I’m just saying he’s not some guy who dated a chick for a few months, accidentally got her pregnant, threw a ring on her finger because “that’s what you’re supposed to do” and then bailed after a few months of marriage. Or a guy who’s had 4 marriages all lasting under a year etc. Or a guy who bailed the instant their marriage was no longer magical, cause presumably in a 12 year marriage ending this way the lack of satisfaction has been going on for a solid 3+ years now…so it sounds like he TRIED to stick it out.
Not just being attracted outside your marriage but ALSO unattracted inside your marriage is a difficult combo for anyone to resist.
Well, mostly I was referring to this specific situation. If two married people are truly miserable together, they give an honest effort to working it out, and ultimately decide to split, I think it’s much easier for the kids to process and not have that sting of abandonment than when one party blindsides the whole family by falling in love with someone else and taking off to be with her, while presumably the family back at home thought everything was fine.
As far as him spending more time with his kids…I’m not that sympathetic to that point. He obviously had the option at any time to try to get a job closer to home, so he could be with his kids more. Maybe he should have done that AND made an effort to work things out with his wife.
Agreed. I wouldn’t say “abandoned his kids” so much as didn’t put them first in his decision-making. Isn’t that what parents always say - “My kids are the most important thing in my life”? I’m not seeing that here.
That’s a tough call to make from the bleachers here, but from what Richard has described here, it doesn’t sound like he was pulling out all the stops to stay in love with his wife; he wasn’t physically there, and he wasn’t emotionally there. It’s easy to say that the attraction died, but what did he do to nurture it, to keep it alive? As Truman says, a good, healthy marriage doesn’t just magically happen.
What would you suggest he have done to “stay in love”? You can’t force it if it’s not there. I couldn’t tell you to fall in love romantically with your brother/sister. It doesn’t sound like he hated her or anything, just that they became more like platonic roommates/friends/siblings vs lovers.
I’ve never been married but it sounds like most marriages end up that way. Is there a way to keep the fires burning past 10 years or marriage or does everyone just accept that they’re never going to feel that new relationship passion again?
One could say maybe his wife should have made more effort to keep him attracted if we want to go down that route but it really doesn’t sound to me like it has anything to do with someone being at fault for not being/keeping interest because he hasn’t said anything bad about his wife (like he hasn’t said “well I met this girl and my wife has let herself go so I think Imma trade up”), I think it’s more that they just kind of both fell into a “we really don’t have that much in common” discovery.
But then we’re only hearing one side of the story and all. I’m just saying beyond sticking it out for a solid few years what else could he have done for people to not wish him misery an suffering? If he changed his job a few years ago and surprised his wife with candlelight dinners and flowers but still felt the same distance from her, would people be okay with it then? If he tried for another 10 years (and wasted even more of his wife’s life)?
I ask out of genuine curiosity as I have all sorts of commitment issues so I could see myself being in the OP’s position someday, which is scary.
That is just too sad to comment on truly.:dubious:
It’s not that anyone wanted him to stay in a loveless marriage. It’s that he blindsided two families with this. His kids didn’t see anger, discontent, sense distance, nor did his wife. One day he just up and said,’ I’ve found someone who makes my heart race, so I’m moving on, sorry about your luck’, effectively.
That’s a heartless and cruel way to treat a woman you swore forever to, and who produced a beautiful family with you.
He mentioned they had financial troubles, any bets on which half of this family is going to fall into poverty? The girl and him, two incomes? The old wife and kiddies? If she’s a stay at home Mom, they’re going to fall into poverty working and trying to pay daycare costs, or live on much less, minus lawyer fees. Gosh who wouldn’t be looking forward to being a single mother of two small children?
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One could say maybe his wife should have made more effort to keep him attracted if we want to go down that route but it really doesn’t sound to me like it has anything to do with someone being at fault for not being/keeping interest
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I was married once and got divorced after a few years for multiple reasons, but mostly due to infidelity on his part. He was cheating on me pretty much throughout the marriage. I was young and immature when I married him and I think the biggest mistake I made was to stay married to him for a few more years after I had first found out that he was cheating on me. I was too scared to leave, I was a recent immigrant to this country, I didn’t have any family here and I guess I really didn’t have very much in terms of options. I felt trapped. But the love for my then husband changed for me the minute I decided to stay despite his cheating. There was no longer the romantic love. It just became a relationship of convenience and I really don’t recommend that for anyone. I felt so free when I left him a few years later and thankfully there were no children involved.
I don’t recommend forcing anyone to “stay in love” with somebody if you don’t have those feelings anymore. But it is a good thing to figure out for yourself why you fell out of love with this person. However, I believe that when two people have been together for a while, have children, grow older, the meaning of love shifts. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, it just shifts from when they first met, dated and fell in love. I guess that is sort of a trying period for most couples because they begin questioning the shift and people other than your partner begin to seem fun and attractive and oh so refreshing. It is important that couples at this point do everything they can to reinvigorate the mundane, and to find ways in which they can continue to love one another and communicate whatever they are feeling and not come to the conclusion that their present relationship doesn’t work and that it’s time to move on. It takes work…but IMHO partners owe this to one and another.
None of know really how much work the OP and his wife put into making their relationship work. Doesn’t sound like a whole lot to me given how fast he went from pledging to make things work with his wife to running out the door, but then again, I’m not there. Maybe he did try to communicate with his wife. Maybe they did try counseling or vacations together without kids, to reignite their chemistry. But based on what the OP wrote, it sounds more likely that the OP got stuck in a psychological rut (depression does that) and found that “the girl” allowed him to escape into an adolescent fantasy of freedom and excitement. So his answer was to flee his marriage and chase after this distraction.
Although I’m not married, I do believe it’s unrealistic to expect that a married couple will “stay in love” through all the peaks and valleys of life. If “staying in love” is a top priority for the OP (or anyone else for that matter), then they probably shouldn’t be making vows of lifelong fidelity. It’s about putting on your big boy pants and knowing what you want in life. Do you want a family? Do you want a wife and a loving partner? Okay, so try to buckle down and ignore the temptations when life gets you down. Those temptations will always be there; rise above them. Or else stay single.
There are tradeoffs for every decision we make, and although we make mistakes and choose the wrong thing sometimes, that doesn’t mean there’s no accountability and that anything goes.
They have two kids in common and 12 years of history, so there’s that.
OP says he is passionate about piloting. That’s great, but what else can he talk about? What exactly has changed between 12 years ago and now that renders communication so difficult? Seems like the common ground should be increasing, not decreasing.
For some people, being married means you should try to make things work before giving up. It’s a contract that you told everyone you’d uphold. So yeah, if he’d tried to do all of that and things still didn’t go anywhere, he’d be looked at differently. Effort matters.
Right. Effort matters, and marriage (or any similar relationship) takes work. Not just vague “I didn’t mean for this to happen!” while indulging in an emotional affair, but real work to stay connected, to avoid temptation, and to invest ourselves. Sacrifice, tolerance, patience, good humor, and generosity of spirit help, too.
Not all relationships are worth saving. We readers of this tale have no way of knowing if the OPs relationship with his wife was worth any extra effort. But the feeling I got from the story was that the OP didn’t really try very hard because there was something else on offer, and a new relationship is pretty much always easier than an old one because it’s shiny and new and all the little things haven’t made you crazy yet.
From what the OP wrote, this is not a situation that just happened. These two had made commitments and when you make a commitment you’re supposed to stop dating other people.
That’s the mistake they made. When they started to realize there was an attraction, they should have avoided each other not sought each other’s company.
Yes! Effort matters. To me, marriage is just a legal tie to another person. I know some of you will disagree. My partner and me are not religious, but we are spiritual people. Marriage or no marriage, effort matters.
First of all, no one stays “in love” . I made a point above, and elsewhere, that “in love” is different than true romantic love, and only lasts a short time. Some people just keep falling “in love” with the person they’re married to, but successful relationships nurture their love and keep it healthy.
True love takes work - taking care of problems when they happen, instead of running away, nurturing each other, working together on problems instead of working against each other.
If you didn’t grow up in a family that was a good example of a loving marriage, I recommend you read this: Recovering Love, by Richard Cookerly. He is a marriage counselor and researcher specializing in relationships.
Yeah, she’ll be entitled to the sole parent pension - as well as rental relief, a pension card for reduced cost of services (transport, some utilities), a healthcare card for reduced cost/free medications for herself and the kids, tax breaks if she does go to work, childcare subsidies and so on and so forth.
Not to mention any alimony/child support that the non-custodial parent is required to pay, which CSS are pretty fucking gung-ho about chasing up, and the ATO are more than willing to garnish your wage to collect on their behalf if you deadbeat it.
She’s not going to be rich. It might get tough at some points. But he hasn’t left her in the cold and dark with no house, no lights and no food. Just because YOUR country doesn’t like supporting those who run into difficulty through no fault of their own, doesn’t mean that shit plays out the same way in the rest of the world.
This is not even the most frivolous divorce ever. For those who think that this situation is wrong, you believe that divorce should be less common on the margin, and that marriage should count for more. Given this realization, please ensure that your opinions on divorce law and the desirability of incentivizing marriage, or making it easier to divorce, are consistent with this view going forward.
(That anyone would hold the opinion “easy divorce for people like me, but not people like thee” is too ridiculous to even consider :p)
No–most of us here believe that divorce is not something to be entered into lightly (nor is marriage, come to that), and that some soul searching and concern for those who cannot help but ride that bus (the kids and the spouse who did not ask for the divorce) be present.
I’m not seeing that. I think it’s on you to defend divorcing frivolously, not us to defend attempting to salvage the marriage.
My wife has made that exact same “mistake.” So have I, when she’s away from home. Thing of it is, we’re both quite satisfied. Oh, we’ve had our problems, our disagreements, but nothing so bad that we want to be away from each other permanently, or that someone else could fit the bill better. Sure, I don’t kid myself that she wonders sometimes, what it’d be like with some guy that catches her attention, because I’ve thought the same thing. Well, with other women, not some other guy. But neither of us is inclined to start from the beginning all over again learning to adapt to another person’s quirks and peculiarities, and worst, the deep-seated neuroses or psychoses that don’t show themselves in the early stages of a romance.
Change is NOT change for the better. Often it’s for a lot worse and you don’t discover that until it’s too late. And the only time the grass is greener is when yours is totally dead or just nothing but dirt.
That is true. We’ll do what we can to try and make sure that doesn’t happen, but short of going back to my wife it might be inevitable. I guess that’s where the employee assistance program might be able to help.
Yes she is actually. Though my wife doesn’t want her to have anything to do with the children at the moment which is understandable.
As for finances, my wife and I are communicating well and have been discussing that regularly. At present I will be paying the required child support plus paying the mortgage on the family home. That pretty much leaves my wife and I at a similar level of poverty. As my own circumstances change we’ll be able to renegotiate things to keep them as fair as possible under the circumstances that I have put us in.
Why didn’t I take the job earlier? I’ve already said it in this thread but I’ll say it again, there were big retention bonuses on offer to stay and my wife and I both thought it was best to stay, pick up the money then get a job at home. That plan hasn’t changed. I guess if I didn’t have children I might have changed the plan and stayed closer to my new girlfriend and in that sense I’m sticking with the original plan to stay close to my children, but as it is, the change of jobs was always planned and the break up of the marriage is a separate issue.
Again, it isn’t that the OP should have stayed in his marriage for the sake of the kids, or not - it’s that they seemed to barely register in his thinking.
And most definitely this.
In coming up on 20 years of marriage, I’ve certainly been attracted to other women along the way. But there’s always a lot you can do to minimize the chances of your ever acting on those attractions. And if you’re in a committed relationship where sexual and romantic fidelity is considered part of the package, then you do those things, once you’re aware of your feelings. You don’t spend time with the other persons you’re attracted to when you don’t have to. You don’t flirt with them. You don’t even hint to them of the existence of your feelings.
And the reason WHY you do these things is simple: once you’ve entered into a committed relationship, there is the chance that it may not work out. BUT in that eventuality, your SO deserves for your decision to be one of ‘can we work this out, or are our differences irreconcilable?’ rather than ‘do I want to stay with my SO or do I want this other romance more?’
You’re free to do the latter when you’re dating, when you’re footloose and fancy-free. You pursue, you spend time with, the one you’d rather be with. You can do this on the basis of ‘I like person X better than person Y.’
But once you’re committed to person X, you’re committed to that person unless you get to a point where it’s not working, it’s not going to work, and nothing you can see will change that. But even in that extremity, you owe your SO that it should strictly be a decision on the viability of your relationship, and the question of whether you might have more fun elsewhere shouldn’t even enter in.
Because you didn’t go to your wife and say, “Hey, I’m feeling distanced from you and this other woman is really attractive and I think we need a new plan.”
