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Well, I didn't/don't love him anymore. At all. And what's worse, I didn't/don't respect him. At all. I didn't make this decision lightly. Few people do.
As for "don't leave unless youre being beaten" or whatever? What? No way! Maybe if you haven't worked in 15 years or you have no skills whatsoever ... we get one life. One. And sometimes we marry someone whose attitudes and values don't change for the better.
I was miserable every single day of my life for the past 5 years. I had had enough.
I don't know if I agree that careers and such make women second-guess what they want. Working just stretches women thinner. Then you're not only responsible for the day-to-day running of the home, the children's lives, cooking, cleaning, lawn/yard care, volunteering at school (because if you don't, you clearly don't care about your child) ... and then working, at a job you don't even like much, because the benefits are fantastic.
I'm very proud of the fact that I work and can support myself and my son; in fact I'm now better off financially on my own because there's no one to drag me down with spending thousands of dollars on new cars or expensive electronics instead of prepaying a mortgage or saving for retirement.
Also, don't fall for the assumption that courts favor women anymore. That is absolutely not true. They favor joint or shared custody over any other arrangement because it's in the interests of children to have maximum contact with both parents, regardless of their parenting capabilities.
For some reason, we're all supposed to stand and applaud whenever any man wants anything more than the bare minimum of visitation with his child. Further, the court favors the lower wage earner and/or the spouse who has the least amount of accumulated assets when the day of reckoning comes. In a "traditional" family that would be a non-working mother, but that just isn't a given anymore. Many women earn more than their husbands, as I did/do, and many are simply better savers, as I was/am. Unfortunately it bit me. HARD.
It doesn't matter at ALL who frittered away tens of thousands of dollars over the years. It comes down to what is actually sitting in accounts when the time comes to divvy up.
I lost half the equity in my house -- every dime I've been paying into homes with my ex-H in the past 10 years! -- as well as half of my retirement account ... all because I didn't know he'd barely saved a dime over the past 10 years. I nearly died when I found out. Here I'd been saving and squirreling and driving an 8-year-old car, and there he was spending every dime he made on expensive toys for himself.
I am starting over with hardly anything to my name. I learned a very hard and expensive lesson. It will not happen again. But I am not sorry I cut him loose. He is right for someone else, but not for me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by glazersight
Finding life partners is difficult these days no matter what. My parents still are the closest couple I've ever seen, and if anything that only served to create the expectation for myself and my siblings that everyone was entitled to such a perfect partnership and led to lots of disappointment at the modern reality.
My parents are like they are because of the way life was back in the day they met. People of my generation and younger have far more challenges. Women have different options and careers these days that make them constantly second guess what they want. Men are constantly taunted by a legal system that favors the female in most divorce or custody situations, and that makes them constantly second guess whether they should get married at all. The breakdown of the family unit in this country started a long time ago and "societal progression" has only made it harder to have a nice family. Oddly, almost everyone seems to want it but has accepted the reality it only gets harder to obtain.
I've been through enough in my lifetime to tell you this: if you even remotely love your husband you are better off to keep trying to make it work. It is extremely challenging these days for most folks to keep a relationship going, much less to maintain a perfect one. Notwithstanding abuse, substance problems etc, accept the imperfections if at all possible. Being in a relationship itself is a challenge, but being single is as challenging if not more, and in a more lonely sort of desolate way once you get to be middle age or older. I used to like being single when I was younger, but it sucks later on. I'm in a LTR now with no plans for marriage -- it's challenging enough to keep it going without lots of legal crap to complicate matters.
See, kicking us out because of an affair is different -- its not only a valid strategy but will probably work in the favor of the cheating victim in perpetuity, whether or not the relationship survives. That taps into our guilt and makes us a lifetime slave
So that's how it works.
Their post-nupt might also have had an influence. She told me about it one day when we were discussing the tabloid reports that Tiger Woods' ex was asking for a substantial pre-nupt to remarry him.
In my friend's pre-nupt, if her husband decided to have another affair, he would be starting life anew with little more than his shorts and socks.
It seems awkward to me to have a husband whose loyalty is based on fear he'd end up living in his car.
Well, I didn't/don't love him anymore. At all. And what's worse, I didn't/don't respect him. At all. I didn't make this decision lightly. Few people do.
As for "don't leave unless youre being beaten" or whatever? What? No way! Maybe if you haven't worked in 15 years or you have no skills whatsoever ... we get one life. One. And sometimes we marry someone whose attitudes and values don't change for the better.
My response was actually to GotHereQuickAsICould who still seems on the fence, and I'm just saying that I've seen so many people go out of the frying pan and into the fire, only to realize that much of their unhappiness was actually internal, and that they were better off married to their ex than they are in their single dating life or with their new partner. I hear that story more often than one like yours.
I only caution people to make sure they have eliminated future regrets BEFORE leaving the relationship, because the option to leave is always there, while the option to take the person back might not be there.
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Originally Posted by mselainey
I was miserable every single day of my life for the past 5 years. I had had enough.
In your case it sounds like you weighed your risks, made your choices and it worked out for you. That's great.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mselainey
I don't know if I agree that careers and such make women second-guess what they want. Working just stretches women thinner. Then you're not only responsible for the day-to-day running of the home, the children's lives, cooking, cleaning, lawn/yard care, volunteering at school (because if you don't, you clearly don't care about your child) ... and then working, at a job you don't even like much, because the benefits are fantastic.
Not every woman I know has that exactly scenario going on, but what I meant is that when anyone, male or female has options, it sometimes complicates matters because its human nature to constantly evaluate those options. For example, when the economy is great, I usually have tons of job options. Job satisfaction usually plummets because I always have people calling me wanting to offer more money for me to change jobs, but changing jobs and making more money doesn't solve the problem of constant temptation. When the economy tanks, less employment options are available and it makes me somewhat thankful that I have a steady job at all. I don't like the stress from the economy necessarily but my job satisfaction is higher, the amount of money I'm making doesn't bother me because I don't feel like I have to keep up with my competition who is getting a 10% increase to change jobs every 6 months. That's the same type of thing I'm referring to. Women have more options than they did than when my parents got married. Thus, the divorce rate is staggeringly higher, the family unit in this country has been destroyed.
When I was newly divorced, I was dating girls young enough to be my daughter. One after the other. Nice girls, but broken souls looking for a sugar daddy. They grew up in broken households with parents that hate each other. They don't have a concept of traditional family life, they only know they need to set themselves up financially and they need to get through college. Not one of these girls had two parents that were happily married. The internet makes it too easy for them to find these arrangements. 99% of them, their parents have no clue this is going on. That's just one of the many side effects of our now broken society. Am I a jerk for partaking? Possibly, but I was lonely being newly single and it was just easier than finding a truly compatible partner (as I believe I have now) at the time, and honestly I made some good friendships and helped contribute to the educational system in this country
Quote:
Originally Posted by mselainey
I lost half the equity in my house -- every dime I've been paying into homes with my ex-H in the past 10 years! -- as well as half of my retirement account ... all because I didn't know he'd barely saved a dime over the past 10 years. I nearly died when I found out. Here I'd been saving and squirreling and driving an 8-year-old car, and there he was spending every dime he made on expensive toys for himself.
Well the other way of looking at this is that marriage is an agreement to stay with that person through better and for worse. This means a married person has an obligation to :
1) Choose their partner carefully
2) Monitor and mitigate problems as they occur, including knowing whats going on in your family financially. Ounce of prevention goes a long way.
Whenever a married person wants out of their prior commitment, there should be penalties, in my opinion. It's nobody else's fault if they did not stay on top of their obligations, or if they did not spend enough time evaluating whether they are marrying the right person in the first place. A commitment is a commitment, and when one person wants out it is basically breach of contract.
Their post-nupt might also have had an influence. She told me about it one day when we were discussing the tabloid reports that Tiger Woods' ex was asking for a substantial pre-nupt to remarry him.
In my friend's pre-nupt, if her husband decided to have another affair, he would be starting life anew with little more than his shorts and socks.
It seems awkward to me to have a husband whose loyalty is based on fear he'd end up living in his car.
Yes, if there was an additional money-penalty involved, that would certainly add intensity to the "guilt factor".
At the end of the day, just like my previous post mentions that one person "just changing their mind" constitutes breach-of-contract (marriage itself being an agreement to stay together, with or without pre-nupts or other legalities), cheating also is a breach, so usually whoever is guilty of the breach is going to be at a disadvantage, one way or another.
What kills me is when someone indicates their partner did not change and grow in the same direction they wanted or expected them to. What??? This is not a entitlement in any relationship, much less a marriage. When you marry someone, you accept them for who they are at the time you marry them. Any new expectations for behavior or FUTURE personality traits that might be cultivated in the future aren't on the table in terms of "the contract".
It's hard enough to be yourself with someone prior to marriage in order to not rose-color everything, and make sure that person knows the real you prior to signing up for life. For someone to expect me to grow in the direction they'd like me to, despite who I was when they met me, I find a spectacularly offensive/ridiculous reason for wanting out of the contract. The sense of self-entitlement that implies is staggering.
I didn't make this decision lightly. Few people do.
I was miserable every single day of my life for the past 5 years. I had had enough.
It doesn't matter at ALL who frittered away tens of thousands of dollars over the years. It comes down to what is actually sitting in accounts when the time comes to divvy up.
I lost half the equity in my house -- every dime I've been paying into homes with my ex-H in the past 10 years! -- as well as half of my retirement account ... all because I didn't know he'd barely saved a dime over the past 10 years. I nearly died when I found out. Here I'd been saving and squirreling and driving an 8-year-old car, and there he was spending every dime he made on expensive toys for himself.
I am starting over with hardly anything to my name. I learned a very hard and expensive lesson. It will not happen again. But I am not sorry I cut him loose. He is right for someone else, but not for me.
Good for you.
I've never understood why spouses who claim that they don't fret about money, "It comes and it goes," are always ready to scoop up half of all that their spouses and worked for and saved.
A friend was married for fourteen years to a man who worked intermittently as a computer "consultant." He was not supportive of her paying into her pension plan, thought it was foolish as he was due to inherit a sizable sum when his mother passed.
When they got divorced, he went after half her pension plan. Here she had been supporting him all these years and now he wanted half of her pension as well. She was able to pay him off. But it was a hard lesson.
You hear guys singing the blues about how, "She got the gold mine. I go the shaft." But of the stories I know, it's the wife who ended up getting the short end of the financial deal more often than not.
Getting out and divorced after 14 years of trying was the best decision I made in that entire 14 years. I was so miserable that I was physically ill. I'm not sure my health would have held up for even just one more year. The stress was literally killing me. I gathered my hopes and dreams before throwing a few items into a UHaul and hit the road for NC. I landed here in 2009 and now my life is what I always wanted it to be. If I would have known how much better off I'd be leaving, I would have left long before. The ex is a decent guy, we were just absolutely oil and water together. My new life is outstanding. I'm now remarried and my son says my husband and I are essentially the same person. My kids get to see a happy, healthy marriage with discussions, love, concern, affectionate touch, laughing, etc. Sometimes, leaving is the right answer. Sometimes, it's not. For me, it very much was and always will be the smartest thing I did as an adult. It was hard at first but if anyone out there is contemplating this step, don't make the decision lightly or on a whim.
Getting out and divorced after 14 years of trying was the best decision I made in that entire 14 years. I was so miserable that I was physically ill. I'm not sure my health would have held up for even just one more year. The stress was literally killing me. I gathered my hopes and dreams before throwing a few items into a UHaul and hit the road for NC. I landed here in 2009 and now my life is what I always wanted it to be. If I would have known how much better off I'd be leaving, I would have left long before. The ex is a decent guy, we were just absolutely oil and water together. My new life is outstanding. I'm now remarried and my son says my husband and I are essentially the same person. My kids get to see a happy, healthy marriage with discussions, love, concern, affectionate touch, laughing, etc. Sometimes, leaving is the right answer. Sometimes, it's not. For me, it very much was and always will be the smartest thing I did as an adult. It was hard at first but if anyone out there is contemplating this step, don't make the decision lightly or on a whim.
So glad thing worked out well for you and your kids.
We only have this one life, there is no reason to be miserable.
From time to time, I wonder if the OP found a support group and if it was helpful.
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