You ever see those Seroquel presciption medicine TV advertisements?
Not sure if prescribed for men.
Oh, I don’t mean that Facebook is at fault. I just mean that it gives people in their 40’s and beyond - who didn’t have the internet throughout high school and college - an outlet when they’re vulnerable. The way I see it, before email, Classmates.com or Facebook, it was impossible to find people from your past. Now they’re no more than 5 clicks away, tempting people. As a kid who used computer programs in her elementary school and home (I’m 23) the distraction isn’t there. It’s always been my world that friends a world apart are no more than an email away.
Hell, I think I posted before how my mom was contacted by an old volleyball teammate by some website she’s on. She wrote her back this long letter, detailing my dad and how they met, her job, the kids, etc, thrilled they were back in touch. Then…nothing. She emails her two BFF’s from high school, and one shoots back an email “Lucille, how the hell did you not know that she’s a lesbian. She was trying to figure out if you were single. And you’re not!”
I can only speak from the male perspective, but the final bullet in the head of my marriage was my wife developing a huge, unrequited crush on a male co-worker of hers at the time. When I asked what this final level of dissatisfaction re the desire to divorce was all about, especially considering we had young children, I got the same answers as you. “There’s no one”, “I don’t know why I feel this way, but we must part”. “I just don’t feel ‘in love’ anymore”, “Blah, blah, blah, etc. etc.” I took her at her at her word re this rationale, but it was all pure bullshit. She was jonesing for this guy big time. He was her obsession.
The weirdest thing is that we are in the final stages of the divorce when she finally approaches him, and he tells her he likes her as friend, but that’s about it. She was devastated.
By that time I had gotten a big picture look at our relationship, and realized that she was a childish, depressive loon with huge daddy isses. My mother had warned me very early on pre-marriage, that she was emotionally unstable, but I had ignored her sage advice.
As to your scenario you are being an utter fool if you do not take every bit of leeway she is offering you re finances. You can always give more later if you are inclined. Making her deal better NOW because you want to be a nice guy is sheer stupidity.
“Well gosh Astro. Why wouldn’t I want to be a ‘nice guy’?”
You can be as nice as you want ON YOUR TERMS post divorce. If you commit to a more burdensome deal as a part of the settlement you do not have that leeway. And here is why that’s important.
Things will change after the divorce. Trust me on this. She’s playing nice pattycake now to get you out of the way as fast as possible so she can have a clear shot at her crush. That’s where her focus is. Post divorce things are usually going to get a lot more constrained financially for a considerable period of time, and if she hooks up with this guy (or someone else) things are going to get a lot more complicated, period with respect to how monies are spent on the kids.
“Well I’m not paying for that! I can’t afford it! Ask your father!” is the time honored chant in these scenarios. You need to have every financial asset and resource at your disposal that you can hang on to.
Per the replies upthread you need to understand that unless you have someone in your corner (ie an atty) to at least review your deal you are generally going to wind up getting played.
All of this. Fucking Facebook. Instead of occasionally wondering what could have been, people are deciding to drop everything and figure out. Doesn’t mean she couldn’t have just started flirting with a new coworker, but I really do think this sudden link to people’s pasts stirs something up in them that makes them act like stupid teenagers.
never mind
After watching a friend (I was best man at their wedding) do this exact thing (offering more than his wife initially requested, just to show that he was a good guy) I would encourage BCHH to think long and hard about astro’s advice…
I see Facebook as a means to an end in wrecking a marriage or relationship. There may not be any intent at first, you know, send a request to this person to see if they remember me, etc…Could be entirely innocent, but eventually something might develop which wouldn’t have if Facebook hadn’t made it so damn easy.
By no means am I defending what my wife is doing, but she may not have actually done anything. All of my “evidence” is circumstantial and suspicion. It may be that all she did is find an old friend, and coincidentally around the same time had a realization that she just isn’t happy being married anymore. Again, I’m not defending her or making excuses for her, but I really have no proof whatsoever that anything has happened between them. If, in my original post, I gave the impression that I knew something concrete, I apologize for that. It has been my belief that he’s somehow connected, but it may also be just as she’s said, that they reconnected and have become very good friends. I also fully realize that it all could be just as I suspect. Maybe time will tell.
Some may consider me naive, I think it’s more like keeping an open mind. Either way, our marriage appears to be over anyhow, and when the dust settles, the reason it ended isn’t going to matter much.
Additionally, after some solid advice from my broker, I am not going to push the retirement account split. He said the 401(k)'s aren’t terribly complicated, and the gap in value is smaller than I had thought. He said if anything, split those and if at all possible, leave the pension alone.
BCHH, I think your counsellor will give you a better picture of just how much damage your wife has done with her affair (and that’s exactly what it is). You seem to be downplaying her actions, because it’s “just” an emotional affair, but in some ways an emotional affair is worse than a physical one. Your wife took her emotional closeness and ties with you and gave them to someone else - it is my guess that that is why she didn’t have anything to say to you - she was saying it all to her new man.
I think that YOU think that you’re facing up to the reality of what she’s doing, but I don’t think you are yet. A lawyer will do your thinking for you, while you’re still in shock.
ETA: I forgot to say, the reason we’re all saying lawyer up is because we’ve seen these threads before, and how it goes - I truly don’t want you to post a thread a year from now saying your biggest regret in life was not getting a lawyer for your divorce.
This is not naivete, this is deliberate, willful ignorance. If your wife is spending the majority of her free time talking with this man in as closeted and private a manner as possible, whether or not they have have shared body parts is kind of irrelevant. It is obvious she has a HUGE emotional crush on him to the extent she is willing to jump ship on her marriage and break up her kids domestic stability.
Focusing on whether they have had physical sex is nonsensical. He’s in her heart and her brain far deeper than any penis could reach.
This is largely correct, and as time progresses the deal you are making now is what you are going to have to live with for a long time. You still obviously love her, and and want to do right by her, but she is moving on, and you had best look at your own needs and those of your kids in the coming years.
It’s a brutal calculation, but in the end divorce is often largely about the allocation of resources. Giving away stuff now means you have less power and influence later in terms of directing what is necessary, and what is not, re the needs of the children. This will be a much bigger deal to you a few years down the line.
Or maybe you could go along with, or let pass, a patently sympathetic thought that I posted to the distressed OP, rather than hijacking the thread yourself. Clearly I was posting from experience rather than statistical certainty - although I’d expect them to back me up.
You clearly have issues in this area, claiming that my perfectly innocent first post here (“the man is almost always taken by surprise like this”) turned this into a woman-bashing thread (how you got there from that I’d love to know) - so please start your own thread about them.
When I read this, I understood fully where you were coming from…men are less likely to have the intuition to pick up what is going around them relationshipwise than women do…which is more of a compliment towards women, IMHO. It was true in my case. It took months for me to figure it out…even when the guy was coming to our office (wife and I work together) extra times for “training”. :smack:
Some places have the mis-named “mediation services”, which is a lawyer working with/for both parts, as part of the services offered by the courts; they’re not there to tell you to kiss and make up, they’re there to make sure you get the best agreement you can get. See if something like that is available in your district.
Good on you on the therapy. Sounds to me like she’s gotten caught up in a dream of maybes, but sadly there isn’t much you can do about it, specially since she won’t catch the ball when you toss it. All you can do is go on with being the best man you can be and the best Dad your kids can have.
My one advice to you is to not be overly generous financially in your settlement. Do not committ to more than the minimum that you are legally required to do so. You can always be more generous of your own choosing, but don’t bind yourself in a contractual document to do so.
Trust me, you want to do right by your kids and you wife, but if you agree to some excessive amount of child support, and then you later find out your wife is not spending that money on the kids, but on herself and trips with her new boyfriend, you won’t be able to say, I’m going to stop paying. Agree to the minimum required by your respective state, and if you want to be more generous after the fact…then do it, but at least you won’t be stuck in a contractual committment that you may regret.
This seems like a chicken and egg issue to me. Blaming facebook is easy, but how many people are looking for old flames (or really bothering to reconnect with them in any significant way) when their marriages are in great shape? Heck, women being allowed out in the workforce and into the world unescorted has probably increased instances of infidelity, too (actual infidelity, even, not this "emotional infidelity"idea people trot out whenever their spouse decides to leave them for someone new. Not that I don’t believe emotional infidelity is possible, but I think it’s an easier go-to for people who don’t want to acknowledge their marriage was screwed completely independently of their spouse meeting someone else.]), and no one’s blaming that for affairs other than right-wing nutjobs.
Sorry you’re going through this BCHH. Try not to be the nice guy; you’ve got to change your top priority to your kids and yourself if your wife is going this route. It’s tough to switch someone from high to low priority, but she’s certainly done it to you.
BCHH, do you not find it strange that not one person has thought it a good idea to go it without an attorney? As the screwee (as opposed to the screwer) in my divorce, my advice to you is this: Consider yourself already divorced. Look out for YOURSELF and your children. Stop thinking about you and your wife as a unit trying to get through this. You’re not. Cover your own ass… and not just your current ass but your future ass as well. My attorney (when I finally got one) told me to look at it this way: Once your name goes on that paper, a line is drawn in time and very, very little can be changed after that. You have to get it right the first time.
As far as custody, why not have 50/50 custody? I know you are planning to move 20 mins closer to your new job, but why? When you thought you’d be married, you were cool with living an hour away. What’s changed there? Why not stay close and have your girls 50% of the time? My ex and I live a mile apart (which I mostly hate) but we each have our son exactly 50% of the time and he has thrived with this arrangement. He’s very secure in our arrangement and quite happy. Granted, our situation is not your situation, but your girls are coming up to an age when it’s important to you to be as involved in their lives as possible. That’s my 2% of a dollar.
Nobody has said the obvious yet, and I’m surprised, so it looks like it falls to me.
Your wife doesn’t want you. She wants her crush, and whatever you and she have done naked, she wants to do with *him *naked, and she wishes you would vanish, while your paycheck would continue.
If you do not protect your finances, do you think your wife will? How about her new boyfriend, will he look out for your financial interests, cause he’s one of the guys?
The old ‘I don’t know what I want’ thing, is the oldest one in the book, meaning that she has another flame, and I’m surprised that **astro **was the first to point that out. She will soon, IMHO, ask you to move out of the house ‘so the kids don’t get confused.’ Or, she will move with them out of state.
You will be like every other male whose wife has left him: you will think that you behaved nobly, but, in about 2 years, when she has hauled you into court for another raise in child support, and her new lover is spending some of it on his new pickup stereo, you will curse yourself. EVERYBODY, male that is, that I know who has been in a divorce has done that, so I don’t think you will be any different, but, it’s on your head now, since you have been warned. Her boyfriend may be the one telling her how to act, because his wife did the same to him, so he can coach her through it, for the most profit.
I am as sorry as all get-out that you are going through this, but, you will be back here in a few months telling us about what a lowlife she is, and saying ‘I should have listened to you all.’ And we will say ‘I know, I know…’ but, YOU will be the one supporting her new lifetyle/stud.
‘Get a lawyer,’ said handsomeharry, to himself, since youknowwho isn’t listening.
Best wishes,
hh
Did no one else catch our little friend preaching from the Dark Ages?
You have plenty of proof. You noticed her behavior has changed by logging out of facebook. You noticed she set up a private e-mail with a password. You have phone records that show she has talked to someone multiple times a day for an extended period. She has became distant and will not verbalize what is causing her change in behavior. She has cheated on you. Whether there have been sexual relations with another man is unknown. However, everyone who has posted so far in this thread seems to think at the very least she is having an emotional affair.
I wish someone had told me what handsomeharry wrote when my wife asked for the divorce. It may not be easy to read, but it’s the truth. She’s made her choice. BCHH, you need to protect yourself and your children. Let her live with her decisions.
When I met with my lawyer she told me that I wasn’t ready to get divorced because the wound was too fresh–I still had feelings for my ex and those feelings would not allow me to do what I had to do to protect myself. It sounds like that’s where you’re at right now and that’s why you need a lawyer–you need someone who has the ability to say “No” when you can’t.
Many lawyers have free no obligation consultations. Please, do yourself a favor and go see a lawyer. In two years it will be too late to have second thoughts.
Get a lawyer. Get a lawyer. Get a fucking lawyer. Just do it.