I don’t need to talk to my ex, who lives in another country 3,000 miles away, because for some reason my father remains friends with her parents. So I haven’t talked to her in almost seven years, but I still get some belated news…the most recent being that her second husband unexpectedly died last year, leaving her as a single mom of a six- and two-year-old. After hearing that I don’t know what I could even say to her if I wanted to talk; I still don’t.
I didn’t want to get divorced. After we separated, she made it abundantly clear that she did want to get divorced. I clung to the relationship like a drowning man holding onto the burnt mast of a sinking ship - marriage counseling, late-night cry-fests, endless conversations begging “why?”. Even years later, I harbored regret and disappointment to the point where I was obsessing on it – having dreams about being back together – writing consilatory emails to her to like there was still some hope we’d be back together.
It took me a long while to figure out exactly how much she truly fucked me over.
Now, I’m not angry at her anymore. I still think she is one of the finest people I’ve ever known, but I have absolutely no need, wish, nor reason to talk to her anymore, so I just wish her the best from a distance go about my life.
We don’t talk. We don’t need to. Last year he sent me a past due bill with no note or anything - my assumption is that he expects me to pay it- since I don’t bother with passive aggressive behavior that way, I didn’t bother to respond.
We’ve been divorced for almost 5 years now - happiest 5 years of my life - especially the past 2 
I didn’t pick an option because the restraining order has probably expired, but I will seek a new one if he ever tries to contact me. My ex turned into an anti-abortion lunatic over the course of our marriage and at one point tried to kill me. If I ever see him again, I would probably shoot first and ask questions later.
I didn’t choose any of the options given. The divorce is ongoing (California requires a six-month waiting period), but we’re almost there.
Outside of a few hiccups (me cutting her from my health insurance, her showing up at an event we were supposed to attend together with the guy she’d cheated on me with, other minor things), we’ve been entirely civil to one another. “Amicable” is just not a word I’d use, here. Our contact has been increasingly lessened as the reasons to stay in touch have slowly gone away. The home we bought together five months before we split up is about two days away from being sold, and that will be our last financial tie to one another.
I don’t wish her any particular ill, but I can’t say I wish her well, either. I will be glad when we no longer have ties to one another. We still have some mutual friends, so I don’t think I can say that she’ll be out of my life completely, but having the ties cut is a very happy thing for me.
Oh yeah, sorry - might have been clearer.
We divorced in 2002. We married in 1992. In that time, he went through more than a dozen jobs, and was shown the door in all but two, and it was never his fault.
Also, even in this economy, he managed to land a good job, as a 911 dispatcher. He managed to get himself fired from that in less than a month, but it totally wasn’t his fault, you know. :rolleyes:
I wouldn’t care except that he’d sent his first and only ever child support payment of $100. That was in 2009. I did say we divorced in 2002, right? sigh
The only reason he did is because I threatened Friend of the Court, but now I’ve fallen back to my default position of, essentially, it’s not worth the hassle and the grief it causes my son, because when he’s mad at me he makes sure my son knows how difficult I’m making things and how this is all my fault and yadda. So I go back to being pleasant and polite.
But no, if he’d held a job except for the current economy, I wouldn’t be anywhere near this scathing.
Easier than I expected.
No major community property to divide. No kids, so no reason to stay in touch. I think we’ve spoken once or twice since.
I thought it was obvious who benefited more from being married, though, since he ran right out and got married again within a year, divorced in 2, and was engaged again soon after, while I didn’t marry again for 17 years.
I guess I was a little reluctant to mix finances again. 
I have terrifying nightmares that I HAVE to talk to my ex husband. Except when he’s not ditching out on our shared debt, I never talk to him and never want to.
Wow. There are a lot more women than men in this thread. Aren’t there actually more men than women on the Dope?
When my sister divorced her first husband, who had pissed away several months of income in a row and turned out not to be making any bill or house payments during that period, she gave him a simple choice that I wish more women would contemplate.
1> Pay Child Support, or
2> Surrender Joint Custody.
Given his situation, he chose to walk away without paying support, and she got full and sole custody. She ended up filing bankruptcy and losing the house, but in the long run, was a lot better off. She was his second marriage, and as far as I know, he is now on his fifth marriage, with one or more kids from each of the first four.
After several years, his daughter by my sister was allowed to spend time with him, to go out of state for like one week a year. As she got older and he married and divorced again, that became more like “fly out for a day, once a year”.
I also didn’t pick an option, It’s been nearly a dozen years. With a few minor find replace commands I could have written Gleena’s post. Unfortunately we have three sons, and to this day she’s never made any effort to support them. I in fact could use the money, as illness, and the accompanying medical bills has been an issue for the last year or three. Still as long as I’m wishing I’d like a new BMW and to be 6’6”. It’s been easier to let go than get angry. She at least sees them regularly, and oddly seems downright friendly most of the time. I can’t seem to do the same, like I told the last person who asked me about it, I just don’t have the mental energy to deal with someone I feel is lying to me everytime we talk. The best I can manage is indifference. My youngest is 15, so only a few more years.
I would be more aggressive about it, except it does affect my son and I really don’t need the money - I mean, I do in that he has a responsibility to his child, but not as in we’re fine financially.
I live in another country. He’s de facto given up joint custody, as his end of the deal was either a.) pay child support and I fly him back for his six weeks at Christmas every year or b.) fly him home, and no child support, an option he picked because it works out cheaper. He has done c.) nothing. He makes no decisions, and he does what I tell him, thankfully, such as fill out the necessary paperwork so that my son can get his passport renewed, and give his written permission for the kiddo’s dual citizenship.
Although his mother pays for postage and makes sure it gets done. Let’s not get too wild here…
I do feel like I should add (and I missed the edit window, sorry)…
He’s not a bad guy, per se. He’s not a jerk. I can talk to him about ice hockey, which I miss. He does seem to genuinely love his kid. We’ve had some massive screaming fights but those were years ago. We don’t have them because I don’t push his buttons as often, and because he does recognise that hes not doing what he should be. In many ways, I am the “worse” human being in this perspective, because a few things he did in the heat of the moment in our divorce I can’t seem to get over and punish him for whenever I can in petty ways (mostly because I get the shits and backchat to his mother, which is an evil thing that I do and have resolved to stop doing, and have not done for some time). This is bad of me and I should stop it, and I know that. I mostly have done, and suspect I haven’t completely because I’m so irritated at his failures that it comes out that way. Nevertheless, I recognise that I could be a better person than I am, and I work on that all the time.
Any divorce has two stories, and you’re just hearing mine. The stuff about him holding a job is factual, and a real reason. There were other reasons that were subjective, and I suspect that as much of a huge shock as it seemed to be to him, there was some real relief to have it be over for him. He hasn’t said as much, but I’m not Miss Angel Perfect ™ either, you know? But there was no adultry and no abuse, nothing like that. It was my contempt for him that killed our marriage, and that contempt still colors our post-divorce relations.
What he can’t seem to do is get himself together in the most simple of ways. He can’t make a plan, even an easy one like, “Call GleenaKid at 9am his time every Sunday, which is X time on Saturday for me.” He forgets. It’s not even the expense, his mom pays for it. He can’t stop relying on me to tell him what to do, and gets upset when I tell him it’s his life. Now that our son is at boarding school and he calls GleenaKid directly, I’ve managed to get away from some of that - but I still get it in e-mail. He’s a serial dater of women who are going to be “the one” and who, for the most part have kids. He tends to dote on those kids, and our kid knows about it - FB can be a curse, too. That hurts our son, and gives me the shits with him. But I was lucky to find “the one” on the first go after the divorce, so…maybe it could have been me? I’d like to think I have better sense, but I don’t know, I didn’t have to find out.
So I have to cope with him, and he has to cope with me. I try to be the bigger person (metaphorically, LOL) but I don’t always manage it. I try to remember it must suck to be him at the moment, no unemployment, living in his mom’s basement at nearly 40, trying desperately to lose a huge amount of weight so he can get back in the military before he turns 41 because he sees that as his only life option.
But yeah, sometimes I’m a bitch. That’s all I’m saying. Sometimes I have a reason to be, maybe most times. Sometimes I’m just taking my pound of flesh.
It’s why I said communications problems.
So I’m not perfect and I have faults, but I have always upheld my responsibility as a parent, plus 1000 percent more, and he has done very little, and this is why I bag him out. He would say I’m wrong, but he’s not here, so…yeah.
The first time we were both very young, had no property or children, and the whole thing was settled via mail with her paying the bill, she had moved far away. Not amicable, but not hostile either. The part that really pissed me off came two years later when the Catholic Church sent me an annullment saying that the marriage never really happened. That pissed me off. It was real, I was there.
The second time we had two young boys and she had a millionaire grandpa who bought her a lawyer, (who would later become a judge), and I didn’t fight it because she held to a reasonable child support payment and we all still got along. I paid child support for two years until she and her new husband went into drug treatment where they admitted that they had spent every single child support check on drugs. They recinded the child support order and I raised the boys thereafter.
Both divorces were very bad experiences, but as far as they go, mine were quite easy. In neither case did I spend even a dollar on legal fees. More like a bad dream than a nightmare.
I picked nothing since its not over yet. We communicate fine as long as I agree with everything and give her everything she wants.
I haven’t seen him in a couple of years now, and that’s the way I like it. If I have to see him I can be polite and make conversation, but it still wouldn’t be smart for him to step out on the road in front of my car - I might hit him while I’m trying to decide whether or not to brake.
I’ve been divorced for almost a year, but haven’t seem him in a year and a half (he moved when we separated). We don’t have kids together.
At first it was really hard to talk to him. Eventually we had gotten to a point where we weren’t bitter or angry anymore, but at this point, we mostly just ignore each other and only talk if something comes up and we have to.
I had hoped some day we’d get past things and be able to get back the friendship we’d had, but once you get married and divorced, it’s kind of hard to just jump back.
Happiness is not dealing with the ex.
Misery is dealing with her.
My answer is somwhere between “rough at first” and we don’t talk.
We have a kid so we’ll need to talk for at least six more years. With the advent of caller ID if I see his name I hand the phone to Junior. My ex moved far enough away from where we live that the interaction is minimal. I’m not running into him at school events or anything like that.
On the occasions that we do need to talk about arrangements or a school issue I try very hard not to let myself be irritated, but at the end of any conversation I find myself frustrated and a tiny bit angry. It passes more quickly now, but I’m not expecting ever to get off the phone with him and think “what a nice chat!”.
After I got over the shock of my wife leaving me for her lover of a few years it was amicable enough. No children. We did a do-it-yourself divorce (this was California in the mid-80s) for a couple hundred bucks, she moved out. We had recently written a book together, and after the divorce would get together to plan and write updates for the next 7 editions of the book over the next two decades. Outside of that, we would exchange emails or phone calls to update each other on family happenings from either side. She and my wife get along together well. Our 10 years of marriage is shunted into a dustier part of my mental storage, and I can interact with her in her role as a friend who lives one state away. Surprisingly, my wife and I look forward to her visits to the area.