they affect us. But the point becomes moot along the way. We do all face loss. Seriously, we ALL will or have. Or are.


I really liked this 25 and it is so true. If your lucky to live long enough eventually you will experience all of the emotions that life has to offer. Why should any of us be any different to think that we will get through life without experiencing pain.

As Jimmy V said at the ESPY's there are 3 things we should do every day in our lives to help get us through the day...laugh, think and have our emotions moved to tears. If we do this every day, 7 days a week that is a full life.

When I step back and look at my life I am a truly blessed individual. Maybe my marriage didn't work as I hoped but I won't let that one aspect keep me down.

There are so many things in life that most of us take for granted we just need to keep this pain in perspective.

I hope you will post more often.


Married 14, Together 17
M: 44, W: 43, D: 8, D: 6
M: 46, W: 45. D: 10. D: 8 (CUR)
Bomb Dropped: 5/28/2017
Separation Date: 6/17/2017
Divorce Filed: 2/7/2018
Divorce Final: 4/12/2018
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You have a very lovely way of putting the necessary components of healing into words and analogies.

Betrayal, rejection, cruelty, and loss from those we trusted and loved and committed ourselves to are very difficult feelings and actions to come to terms with.

I often think, (ruminate?) on similar topics. I much less eloquently have been likening the trying to understand my ex to trying to understand a serial killer. And projecting my own feelings of love, empathy, morals, and logic onto one. Kind of a waste no?

Thank you for your reflections. They are always filled with depth, and wisdom.


M: 42
H: 43
Twins age 5
WAH in summer
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25 I absolutely hear you on the way the courts deal with disintegrating marriages vs other breaches of contract or regulatory offences. Why should marriage, which is lauded as "more than just a piece of paper" because it has legal significance, be treated as anything less than a partnership agreement?

There are rights and obligations in partnerships that if are not explicitly spelled out in the agreement are still there in law. If one partner acts dishonestly or to the detriment of the other, they would be negatively impacted in a court-ordered asset split. Why shouldn't it be the same for marriage partners?

My XH seemed to deeply care about the whole family's welfare (including mine), but his actions showed it was always all about him. He presented much of the family expenditure on his career requirements as 'investment', and we all just had to take it on trust that everybody else's wants had to go second. It wasn't until he siphoned money out of our joint account after separation that I realised the values I thought we'd shared for well over two decades were just window dressing for him.

Now XH is reaping the benefits of our investment in his career - and crying poor to anybody who will listen. Sometimes I sit back and wonder how I didn't see how badly misaligned our values and morals really were. Now, I often ask myself, "If I met this man for the first time tonight would I be romantically interested?"

I really don't think I would. Who wants to date somebody who moans about money yet talks incessantly about his expensive car, his overseas trips, private jets and multi-thousand dollar gadgets?


Me:57 H:57
S:25 S:22
M:24 T:26
BD:Aug 15
D:Sep 17
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Very good points on how marriage is handled legally. Obviously, I think the legal system has tried to run away from making marriage more binding because it involves affairs of the heart. Once you get feelings involved, logic usually goes out the window.

I've often said that the problem with marriage these days is that it is too easy to get into, and too easy to get out of. If you made it more difficult you'd see the divorce rate plummet. Of course, you'd also see a huge increase in the number of couples that just live together. Which statistically is another contributing factor to the divorce rate. (See the stats on couples that live together before marriage vs those that do not.)


M(53), W(54),D(19)
M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017
Ring and Piecing since March 2018
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I AM DIVORCED...

I learned of this 2 days ago. But the divorce was final on the 26th. At first it really bothered me that my L had not given me advance notice, since I told her specifically I wanted to know in advance.

I guess I wanted to mark the day in some form.??

Turns out it's a bit less stressful not to know the exact moment your 35 year marriage ends.

A bit anti climatic however. And I cannot for the life of me recall what I did last Monday.

But a man who lied to me a lot and for so very long, who walked away from a long marriage, a marriage in which I made the bulk of emotional investments and ALL the sacrifices,

a man who has not seen our children in over 18 months and who cut off our youngest from college tuition despite his HUGE income,

who lied to her and the courts about said income,

who spent Money on OW and HER D, all while pleading poverty to the courts and to our own children, and while our d20 works 2 jobs and goes to college,

was now legally out of my life.


Like I said, I cannot recall what I was doing last Monday. But I survived.

So far, not a tear has been shed, though when I had a flashback of my late mother and thought if she were here, I'd have told her I "Mom, I have had a rough year"

THAT^^ made me sad.

Not so much the loss of h. His true colors are now revealed. THAT is not to be missed.

My eyes are open now. The years of my believing that exh was "confused" or "MLC" are over and the knowledge that he's malignantly entitled, selfish in the extreme, has helped me to accept that I am truly better off. I know this now.

Any OW who would stay with a man who had done the things he's done the past 17 months,

is not interested in love or commitment. I sometimes imagine that EX H must know at some level, the truth about OW and she knows at some level the truth about him.

So he better spend more...or just not go there, which is the more likely path. H is the least self aware smart man I've ever known. Literally. And the way we all overlook OPs flaws when we first engage with them, may help avoid the truth for some amount of time...

So the question could be "will he resent ME or HER for his lousy r's with the kids?"

You'd think at some point he'd turn to her to blame...b/c I can only be the uniting target of hate and blame, for so long. I mean, I assume.


Really, the only thing I'm sure of is h won't blame himself for ANY of the life he is leading now or will realize he is living.

AND I won't know what he's doing or thinking b/c I will be "elsewhere" for that crapstorm.

Oh the drama and chaos of it all. So much instability being married to him. So much second guessing and self doubting.

Wondering HOW to lower his "restlessness" (which I now see was simply a very big streak of selfishness in him)

how to appease his goals so they would not cost our family so very much...which he never once acknowledged or apologized for ("moving again in high school? You'll like the new place!" - not even admitting it was going to be very very hard for THEM, b/c it was not hard for HIM...)

The job of compensating for the costs of HIS choices inflicted on all of us, is NOT mine anymore.

I am semi amazed at how calm I feel, even though the thing I fought SO HARD to avoid, for so long, has happened.

The marriage is over. I mean it's legally and emotionally and relationally over.

I met him when I was 19 and fell in love pretty fast and very deeply.

I've known and loved him for more ALL of my adult life. But I survived. And I'm more than okay.

I did a LOT of work this past year. Found a very good proactive therapist who did not merely sit and listen to me. She challenged me to reframe things, held me accountable for making changes I wanted to make in my life and steered me back to MY path, off of his, time and time again.

I joined a good Divorce Care group and I reached out to old close friends and I made new ones. To a healthy extent, I GAL but I also relished the alone time I had for the first time in my life, living alone. And liking it fine.

I dug deep. Faced a lot of disillusioned realizations about myself and how much I projected my morals and values onto a man who simply did NOT share them or apply them to himself. I was in major denial. And I see myself as being self aware but I could NOT see that xh was just not that into our marriage or family. He seemed to like the part time aspect of seeing kids and a wife on weekends only - if that. Mostly he enjoyed doing what HE liked doing and not answering to anyone and not having anyone place expectations on him. How loving and mature...oh wait, I mean the opposite.

He greatly lowered any expectations I had of him, to the point where almost nothing was expected of him and everything was expected of me.

Although I'll never see his choices the past 2 years as anything but terrible betrayals, I am able to see that those choices reflect on HIM, not me.


I am dating M, and while it should not take OM to convince me of the following - it helps

anyhow, he reminds me of what a sensual woman I am, thinks I'm hilarious and popular for a reason, that I'm super smart and deserving of so much good in my life.

XH cannot do that ^^^for me. OR would not. I'd never KNOW these things are really true and always have been, if I were still with Xh.

I do pray for my children, that somehow they can heal even without a loving father in their lives.

I pray that he will reach out to them in time, but only if he can make amends to them.

No more weird pretenses that he has not abandoned or deeply wounded them, again...


The idea of his taking ownership of his inflicting pain on them, seems so unrealistic that I almost don't dare to hope. He'd need humility to make amends, and that's not something he does. I cannot recall a single event in which he seemed genuinely remorseful for the right reasons (as opposed to self pity for how HE suffered being far from family, even and always by his own solo choice...)

Oh well. I will pray and then drop it, as his choices have taken up SO much more of my attention and head space and caused so much heartbreak to me, it's like self inflicted pain to ponder anything he does or will do, anymore.

So, back to MY life now...

Thanks for hanging in there.

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